I have back/hip pain and chronic migraine. I know the pain in my back and hips is related to trauma because it flares up badly following a panic attack or flashback, and gets better during periods of lower stress or when I’m able to prioritize self-care.
Stress is my biggest migraine trigger and the frequency of attacks can hint at how I’m doing mentally, but they aren’t purely psychosomatic in my case; I’ve got a history of repeated TBI and the chronic migraine is just a long-term complication of that. I wear special glasses that help with the photophobia and reduce how often they happen, but it’s a tool and not a fix.
Been planning to make my own post about this. I’ve got EDS, FND, and Fibro, and use a wheelchair full time because of the pain in my legs.
I realized recently that I have a really high pain tolerance compared to the rest of my system and there are a lot of instances where someone tries to switch, but can’t stay in front because body pain is too high. When pain is really bad it’s like there’s a wall up. I can’t get out and no one else can get in.
I’m still early in system discovery and it’s making me question if I’m actually the host in the traditional sense or if I’m just constantly being forced back into front because no one else can handle it
**TLDR: I am severely hyperverbal right now and am being urged to apologise for it, so sorry for the wall of text; I have a ton of chronic health issues and there's a lot of complex interplay between DID and my other conditions; I have some nitpicks with the concept of "psychosomatic" conditions; disabling conditions tend to be kind of a "buy-one-get-10-free deal."**
We have a lot of health issues. We each experience them way differently, probably out of sheer need for compartmentalising. Because everything we experience is, in some fashion, real. There's no denying our T1D or seizures; there's also no denying that we, as alters, experience very closely linked phenomena that fall under those experiences but that are also "identity-altering/trauma-induced."
IMO...there's no entirely differentiating what is chronic pain and what is trauma. Trauma _is_ pain and refers to any injury, visibly-physical and less so. Pain refers to stuff that hurts. Many people can't immediately tell the difference between a stomach bug and a weeeeeird anxiety attack without the context provided by those words. **Your lived experience of it is what matters, whatever that entails.**
We have T2 diabetes in our family but not T1D; we had childhood trauma; it's likely that we would've gotten Type 1 Diabetes anyways, since immune systems are a bitch to deal with in general, but we have no way of knowing and therefore not much way of separating the two. Meanwhile, we have alters who correspond with spikes and crashes in blood sugar in response to stress, at least one of whom was very present during the period where we were medically neglected for several months prior to diagnosis, and several others who experienced the impact of that and of diagnosis itself. Meanwhile-meanwhile, we're well aware that stress hormones alone --- as in, coming from any stressor at all, as bodies can't really tell the difference --- can fuck with blood sugar.
**We've needed to cite this as a defense against our own denial of plurality ("What if I'm only like this right now because of my blood sugar") --- it's a constant feedback loop,** because if an alter is always triggered out by blood sugar issues and always corresponds with resulting changes in identity, it doesn't matter if the change in identity only comes with blood sugar nor if the blood sugar is just the trigger and the identity formed independently. **It still happens.**
**The origin point is not always what matters. (EMPHASIS ON "ALWAYS.")** Do my chronic pelvic pains come from my sexual trauma, from the fact that high blood sugar can result in frequent urination, or is it simply a matter of **comorbidity** --- another chronic condition on top of the other, what, five+? Or does my response to it matter more? **If I have a flashback, I can guess why I'm experiencing it; if I try to do something about it or respond to it as I would any physical pain, the same applies.**
This is how "symptom holding/delegation" probably works, IMO. Yeah, it's all probably related, but it go both ways. **I have type 1 diabetes, a brain malformation, seizures, chronic pain, all kinds of hormonal issues, probably EDS, fucked-up joints, fucked-up circulation issues.** I've had a lot of people tell me, especially for the seizures, that I'm only like this because of trauma or anxiety, which kind of sounds like gaslighting. They're not wrong --- but they're also not _right,_ seeing as, **if I _hadn't_ already been fucked up enough to get T1D and got it anyways, I'd probably have gotten fucked up enough to still be traumatised** by medical neglect, gaslighting, malpractice, mistreatment, and fuckery not otherwise specified.
**In short, the way I often put it: Substance dualism is sooooo 400 years ago (/j)!**
i’m not sure what we have, but yes. random muscle pains no matter where i am, can’t stand for a while, low energy, weak body.
i do believe that it’s gotten worse from my trauma. constant stress and being on edge (tensed up) might have something to do with it — or at least it getting worse.
everyone always told me it was normal growing pains, but they always hurt really bad… to the point i had to take advil and use heating pads as a kid to make it better.
only after i stopped growing i realized it was persistent and not stopping.
i feel like it could’ve been better had adults actually listened to me and stopped putting so much stress on me as a child.
i still have no idea what’s wrong with my body
sorry if this is worded weird, i’m out of it rn 😵💫,,
interesting! i’ve been considering it might be hEDS for a long while now — a lot of stuff lines up.
even my physical therapist told me i might be hypermobile when they were checking out how my hip joints bent LOL
if you’re willing to share… how did you go about getting diagnosed for that? what do they test for? (if any)
My PT was the one who brought it up, and recommended I follow up with another Dr to confirm. Hypermobile EDS is diagnosed through a physical assessment, it’s phenotype. Recently I saw on bendy_bodies instagram that some researchers think they found the gene associated with it, but there’s not currently any genetic test for it (genotype).
i see… thanks for sharing! i appreciate it. i might try and ask my doctor about that and bring up what my PT said.
hopefully they can either mark it or it’ll give them a leading clue as to what might be wrong.
thanks again! :]
my story likely isn't going to really fit anyone else's, but my chronic pain came from a bad accident where my leg ended up suffering some pretty severe damage. I already had DID since it formed when I was younger, but the incident that led to my chronic pain was a huge shock to the system.
i personally dont have a ton of communication, sadly, so I don't know a lot, but i do know that after that incident, instances of dissociation and amnesia became much heavier for me. It's likely i dissociate and switch when the pain becomes too much to someone better suited to masking. i didn't realize this was the case until i started living with my partner, and they picked up on these things, but without a shadow of a doubt, that incident caused splitting. Chronic pain can absolutely be a part of your trauma.
