Right, when I dissociate, I don't feel much pain in my hip and legs. When I am really awake and present, I am in much more pain. I walk in nature, I work with acupuncture and talk therapy. In dissociation, no acupuncture. I wait until I can feel pain before treatment. That's how I discovered the connection myself. Recovery gives my more pain. Yes, I´m fighting for my better life every day. I am 57. All your information is important to me because dissociation is mysterious and lonely and painfull. Thank you. Keep up going every one. Thank you from Belgium. ❤
Watched half of this, accidentally smacked my finger and did my 'make the pain stop' thing I've always done, then immediately realized how I've been making the pain stop. Damn. So much for being some kind of guru lol.
This is very timely. My therapist paired me up with another or her clients who has DID, as she felt we could support each other, and one of the things that keeps coming up when we meet is physical sensations that seemingly have no cause and come out of nowhere. Before I went to therapy and was diagnosed with DID, I had migraines, headaches, bodily pain and abdominal pain. Since coming out of therapy, the pain I have experienced has reduced. Weirdly, it seems that in my case, certain pain is linked to some of my alters. So, that's weird. Again, great video and I love your content!
While I am still working on getting professional help for my D.I.D, videos such as these helped me better form a understanding on what we are dealing with. Thank you so much for all you do for people like myself.
Very good video! Somatic symptoms are very reall and over the years, it can even cause nerve issues being in that hyperarrousal state so much. Leaving results that are not reversible, which also is why getting healed sooner is so much better.
Thank-you for this video on pain. My thoughts are you need to be connected to your body to feel pain. Ideally you feel small amounts and you pay attention to it and do something. If feeling pain triggers disconnection from body / dissociation then yes I think a feedback loop happens, more pain signals are produced as it’s not been attended too, more disconnection /dissociation. Pain messages ramp up until feels huge and as you’ve said you present with a physical issue to be investigated and diagnosed. It may come and go as well due to disconnection/dissociation. There may then be anxiety about what this pain is which can cause more disconnection etc. And as you’ve said emotional pain in the brain feels like other pain and can be felt or not felt in the body. If dissociating from current emotional pain as well as done in the past, then there may well be periods of feeling great and feeling awful. In my experience when I started connected to my body, didn’t even realise how disconnected I was, it felt like being plugged into the national grid and it caused more dissociation. Mostly because of ham fisted therapists pushing mindfulness and connecting to your breath as an answer to everything. Not saying mindfulness is not helpful or breath work. It definitely has its place. For me though and going back now to 2015 it was too overwhelming at the start especially just sat in a small room with a man and him wanting me to do all that. It wasn’t an issue to try it or raise it, it’s rigidity of therapists who put it on the client at fault for not engaging with it, trying hard enough or basically giving them the outcome they want, right away. It would have been better in my view for the therapist to see my deterioration and think this isn’t helping, plus the client is telling me. It does probably come down to lack of awareness in therapists of dissociation ( including depersonalisation/derealisation), and assumption of one size fits all and the commodification of mindfulness. Plus there is a lot of in my experience in the therapy world, I am the 'expert', I am 'right', and a rigid mindset. I found yoga and movement helped reconnect to my body. Just my thoughts and experience shared.
I love this comment. I find myself agreeing with everything you say- it seems we've had similar experiences. In particular I love your description on "ham-fisted therapists"- the imagery of someone with gammon hands jamming mindfulness down my throat saying "cOnNeCt To YoUr BrEaTh!!!" does makes me chuckle 😂
I seem to be the odd one yet again. I've had severe pelvic pain since I started to menstruate with 12 which got worse and worse with every cycle. I needed to wait until my mid 20s for my partner at the time to report to doctors how severe it was to be taken seriously. 6 hours of surgery later it was confirmed that I have severe endometriosis. Pain wasn't that much better after surgery, all the trauma erupted about a year later and I got diagnosed with cPTSD and DID. From this time on, it was all psychosomatic again and I wasn't believed by anyone. It got so bad that I was unable to do anything half time of the month and after years of fighting and getting diagnosed with adenomyosis as well, I had a hysterectomy in October. Severe endometriosis was found again, also in places in which it causes a lot of pain like on the bowel, bladder and around nerves. Long story short: I was in less pain immediately after surgery and I'm not even completely healed now but have 3 days of mild pain instead of 14 days of severe pain with throwing up, passing out etc. I'm also experiencing a whole lot less brain fog and can feel my body and emotions so much better now. Dissociation was the scapegoat for all of this and it was just wrong and harmed me a lot because my uterus was the main cause of all this excruciating pain. It's so important to not just brush things off as psychosomatic because in my case it wasn't!
