Connecting Trauma, Stress & Fibromyalgia Pain

For several years, I have been aware of how trauma has impacted my body and mind. In many ways, I had learned to cope through repression, detachment, and disassociation. It took me a long time to reconnect with my body. I had to learn to feel and respond to the sensations and messages of my body.

I had to learn how to feel and respond to the pain that I had been holding on to. Learn how to release the emotional charge of trauma triggers through somatic release. These triggers made me lose control of myself, and I would respond physically. The energy was intense when it happened; it would wipe me out for days and cause long periods of pain and tension.

For many years, as part of my trauma recovery, I have had to navigate this relationship and all the associated symptoms that manifested physically. My symptoms included pain, tension, fatigue, brain fog, confusion, panic, anxiety, IBS, overactive bladder and insomnia.

It has been a part of my life design and recovery process to create a lifestyle that allows me to respond to my physical needs and emotional fluctuations when needed. But before I realised this connection, I simply thought I was mentally ill!

As I have worked through my trauma and been through a period of deep introspection, retrospection and refection, I can now see, understand and explain the relationship between my trauma and my pain.

Breaking Down Fibromyalgia Pain

One of the main points to understand this process and connection I have identified (because it does also have physical roots, which I cover in the course “How I Healed My Fibromyalgia Flare-Up”) is that I had been taught to repress my emotions. I was not allowed to express myself fully, there was no space or support to be unwell, and I was very emotionally stunted.

This deeply impacted how I responded to stressful and traumatic experiences in my life as a child, through adolescence and as a young adult. When I experienced physical, sexual and emotional stress or trauma, I internalised it and shut down emotionally and physically.

When I was young and being sexually assaulted, I adopted a freeze and fawn response. This meant my body and nervous systems had made the association that to survive these situations, shitting down was the safest option.

This shutting down caused a serious ripple effect in my life regarding my mental health (depression, anxiety and PTSD) and physically in my body. I could barely feel pain, I had to learn how to orgasm because I could barely feel pleasure and held a lot of tension in my body generally.

I experienced many other traumas due to this response. Rather than respond to stress or fear by protecting myself physically, by walking away or leaving dangerous environments, people or experiences (where red flags or warning signals were present), I learned to ignore them and tolerate situations that were not safe for me. This led to more trauma, abuse and violent experiences.

These types of patterns and responses are often the ingredients for complex trauma triggers (CPTSD) and stress-related conditions of this type.

I was aware of this manifestation when I began my initial life design process (in 2018) but not when I first began my recovery journey (in 2011). I had been managing my health through a balanced lifestyle, was engaged in shadow work and had begun to reconnect with my body responding to my needs. I was also learning emotional expression and building my emotional intelligence.

In 2022, over nine months, I experienced several big traumatic events that caused a huge amount of stress in my life. I had a close family member die, another get seriously ill and required long-term care and a recovery period and the project I had invested many years in was very nastily ended, unexpectedly.

These were deep attachments of mine; the events caused a major disruption to my lifestyle, and I lost my support system and income. I responded by choosing not to follow my life design, allowing myself to indulge, not worrying about my lifestyle, and giving myself space to grieve as I adjusted and honoured the losses in my life.

I chose to push my needs aside for a while since I was supporting others. I wasn’t doing the physical (land based, occupational ) work, body work (massage etc) or exercises I had previously been doing. Over 18 months, I gained about 2-2.5 stones in weight.

This caused me to ultimately have a fibromyalgia flare-up that manifested as extreme pain and tension. I woke up one day and could barely walk. It was like my body was in shock. From my head to my toes, my body was in sharp, shooting pains. I had dull aches, muscle tension and stress throughout my body, and it was a struggle to do even daily tasks of taking care of myself.

I decided I had to try and get support, which would require a diagnosis, and I began engaging with doctors. It took 9 months of appointments and referrals to get a diagnosis of fibromyalgia.