I can relate 💯. I suffer from scoliosis, which causes my right hip to be higher than my left. I also suffer from arthritis in both of my shoulders and carpal tunnel in both of my hands. I do suffer from chronic pain due to my trauma.
OMG IT HAS A NAME!!!!
I am taking this knowledge to the docs bc us and our father and aunt have a "unknown chronic migraine" that gets randomly treated with meds (but they all fail within two months).
May the universe bless you with effective treatment!!!
Glad it helped! Only things that have helped us are Nurtec and Botox (and lifestyle changes - all computers are eink, including phones, and have done our best to reduce noise in our home environment). And BOY have we tried *EVERYTHING*. Currently trialing Qlipta, which is doing jack shit.
Thank you!
Seems like my country does not allow Nurtec. I will seek if there's something similar. My dad tried botox and it failed too. The last one used was naratriptan. Works well on my dad, but in me and my aunt it only lowers the pain for some hours.
I hope things go well for you, I will keep testing everything here too.
yes. some of it we do know is a legitimate health issue/disability and other pains we have we know are 100% somatic. we have chronic “coat hanger” pain, which is both actual chronic pain and somatic, because the pain feels different. can’t really explain how. it’s like the legit pain is my nerves responding to something wrong or altering me to it, and the somatic pain feels like my nerves are just firing when they’re not supposed to. it’s weird but yeah
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We have severe joint pains in back/neck, but our most severe pains are in our tummy, and there appears to be no cause. We've been put on oral morphine to help for the pain.
system with fibromyalgia here, we have full body pain but mainly back/neck/joints, but we had stomach issues when we were younger and had so many tests done, turns out our ongoing stomach pain was just ibs, try seeing if certain foods make your stomach hurt more or less and it can help if its ibs
We used to have terrible GERD, esophageal hypersensitivity. It was very related to educational neglect and anxiety. I was never taught about the digestive system (homeschooled) and when I started to feel sensations (alexithymia going away with therapy) they were awful.
I got an endoscopy, found that I was physically fine. Then I did acceptance therapy and the pain went away. Obviously not everyone is that lucky.
honestly I'm too dissociated from the body to know. I'm guessing so, because when I'm not dissociated I have random mild pains in different areas of the body. and as a kid I'd have tactile flashbacks to trauma, so *some* of the chronic pain, if I even have chronic pain at all, is because of trauma.
We have chronic pain, but we have a connective tissue disorder which causes most if not all of it (suspected EDS/HSD, assessment to find out is this month). There's a possibility that some of it could be from having PTSD but honestly if it is it's probably not worth investigating in our case. Treating the other stuff would be more effective in terms of pain management.
The only thing we think could be directly related to the trauma itself is extreme cramping after fun adult time but that's debatable since it hasn't always been that way.
Lots and lots of chronic pain going back to childhood. Hypermobility, arthritis, fibromyalgia, IBS, TMJ. Constantly tense muscles. Chronic fatigue. I also have 3 herniated discs in my lower back and boney growths inside my spine pressing on my spinal cord that I’m waiting for surgery for.
I’m on quite a lot of pain meds these days just to be able to move around the house and take care of myself and my dog. The last few years have been progressively worse, which also correlates to trauma therapy and becoming less dissociated at baseline. It sucks that in order to get mentally healthy I have to deal with the pain relating to all of this shit. The pain was always there but it wasn’t pain because I couldn’t feel it (except for my back).
i have EDS, a connective tissue disorder. while my pain is largely physical flare ups can 100% be triggered by trauma related things. too much too quickly will put me on my ass for days with endless fatigue, depressive symptoms, joint pain, headaches, migraines etc. therapy sucks because of this lol but i still do it
edit; in other words my pain isn’t just mental/emotional. my genetics really just pulled a fast one and caused my body to not make enough collagen
Chronic Migraines since age 8, Functional Seizures, Fibromyalgia (could be something else though?), and more! I see 10+ medical professionals on a regular basis at this point and need to see another 2-3 before my bases are covered.
we have an insane level of chronic pain due to multifactorial illnesses, things i was born with, and traumagenic pain
fibromyalgia developed pretty early, we have slidey joints that are always failing, we have gastrointestinal issues caused by intense levels of stress throughout life, and insane chronic migraines that gave us brain damage
it sux, but its interesting how different alters percieve our bodies current state, some of us have less awareness of the pain and some of us feel too much! balance is hard with that.
managing w lots of different types of medications :3
yes! i have pain directly related to specific traumatic events in my childhood and pain related to my childhood trauma in general. the main pain i deal with is my bladder condition, which i believe is linked to my csa, and my spinal pain; i fell a couple stories in elementary school directly on my head, impacting my jaw and neck, and then landed secondarily on my wrist and ribs trying to catch myself. i luckily wasn't severely injured but my parents didn't seek necessary medical care for me after the fall (not shocking, they were very neglectful) causing one of the longest periods of amnesia in my childhood where at least one of us was tending to the injuries for several months, a skill we already thankfully learned. because of my parents neglect i now deal with tmj, consistent aura and very frequent migraines, severe spinal pain, etc. with my bladder there are a myriad of symptoms and ways i have to keep up with caring for it all as well. i'm so sorry you experience pain because of your trauma, pain is already overwhelming, having it tied to something makes it even more complex imo
I have DID, I suffer from chronic migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, and POTS. Not sure what’s connecting it all but I hope I find the answer to it soon.