This explains my atypical hip, knee, thigh and calf pain that comes on suddenly, more intense in one of the places. It lasts for a day or more and the weird part is it just disappears. It comes back random times but mostly when I'm dressing. It made no sense, the I've wondered if it is related to certain alters or just psychosomatic. Thank you for the knowledge.
I used to live with pain that I know it's coming from my traumatic experience but now the identification in different parts are found, they are holding up the pain accordingly. I don't notice their pain or the psychosomatic experience but between my chests I feel the physical soreness sometimes or sometimes it gets even quite unbearable. The arthritis pain can even be felt different places in my body depending on the day. Some alter presence can be much heavier than others too. So glad someone can help us explain the logical of our trauma pain in a way that can be understood or hopefully it will get to that level of achievement. With gratitude, ❤🌻❤️
Thank you for this we are currently experiencing great pain and trying to get support from the insurance (govt dep here in New Zealanders ) to understand this link. Your video expresses this perfectly.
When I was 10 I learned headaches could be psychosomatic. One day my friend was complaining of a headache and I told her to close her eyes and tell herself she didn't have a headache. She opened her eyes astonished and asked me how I did that. Our bodies and minds are more powerful than we know.
I thought this video was going to be about pain and dissociation. Because my experience is much more that I have difficulty identifying, feeling my physical pain and at time it leads to much more serious problems because I don’t take care of it in time.
Thank you for posting your videos doc! We have a lot of trauma regarding medical care but since we started watching your videos it has been helping us a lot with getting us to warm up to the idea of starting therapy again.
at 3, you are very kind. doctors here that say it's all in your mind are , well, being mean. Another one we hear is , "oh, you're one of those " How many of your clients have Fibromyalgia and ME (also dumbed down to mean Chronic Fatigue) would be curious to know . There was a fabulous pain specialist here that used only magnesium and small amounts of freezing to release knotted nerve centres; and i mean 'cure pain' -I remember some of the body reactions being shaking from head to foot - and certainly things would come to the surface later. He would always ask his clients if they had therapy support as well. Sadly both him and my therapist that worked together are gone - they were a fantastic couple of men and helped alot of people.
Speaking of psychosomatic, that makes the psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES). What have you witnessed and know about these? Sure do appreciate these videos.
Thanks for this video and I am looking forward to the next two. I have DID and then all of a sudden I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and it is very hard to make people understand that the pain is real so I have started telling them that my arthritis is playing up and they seem to be able to accept that.
Interesting. I actually don't feel pain as much as I probably should. Mostly I feel numb, esp in the pelvic region. However, if I, for example stand on a plug socket, or stub my toe, I feel it, but because I've been so used to feeling pain + auto dissociation response = numbness / suppression. BTW, I wonder how my referral to you is going. I still haven/t heard anything. Especially after recent events. BTW, I hope you are well re E.L.
@Rat_Queen86 I experience pain differently in different Alters, so I don't find it strange. It seems to be related to trauma specific to that Alter and the pain associated to the event or events that Alter was present for. I still get body pain when I am deeply upset, but I understand that is normal for me and try to deal with the pain and my specific parts attached to that pain. I hope this helps.
I fell off a cliff when I was 15 and have had intermittent pain ever since. Sometimes I’m fine for decades & then it will come back. I wondered if the pain I’m in now was due to that, but I’m thinking it may be related to the abuse I survived. If it is the case, then I feel pretty disheartened by it, because I’ve already done so much work with therapists and my Alters. It feels like another reason why I’ll never be okay - that there will always be something wrong with me.
This is so important. I have noticed that the pain is different as well, I mean we have had lots of broken and fractured bones and other abuse injuries over the years and they have all now with time turned into inflammation which requires constant anti-inflammatory medications. The other pain, the one you are talking about feels different to that pain and it is so hard to describe to people as it does feel somewhat generalised. We have had a horrid few years therapeutically (hopefully about to end as we have a new psychologist who actually has experience with DID and we are so deeply grateful for that). We have noticed the generalised pain has gotten so much worse. It is like we ache all over all of the dam time. So you explaining that all the unprocessed stuff made us groan with that deep knowing how right you are. But there is also hope as knowing that is what our body and system are trying to tell us, means there is a way to fix it. Thank you so much.