Ultimately, I didn’t receive any financial support and was told to manage my condition through either painkillers or lifestyle (which I previously knew anyway). I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t take painkillers due to my history with addiction and suicide attempts, so my option was to go back to lifestyle. However, with little support, no transport and no income, this seemed like a big task!

I cover the details of what I did to overcome the flare-up in the course (linked below) and share the methods, tools and ecosystem mindset I used to create life designs and a recovery plan in the bundle Recovery By Design.

In this part of the blog, I want to break down what I noticed when my body was responding to an overexcursion (after I had calmed the initial flare-up pain) and was beginning to experiment with more exercise and movement to test my limits.

This was really useful insight as it allowed me to observe how my body, mind and nervous system were relating to each other. I was able to better understand the process and respond to the pattern, breaking the cycle before the flare-up could get worse.

I had an unusually deep sleep and intense dream one night, and when I woke up, my neck was incredibly stiff and was killing me. As I paid close attention, I figured out what was happening with the fibromyalgia. I noticed:

• When I woke up and realised I had developed this intense pain, I had an initial fear response, and my nervous system began stressing out. I assume it's because now it associates any pains with the risk of a massive flare-up.

• This caused my body to begin tensing up as soon as I tried to move. My muscles were spasming and contracting, and I became aware of thoughts around “problem-solving” with fear-based responses and trying to fix, avoid or stop the pain.

• This was causing stress on other places in my body and within other muscles, and the tension was building through my body, making the neck pain worse.

It was creating a cycle of pain, nervous system stress and tension that led to more pain.

Realising this, rather than focusing on the pain and tension, I decided to focus on trying to keep my nervous system calm. Practicing breathing and relaxation techniques with affirmations of my safety and self-soothing that this is not another flare-up.

I realised I needed to reduce the other muscle tension with some hand massage, gentle movement and rest. Once I was calmer, I needed to soothe the source of pain. In this instance, I decided to take some pain killers that calmed the neck pain.

For the rest of the day, once the initial trigger had been calmed and while the pain killers were working, I kept gently moving. I did household tasks I knew I could manage, with lots of rest in between. I intended to balance the movement and rest to avoid stiffness (from sitting too long) or over-exertion (from doing too much without accurate pain signals).

This neck pain actually did last about three days and took a while to soothe. I didn’t take painkillers the whole time. Instead, I followed the regime I had learned (explained in the video series) and used topical soothing products that helped to relieve the tension.

Before this flare-up, I had noticed a link between periods of stress and IBS symptoms that affected my digestion. Whenever I would be particularly over-worked or something happened that caused stress, I would have an upset tummy, and my periods of pain and tension increased. I was somewhat aware of a link between stress and my digestion but hadn't put this fully together until the flare-up recovery I explain in the course.

Since our gut is our second brain, it seems there could be a direct link between how we process our food and how the nervous system is activated. This would mean there would be a reduction in nutrition we consume or absorb and an increase in things like our insulin and other hormone levels as we try and cope and calm the trigger.

It would also correlate with an increased desire to indulge in addictive behaviour or emotional eating after a stressful event to self-soothe. Which might then create another cycle of body stress.

Now, knowing the link between body stress, digestion, the nervous system, mental processing and pain signals, I can interrupt the cycle when I first notice it beginning. This has significantly reduced the length of stress-related pain events and the beginning of being stuck in a flare-up cycle. I haven’t had a fibromyalgia pain flare-up for several months.

Recommended Support

If you enjoyed this blog post and struggle with fibromyalgia pain or chronic stress, I would recommend the following products at Love School:

To explore in more detail how I managed this flare-up and significantly reduced the pain and tension of the flare-up without doctors and within 30 days… and then created a life design to support my recovery to wellnes over nine months, I would recommend the How I Healed My Fibromyalgia Flare-up Course.

For a dedicated Complex Trauma Recovery Course, we support a holistic, natural approach to recovery with an online community and regular group sessions.

To dive deeper into how to create a life design and understand healing from an ecosystem mindset, I would recommend the Recovery By Design Bundle.