I have multiple chronic pains, not all are due to our trauma, some are connected to trauma, but not always due to it if that makes sense. For an example, we had golden staph that was at least in part caused by a mental health diagnosis that led to the wrong medication being used with us. ( we were diagnosed with medically resistant schizophrenia and not the gender dysphoria we have) that caused us a emergency surgery and a long hospital stay as well as rehab, learning to walk once more. The trauma is the misdiagnosis because we could not get somebody to listen to us and believe us, but while the golden staph and learning to walk was horrible, it in itself was not traumatic, but the scar where we had a growth removed from our spinal column does ache badly in the cold.
As for chronic pain we know is connected to trauma, there is the headaches when we start to get when we verbalise it or the fear our body goes into when we find somebody we like attractive us a trauma response and can make things either nauseous for us, but also painful to speak.
That being said there are also times when that hasn’t happened due to being able to feel safe around a person, it is rare enough but it does happen and can be a great relief as it is our body’s way of letting us know that the person is someone that we feel comfortable but most importantly is safe to care for.
I have chronic headaches as well as migraines, undiagnosed backpack (possible scoliosis) and I tend to pull muscles super easy. My headaches and migraines tend to be stress related which i belive is semi connected to trauma. My back pain I've always had and has just gotten worse but belive I was born or developed it young due to my hips being off. And the pulling muscle could be I tend to not feel or recognize my pain till it's bad. Probably partially due to trauma of it always being ignored or told me be over reacting
Amazing how common migraines are, we have them too. Propranolol has been a godsend. Constant neck and shoulder pain from being tense all the time. And severe debilitating and painful nerve damage from who knows what, thinking autoimmune, since I've developed psoriatic arthritis after i realized/remembered things. Some of us don't have those symptoms or don't care about them, others avoid them like the plague.
Yeah we were born with chronic pain such as fibromyalgia and chronic headaches that can turn into migraines. It flares up on the daily depending on the weather and our mood. Literally if it’s a nice day and we’re stressed it just flares up.
If it’s slightly a temperature drop, it flairs up.
**It sucks!!** But that’s life I guess lol — Co Host
Not sure if we count as having chronic pain but it seems like we are usually in some amount of discomfort when not so dissociated, though always in a different way.
My doctors say it’s just a myriad of stress related symptoms, and all the tests I’ve done always show I’m perfectly healthy.
Maybe we’re just missing something, but at this point it seems like there’s no underlying issue and it’s all stress. If that’s the case it’s definitely related to our trauma and resulting anxiety issues.
We deal with chronic pain in many forms. The longest thing we've dealt with is back pain. Not entirely sure if it's related to trauma since there was never a point in our life when we didn't experience trauma and pain.
We have POTS, and it's being compounded by one or more extra issues, we just don't know exactly what they are yet.
We can't drink caffeine, not even a little (doc told us we'd be dead in an hour if we ever drank an energy drink), can't run or jump (okay, I mean we can, but it would have really bad consequences), can't really do anything that isn't calmly sitting - or it's pain. Extreme heart pain.
Because of all that, we're an ambulatory wheelchair user. We've got a nice motorized chair though so we don't exert ourselves too much.
It sucks, but as far as I know, we've been like this since the body was 14, so it's just normal at this point. I really wish our little didn't have to be like this though. She doesn't deserve this.
Mostly the struggle is constantly feeling like a burden on our partner.
I have CP and FND. Although my CP pain isn't triggered by stress, it is very mentally fatiguing and causes me to dissociate more.
My FND, though, is directly related to my trauma and is triggered by stress and flashbacks
We have hEDS, Fibro, chronic migraines, and horrible back pain from going to chiropractors for a decade. We've noticed there's a lot of systems we know that have some type of EDS which is interesting since they're both rare disorders. It doesn't totally suprise us though. The pain we had to deal with at a young age while being medically neglected absolutely contributed to us developing DID. So it sadly makes sense that others have experienced the same thing.
I have EDS, chronic migraines, as well as likely some kind of intestinal issue like IBS. Growing up with chronic pain has definitely influenced me as a system. One of my main alter’s has a ‘main’ job of blocking pain.
Unfortunately, we do suffer from chronic pain, though it has only become noticeably debilitating for the past year and a half, or thereabouts.
We received a diagnosis for Raynaud's syndrome earlier this year.
(It is an idiopathic condition, and so both cause and symptoms vary)
—————
[To summarize it, chronic stress and anxiety built on a foundation of past psychological traumas contribute to a nervous physiological reaction in which the muscles and blood vessels repeatedly contract and clench over time.
This often leads to painful stiffness and cramping in muscle tissue in various locations all over the body depending on where the physical stress is most often held.
This also sometimes restricts blood flow to the limbs, hands, and/or feet, and sometimes causes mild to moderate blood pressure issues.
In cold weather it can be particularly severe as it triggers the reactions just as easily as stress, and sometimes lack of blood flow will cause parts of the hands and feet to turn white and go numb.
So, in some languages, it is called "white finger" or "white hand" syndrome.]
—————
We are still in the process of learning to adjust habits appropriately and adopt mindfulness of health.
Concerting and maintaining diligence across all current active actors of the conscious mind and body is just a bit of an arduous endeavor.
A slow, long hike up through the sprawling foothills, one could say.
- K
I have severe nerve damage from a surgery/physical abuse over half my body that has progressively gotten worse over time. The others dont feel it unless fronting, sharing the burden is our primary sollution when its bad enough(bad weather/winter months)
I have chronic pain. Have all my life. One thing is, my mom didn't believe me when I was a kid and sometimes I think even now. Rolled her eyes a lot when I was a teen and implied I was lying to get out of having to do stuff. Nowadays we consistently have to stop from gaslighting ourself because we internalized it. We can actively be in pain and have the thought “we’re so lazy, we’re just acknowledging it because we want to get out of doing something”. Just a consistent uphill battle of giving myself the wiggle room to even admit that my body is not a fun place to be.
It's fucking annoying. I wish she’d believed us. Now we have to unravel her shit that she pressed upon us.
CFS + Autism = some kind of HSD comorbidity. I suspect it's hEDs and Injury Induced Arthritis since not only do my joints (especially knees) assumingly sublux often, but they also get inflammed.
I am getting tested soon, actually, in over a week from now. I hope I get my answers... It's been 2 rough years of whatever this is. I have knee braces, wrist braces, ankle compression socks/braces, and a cane.
The CFS is inherited, but also triggered by trauma. My grandmother, who is definitely traumatized, gave it to my mother (and traumatized her) to which she gave it to me and traumatized me too lmao. They both have this joint pain as well, but reportedly not as bad as mine. I believe that's the only trauma related chronic pain condition of mine.
It terrifies me, though. People look at CFS and just see a "condition where you're just tired all the time", but it's deeper than that. My grandmother, most of my mother's childhood, would be bedridden due to CFS and would unintentionally neglect her in every way imagineable because of this, leaving her to do everything on her own. My mother caught similar symptoms around the age of 12-14. As she grew older, the worse it got. In November or so, she fell into a similar situation and was bedridden for a month or so. Before that she was constantly in bed to begin with and my fathers remarks didn't help much. She was sobbing constantly and feeling immense guilt and pain. Sleeping all day. Apologizing. She was shattered... And ever since witnessing that, I am terrified of what will come for me in the future. This condition disables her enough to where she cannot work constantly. I'm scared that I won't even get my dream job because of this. Working is already hard for me. I don't want to miss out on life because I'm too busy being unconscious while everyone else witnesses the wonders of life without any blocks.
We have arthritis in our back from a previous injury. General chronic joint pain due to autoimmune illnesses, and we used to have endometriosis until we got a total hysterectomy. We also get migraines, but not super often(maybe one every 3-5 months).
Some alters have a higher pain tolerance. Others do not. Some are better at being able to deal with the pain mentally than others(ie, being able to get through work without having to curl into a ball and just try not to throw up from the pain lmao).
I have read some interesting articles about autoimmune illnesses possibly being related to trauma , especially at an early age. I will say that almost everyone we’ve met who has an autoimmune disorder also has some form of trauma. I’m not sure how much is correlation vs causation, but it would be cool if more in depth studies were done
We’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia since 6 years old it’s a up and down but recently it’s more somatic symptoms that’s really bad because actually doing good therapy you know but our IBS hurts also but is way better since a child with food modification.
EDS joint and back pain. I genuinely didn’t realize that I experienced chronic pain cuz part of the abuse/gaslighting/neglect was telling me that my experiences were always normal and shouldn’t be causing any problems, so if they were then it must be “for attention” otherwise I shouldn’t bring it up.
So I thought I was fine/normal and sure my joints are kinda creaky sometimes but that’s normal, right? Sure I can’t sleep sometimes cuz of the pain, but it doesn’t even hurt that bad. I could function or do whatever if I had to!
Apparently this is *[checks notes]* **not** normal ?? I have been informed this is “really bad” 🤷🏼♂️
Alexithymia is a bitch man. I was trained to ignore my body and needs, and the metrics I’ve been measuring by are both imprecise, but also just on a wackass metric that isn’t actually usable. I very often forget I’m in pain when I’m in pain. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t there, mind you. I just don’t understand *why* it feels like everything’s hard and everything sucks and I feel like shit
Mine I don’t think is related fully to trauma but because of trauma I developed the mindset that I was weak to complain or mention pain and needed to ignore and push past things that really should have been tended to.
I also have an alter that I think fronts just to feel/handle physical pain or flare ups of mental health? So it’s interesting because I as a whole don’t experience high levels of chronic physical pain all the time but that one part is fairly miserable and feels like it never isn’t in pain. Meanwhile the ‘me’ I am right now feels like they haven’t really had much experience with pain or discomfort at all.
I also had a leg injury that was ignored as a young teenager that caused bad chronic pain for a few years? And sometimes when I feel that pain now or just feel nerve, joint or muscle pain in my legs in general, I feel like I’m that ‘person’ again. (My thoughts are that the alter that fronted most often during that time of my life became somewhat associated with that pain.)
we have a chronic condition that is definitely related to our trauma. if we didn't have it, we would not have been hospitalized most of our childhood, and thus wouldn't have gone through the medical trauma that led to having DID.
We have chronic ankle pains. If we're standing and moving around for too long, our back starts hurting as well. We also got unlucky in the genetics department and have Crohn's disease. I don't think our trauma caused those things.... but being stressed out about traumas all the time definitely doesn't help much. Like bodily were still young, and it's getting to the point where we might need a cane most days so we can at least shift some weight off of us. This sucks.
I have back/hip pain and chronic migraine. I know the pain in my back and hips is related to trauma because it flares up badly following a panic attack or flashback, and gets better during periods of lower stress or when I’m able to prioritize self-care. Stress is my biggest migraine trigger and the frequency of attacks can hint at how I’m doing mentally, but they aren’t purely psychosomatic in my case; I’ve got a history of repeated TBI and the chronic migraine is just a long-term complication of that. I wear special glasses that help with the photophobia and reduce how often they happen, but it’s a tool and not a fix.
Been planning to make my own post about this. I’ve got EDS, FND, and Fibro, and use a wheelchair full time because of the pain in my legs. I realized recently that I have a really high pain tolerance compared to the rest of my system and there are a lot of instances where someone tries to switch, but can’t stay in front because body pain is too high. When pain is really bad it’s like there’s a wall up. I can’t get out and no one else can get in. I’m still early in system discovery and it’s making me question if I’m actually the host in the traditional sense or if I’m just constantly being forced back into front because no one else can handle it
**TLDR: I am severely hyperverbal right now and am being urged to apologise for it, so sorry for the wall of text; I have a ton of chronic health issues and there's a lot of complex interplay between DID and my other conditions; I have some nitpicks with the concept of "psychosomatic" conditions; disabling conditions tend to be kind of a "buy-one-get-10-free deal."** We have a lot of health issues. We each experience them way differently, probably out of sheer need for compartmentalising. Because everything we experience is, in some fashion, real. There's no denying our T1D or seizures; there's also no denying that we, as alters, experience very closely linked phenomena that fall under those experiences but that are also "identity-altering/trauma-induced." IMO...there's no entirely differentiating what is chronic pain and what is trauma. Trauma _is_ pain and refers to any injury, visibly-physical and less so. Pain refers to stuff that hurts. Many people can't immediately tell the difference between a stomach bug and a weeeeeird anxiety attack without the context provided by those words. **Your lived experience of it is what matters, whatever that entails.** We have T2 diabetes in our family but not T1D; we had childhood trauma; it's likely that we would've gotten Type 1 Diabetes anyways, since immune systems are a bitch to deal with in general, but we have no way of knowing and therefore not much way of separating the two. Meanwhile, we have alters who correspond with spikes and crashes in blood sugar in response to stress, at least one of whom was very present during the period where we were medically neglected for several months prior to diagnosis, and several others who experienced the impact of that and of diagnosis itself. Meanwhile-meanwhile, we're well aware that stress hormones alone --- as in, coming from any stressor at all, as bodies can't really tell the difference --- can fuck with blood sugar. **We've needed to cite this as a defense against our own denial of plurality ("What if I'm only like this right now because of my blood sugar") --- it's a constant feedback loop,** because if an alter is always triggered out by blood sugar issues and always corresponds with resulting changes in identity, it doesn't matter if the change in identity only comes with blood sugar nor if the blood sugar is just the trigger and the identity formed independently. **It still happens.** **The origin point is not always what matters. (EMPHASIS ON "ALWAYS.")** Do my chronic pelvic pains come from my sexual trauma, from the fact that high blood sugar can result in frequent urination, or is it simply a matter of **comorbidity** --- another chronic condition on top of the other, what, five+? Or does my response to it matter more? **If I have a flashback, I can guess why I'm experiencing it; if I try to do something about it or respond to it as I would any physical pain, the same applies.** This is how "symptom holding/delegation" probably works, IMO. Yeah, it's all probably related, but it go both ways. **I have type 1 diabetes, a brain malformation, seizures, chronic pain, all kinds of hormonal issues, probably EDS, fucked-up joints, fucked-up circulation issues.** I've had a lot of people tell me, especially for the seizures, that I'm only like this because of trauma or anxiety, which kind of sounds like gaslighting. They're not wrong --- but they're also not _right,_ seeing as, **if I _hadn't_ already been fucked up enough to get T1D and got it anyways, I'd probably have gotten fucked up enough to still be traumatised** by medical neglect, gaslighting, malpractice, mistreatment, and fuckery not otherwise specified. **In short, the way I often put it: Substance dualism is sooooo 400 years ago (/j)!**
i’m not sure what we have, but yes. random muscle pains no matter where i am, can’t stand for a while, low energy, weak body. i do believe that it’s gotten worse from my trauma. constant stress and being on edge (tensed up) might have something to do with it — or at least it getting worse. everyone always told me it was normal growing pains, but they always hurt really bad… to the point i had to take advil and use heating pads as a kid to make it better. only after i stopped growing i realized it was persistent and not stopping. i feel like it could’ve been better had adults actually listened to me and stopped putting so much stress on me as a child. i still have no idea what’s wrong with my body sorry if this is worded weird, i’m out of it rn 😵💫,,
POTS?
i don’t think it is. i only have muscle/bone issues and overall a weak body . not much aside from that i appreciate your input though!
Mine ended up being from hEDS and lupus, my hormonal imbalance only made the fatigue worse.
interesting! i’ve been considering it might be hEDS for a long while now — a lot of stuff lines up. even my physical therapist told me i might be hypermobile when they were checking out how my hip joints bent LOL if you’re willing to share… how did you go about getting diagnosed for that? what do they test for? (if any)
My PT was the one who brought it up, and recommended I follow up with another Dr to confirm. Hypermobile EDS is diagnosed through a physical assessment, it’s phenotype. Recently I saw on bendy_bodies instagram that some researchers think they found the gene associated with it, but there’s not currently any genetic test for it (genotype).
i see… thanks for sharing! i appreciate it. i might try and ask my doctor about that and bring up what my PT said. hopefully they can either mark it or it’ll give them a leading clue as to what might be wrong. thanks again! :]
my story likely isn't going to really fit anyone else's, but my chronic pain came from a bad accident where my leg ended up suffering some pretty severe damage. I already had DID since it formed when I was younger, but the incident that led to my chronic pain was a huge shock to the system. i personally dont have a ton of communication, sadly, so I don't know a lot, but i do know that after that incident, instances of dissociation and amnesia became much heavier for me. It's likely i dissociate and switch when the pain becomes too much to someone better suited to masking. i didn't realize this was the case until i started living with my partner, and they picked up on these things, but without a shadow of a doubt, that incident caused splitting. Chronic pain can absolutely be a part of your trauma.
I can relate 💯. I suffer from scoliosis, which causes my right hip to be higher than my left. I also suffer from arthritis in both of my shoulders and carpal tunnel in both of my hands. I do suffer from chronic pain due to my trauma.
Refractory Chronic Migraine is a bitch.
OMG IT HAS A NAME!!!! I am taking this knowledge to the docs bc us and our father and aunt have a "unknown chronic migraine" that gets randomly treated with meds (but they all fail within two months). May the universe bless you with effective treatment!!!
Glad it helped! Only things that have helped us are Nurtec and Botox (and lifestyle changes - all computers are eink, including phones, and have done our best to reduce noise in our home environment). And BOY have we tried *EVERYTHING*. Currently trialing Qlipta, which is doing jack shit.
Thank you! Seems like my country does not allow Nurtec. I will seek if there's something similar. My dad tried botox and it failed too. The last one used was naratriptan. Works well on my dad, but in me and my aunt it only lowers the pain for some hours. I hope things go well for you, I will keep testing everything here too.
yes. some of it we do know is a legitimate health issue/disability and other pains we have we know are 100% somatic. we have chronic “coat hanger” pain, which is both actual chronic pain and somatic, because the pain feels different. can’t really explain how. it’s like the legit pain is my nerves responding to something wrong or altering me to it, and the somatic pain feels like my nerves are just firing when they’re not supposed to. it’s weird but yeah
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We have severe joint pains in back/neck, but our most severe pains are in our tummy, and there appears to be no cause. We've been put on oral morphine to help for the pain.
system with fibromyalgia here, we have full body pain but mainly back/neck/joints, but we had stomach issues when we were younger and had so many tests done, turns out our ongoing stomach pain was just ibs, try seeing if certain foods make your stomach hurt more or less and it can help if its ibs
We also have fibromyalgia and IBS
we have fibromyalgia linked to our trauma
We used to have terrible GERD, esophageal hypersensitivity. It was very related to educational neglect and anxiety. I was never taught about the digestive system (homeschooled) and when I started to feel sensations (alexithymia going away with therapy) they were awful. I got an endoscopy, found that I was physically fine. Then I did acceptance therapy and the pain went away. Obviously not everyone is that lucky.
I have fibromyalgia and yes I do think it's linked to my trauma.
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I’m sorry ❤️
I'm going to get tested this thursday, idk. Gonna check if its organic or fatigue chronic or similars. I think it may be
honestly I'm too dissociated from the body to know. I'm guessing so, because when I'm not dissociated I have random mild pains in different areas of the body. and as a kid I'd have tactile flashbacks to trauma, so *some* of the chronic pain, if I even have chronic pain at all, is because of trauma.
We have chronic pain, but we have a connective tissue disorder which causes most if not all of it (suspected EDS/HSD, assessment to find out is this month). There's a possibility that some of it could be from having PTSD but honestly if it is it's probably not worth investigating in our case. Treating the other stuff would be more effective in terms of pain management. The only thing we think could be directly related to the trauma itself is extreme cramping after fun adult time but that's debatable since it hasn't always been that way.
Lots and lots of chronic pain going back to childhood. Hypermobility, arthritis, fibromyalgia, IBS, TMJ. Constantly tense muscles. Chronic fatigue. I also have 3 herniated discs in my lower back and boney growths inside my spine pressing on my spinal cord that I’m waiting for surgery for. I’m on quite a lot of pain meds these days just to be able to move around the house and take care of myself and my dog. The last few years have been progressively worse, which also correlates to trauma therapy and becoming less dissociated at baseline. It sucks that in order to get mentally healthy I have to deal with the pain relating to all of this shit. The pain was always there but it wasn’t pain because I couldn’t feel it (except for my back).
i have EDS, a connective tissue disorder. while my pain is largely physical flare ups can 100% be triggered by trauma related things. too much too quickly will put me on my ass for days with endless fatigue, depressive symptoms, joint pain, headaches, migraines etc. therapy sucks because of this lol but i still do it edit; in other words my pain isn’t just mental/emotional. my genetics really just pulled a fast one and caused my body to not make enough collagen
Chronic Migraines since age 8, Functional Seizures, Fibromyalgia (could be something else though?), and more! I see 10+ medical professionals on a regular basis at this point and need to see another 2-3 before my bases are covered.
we have an insane level of chronic pain due to multifactorial illnesses, things i was born with, and traumagenic pain fibromyalgia developed pretty early, we have slidey joints that are always failing, we have gastrointestinal issues caused by intense levels of stress throughout life, and insane chronic migraines that gave us brain damage it sux, but its interesting how different alters percieve our bodies current state, some of us have less awareness of the pain and some of us feel too much! balance is hard with that. managing w lots of different types of medications :3
yes! i have pain directly related to specific traumatic events in my childhood and pain related to my childhood trauma in general. the main pain i deal with is my bladder condition, which i believe is linked to my csa, and my spinal pain; i fell a couple stories in elementary school directly on my head, impacting my jaw and neck, and then landed secondarily on my wrist and ribs trying to catch myself. i luckily wasn't severely injured but my parents didn't seek necessary medical care for me after the fall (not shocking, they were very neglectful) causing one of the longest periods of amnesia in my childhood where at least one of us was tending to the injuries for several months, a skill we already thankfully learned. because of my parents neglect i now deal with tmj, consistent aura and very frequent migraines, severe spinal pain, etc. with my bladder there are a myriad of symptoms and ways i have to keep up with caring for it all as well. i'm so sorry you experience pain because of your trauma, pain is already overwhelming, having it tied to something makes it even more complex imo
Yes!
I have DID, I suffer from chronic migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, and POTS. Not sure what’s connecting it all but I hope I find the answer to it soon.
I have multiple chronic pains, not all are due to our trauma, some are connected to trauma, but not always due to it if that makes sense. For an example, we had golden staph that was at least in part caused by a mental health diagnosis that led to the wrong medication being used with us. ( we were diagnosed with medically resistant schizophrenia and not the gender dysphoria we have) that caused us a emergency surgery and a long hospital stay as well as rehab, learning to walk once more. The trauma is the misdiagnosis because we could not get somebody to listen to us and believe us, but while the golden staph and learning to walk was horrible, it in itself was not traumatic, but the scar where we had a growth removed from our spinal column does ache badly in the cold. As for chronic pain we know is connected to trauma, there is the headaches when we start to get when we verbalise it or the fear our body goes into when we find somebody we like attractive us a trauma response and can make things either nauseous for us, but also painful to speak. That being said there are also times when that hasn’t happened due to being able to feel safe around a person, it is rare enough but it does happen and can be a great relief as it is our body’s way of letting us know that the person is someone that we feel comfortable but most importantly is safe to care for.
I have chronic headaches as well as migraines, undiagnosed backpack (possible scoliosis) and I tend to pull muscles super easy. My headaches and migraines tend to be stress related which i belive is semi connected to trauma. My back pain I've always had and has just gotten worse but belive I was born or developed it young due to my hips being off. And the pulling muscle could be I tend to not feel or recognize my pain till it's bad. Probably partially due to trauma of it always being ignored or told me be over reacting
Amazing how common migraines are, we have them too. Propranolol has been a godsend. Constant neck and shoulder pain from being tense all the time. And severe debilitating and painful nerve damage from who knows what, thinking autoimmune, since I've developed psoriatic arthritis after i realized/remembered things. Some of us don't have those symptoms or don't care about them, others avoid them like the plague.
Yeah we were born with chronic pain such as fibromyalgia and chronic headaches that can turn into migraines. It flares up on the daily depending on the weather and our mood. Literally if it’s a nice day and we’re stressed it just flares up. If it’s slightly a temperature drop, it flairs up. **It sucks!!** But that’s life I guess lol — Co Host
Not sure if we count as having chronic pain but it seems like we are usually in some amount of discomfort when not so dissociated, though always in a different way. My doctors say it’s just a myriad of stress related symptoms, and all the tests I’ve done always show I’m perfectly healthy. Maybe we’re just missing something, but at this point it seems like there’s no underlying issue and it’s all stress. If that’s the case it’s definitely related to our trauma and resulting anxiety issues.
We deal with chronic pain in many forms. The longest thing we've dealt with is back pain. Not entirely sure if it's related to trauma since there was never a point in our life when we didn't experience trauma and pain.
We have POTS, and it's being compounded by one or more extra issues, we just don't know exactly what they are yet. We can't drink caffeine, not even a little (doc told us we'd be dead in an hour if we ever drank an energy drink), can't run or jump (okay, I mean we can, but it would have really bad consequences), can't really do anything that isn't calmly sitting - or it's pain. Extreme heart pain. Because of all that, we're an ambulatory wheelchair user. We've got a nice motorized chair though so we don't exert ourselves too much. It sucks, but as far as I know, we've been like this since the body was 14, so it's just normal at this point. I really wish our little didn't have to be like this though. She doesn't deserve this. Mostly the struggle is constantly feeling like a burden on our partner.
Out of the 7 systems I've known 5 of them have chronic pain. I don't think it was related to their trauma? But I don't know for sure
Yup! Chronic bone/joint pain. Started at puberty, hasn't stopped since. It sucks.
I have CP and FND. Although my CP pain isn't triggered by stress, it is very mentally fatiguing and causes me to dissociate more. My FND, though, is directly related to my trauma and is triggered by stress and flashbacks
We have hEDS, Fibro, chronic migraines, and horrible back pain from going to chiropractors for a decade. We've noticed there's a lot of systems we know that have some type of EDS which is interesting since they're both rare disorders. It doesn't totally suprise us though. The pain we had to deal with at a young age while being medically neglected absolutely contributed to us developing DID. So it sadly makes sense that others have experienced the same thing.
I have EDS, chronic migraines, as well as likely some kind of intestinal issue like IBS. Growing up with chronic pain has definitely influenced me as a system. One of my main alter’s has a ‘main’ job of blocking pain.
Unfortunately, we do suffer from chronic pain, though it has only become noticeably debilitating for the past year and a half, or thereabouts. We received a diagnosis for Raynaud's syndrome earlier this year. (It is an idiopathic condition, and so both cause and symptoms vary) ————— [To summarize it, chronic stress and anxiety built on a foundation of past psychological traumas contribute to a nervous physiological reaction in which the muscles and blood vessels repeatedly contract and clench over time. This often leads to painful stiffness and cramping in muscle tissue in various locations all over the body depending on where the physical stress is most often held. This also sometimes restricts blood flow to the limbs, hands, and/or feet, and sometimes causes mild to moderate blood pressure issues. In cold weather it can be particularly severe as it triggers the reactions just as easily as stress, and sometimes lack of blood flow will cause parts of the hands and feet to turn white and go numb. So, in some languages, it is called "white finger" or "white hand" syndrome.] ————— We are still in the process of learning to adjust habits appropriately and adopt mindfulness of health. Concerting and maintaining diligence across all current active actors of the conscious mind and body is just a bit of an arduous endeavor. A slow, long hike up through the sprawling foothills, one could say. - K
I have severe nerve damage from a surgery/physical abuse over half my body that has progressively gotten worse over time. The others dont feel it unless fronting, sharing the burden is our primary sollution when its bad enough(bad weather/winter months)
I have chronic pain. Have all my life. One thing is, my mom didn't believe me when I was a kid and sometimes I think even now. Rolled her eyes a lot when I was a teen and implied I was lying to get out of having to do stuff. Nowadays we consistently have to stop from gaslighting ourself because we internalized it. We can actively be in pain and have the thought “we’re so lazy, we’re just acknowledging it because we want to get out of doing something”. Just a consistent uphill battle of giving myself the wiggle room to even admit that my body is not a fun place to be. It's fucking annoying. I wish she’d believed us. Now we have to unravel her shit that she pressed upon us.
Yes.. I have terrible neuropathy and limited motion. Suffered non epileptic seizures as a kid which caused my dissociating to start
CFS + Autism = some kind of HSD comorbidity. I suspect it's hEDs and Injury Induced Arthritis since not only do my joints (especially knees) assumingly sublux often, but they also get inflammed. I am getting tested soon, actually, in over a week from now. I hope I get my answers... It's been 2 rough years of whatever this is. I have knee braces, wrist braces, ankle compression socks/braces, and a cane. The CFS is inherited, but also triggered by trauma. My grandmother, who is definitely traumatized, gave it to my mother (and traumatized her) to which she gave it to me and traumatized me too lmao. They both have this joint pain as well, but reportedly not as bad as mine. I believe that's the only trauma related chronic pain condition of mine. It terrifies me, though. People look at CFS and just see a "condition where you're just tired all the time", but it's deeper than that. My grandmother, most of my mother's childhood, would be bedridden due to CFS and would unintentionally neglect her in every way imagineable because of this, leaving her to do everything on her own. My mother caught similar symptoms around the age of 12-14. As she grew older, the worse it got. In November or so, she fell into a similar situation and was bedridden for a month or so. Before that she was constantly in bed to begin with and my fathers remarks didn't help much. She was sobbing constantly and feeling immense guilt and pain. Sleeping all day. Apologizing. She was shattered... And ever since witnessing that, I am terrified of what will come for me in the future. This condition disables her enough to where she cannot work constantly. I'm scared that I won't even get my dream job because of this. Working is already hard for me. I don't want to miss out on life because I'm too busy being unconscious while everyone else witnesses the wonders of life without any blocks.
We have arthritis in our back from a previous injury. General chronic joint pain due to autoimmune illnesses, and we used to have endometriosis until we got a total hysterectomy. We also get migraines, but not super often(maybe one every 3-5 months). Some alters have a higher pain tolerance. Others do not. Some are better at being able to deal with the pain mentally than others(ie, being able to get through work without having to curl into a ball and just try not to throw up from the pain lmao). I have read some interesting articles about autoimmune illnesses possibly being related to trauma , especially at an early age. I will say that almost everyone we’ve met who has an autoimmune disorder also has some form of trauma. I’m not sure how much is correlation vs causation, but it would be cool if more in depth studies were done
We’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia since 6 years old it’s a up and down but recently it’s more somatic symptoms that’s really bad because actually doing good therapy you know but our IBS hurts also but is way better since a child with food modification.
EDS joint and back pain. I genuinely didn’t realize that I experienced chronic pain cuz part of the abuse/gaslighting/neglect was telling me that my experiences were always normal and shouldn’t be causing any problems, so if they were then it must be “for attention” otherwise I shouldn’t bring it up. So I thought I was fine/normal and sure my joints are kinda creaky sometimes but that’s normal, right? Sure I can’t sleep sometimes cuz of the pain, but it doesn’t even hurt that bad. I could function or do whatever if I had to! Apparently this is *[checks notes]* **not** normal ?? I have been informed this is “really bad” 🤷🏼♂️ Alexithymia is a bitch man. I was trained to ignore my body and needs, and the metrics I’ve been measuring by are both imprecise, but also just on a wackass metric that isn’t actually usable. I very often forget I’m in pain when I’m in pain. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t there, mind you. I just don’t understand *why* it feels like everything’s hard and everything sucks and I feel like shit
Mine I don’t think is related fully to trauma but because of trauma I developed the mindset that I was weak to complain or mention pain and needed to ignore and push past things that really should have been tended to. I also have an alter that I think fronts just to feel/handle physical pain or flare ups of mental health? So it’s interesting because I as a whole don’t experience high levels of chronic physical pain all the time but that one part is fairly miserable and feels like it never isn’t in pain. Meanwhile the ‘me’ I am right now feels like they haven’t really had much experience with pain or discomfort at all. I also had a leg injury that was ignored as a young teenager that caused bad chronic pain for a few years? And sometimes when I feel that pain now or just feel nerve, joint or muscle pain in my legs in general, I feel like I’m that ‘person’ again. (My thoughts are that the alter that fronted most often during that time of my life became somewhat associated with that pain.)
we have a chronic condition that is definitely related to our trauma. if we didn't have it, we would not have been hospitalized most of our childhood, and thus wouldn't have gone through the medical trauma that led to having DID.
We have chronic ankle pains. If we're standing and moving around for too long, our back starts hurting as well. We also got unlucky in the genetics department and have Crohn's disease. I don't think our trauma caused those things.... but being stressed out about traumas all the time definitely doesn't help much. Like bodily were still young, and it's getting to the point where we might need a cane most days so we can at least shift some weight off of us. This sucks.