Thank you for another great video. Can it be a mix of physically explained pain and traumatic? I have whiplash and concussions in my story. But the pain and the tension in the muscles are often connected with stress, anxiety and situations that trigger traumas.
I have an alter who takes my pain, when it gets too much he steps in and basically carries it for me, I can still feel it but it’s like a shadow of me, hence my alter is called Shadow! But it means I can carry on with my day without it bothering me. I do think I may have actually created this alter for that purpose, on purpose if that is possible.
Hi Dr. Lloyd - Is it normal for pain to actually cause a dissociative episode? So the person has organic or psychosomatic pain and then it gets worse and worse until the person “checks out” mentally and then doesn’t remember any of the events? I suspect my ex drugged me because since we have split up I’ve not had another of these episodes even though I’ve had severe chest pain from a lung infection and other painful illnesses and it didn’t happen at all (I mean, I’ve been in hospital in pain and remained my lucid self for the full stay and remember everything that happened) When we were together I’d be going to the hospital for chest pain, he will tell me there’s nothing wrong it’s just my anxiety and then I would not remember what happened at the hospital- he would tell me I was aggressive with the staff or crying etc. and I had no reason to not believe this (I do have a severe trauma history). My current psychologist, previous psychologist I had seen for 4 years and my current psychiatrist have all said I have never been aggressive to them at all even when dissociated. It’s becoming a mess in my head trying to figure out wtf is true at this point. I have an unproven suspicion that he would put something in my food or coffee that would cause me to have chest pain and then blackout, possibly benzodiazepines or some other drug that can cause memory loss in a larger dose maybe. Trying to figure this out is all so confusing.These episodes started in the 4th year of our relationship and we were together for 16 years. Thank you for the excellent content!
I often have pain within the parts of my body that were directly involved with my trauma. (CSA) It can come out of nowhere and without a logical trigger. What’s the best way to deal with it? Is it better to actually spend a few therapy sessions focused solely on that particular pain? Or is it better to talk around it? I often dissociate when this pain occurs.
The host and I were dating for months before being intimate (I believed consensually). Afterwards, she specifically said, "I wonder why my first time wasn't painful. I've heard people say it's painful." Years later, one of the alters told me they were &%$ed. Am I potentially responsible? How do I handle this? I know alters can be highly suggestible.
Hi. Thank you for the video. So the pain isn’t a sign of processing? I’ve felt pain for a while but feel that there is some change in how the pain feels and some progress in how I view the past. Thank you!
I was wondering if this is related to a male alter that is very angry and aggressive, he inflicts injuries to me. They don’t cause pain until he’s gone then I feel them? People assume I self harm but I kind of don’t. I tend to alert for help saying someone is attacking me or I’ve been attacked. My traumas are mostly emotional 🤔
Right, when I dissociate, I don't feel much pain in my hip and legs. When I am really awake and present, I am in much more pain. I walk in nature, I work with acupuncture and talk therapy. In dissociation, no acupuncture. I wait until I can feel pain before treatment. That's how I discovered the connection myself. Recovery gives my more pain. Yes, I´m fighting for my better life every day. I am 57. All your information is important to me because dissociation is mysterious and lonely and painfull. Thank you. Keep up going every one. Thank you from Belgium. ❤
Watched half of this, accidentally smacked my finger and did my 'make the pain stop' thing I've always done, then immediately realized how I've been making the pain stop. Damn. So much for being some kind of guru lol.
This is very timely. My therapist paired me up with another or her clients who has DID, as she felt we could support each other, and one of the things that keeps coming up when we meet is physical sensations that seemingly have no cause and come out of nowhere. Before I went to therapy and was diagnosed with DID, I had migraines, headaches, bodily pain and abdominal pain. Since coming out of therapy, the pain I have experienced has reduced. Weirdly, it seems that in my case, certain pain is linked to some of my alters. So, that's weird.
Again, great video and I love your content!
While I am still working on getting professional help for my D.I.D, videos such as these helped me better form a understanding on what we are dealing with. Thank you so much for all you do for people like myself.
You are so welcome!
Very good video! Somatic symptoms are very reall and over the years, it can even cause nerve issues being in that hyperarrousal state so much. Leaving results that are not reversible, which also is why getting healed sooner is so much better.
Thank-you for this video on pain. My thoughts are you need to be connected to your body to feel pain. Ideally you feel small amounts and you pay attention to it and do something. If feeling pain triggers disconnection from body / dissociation then yes I think a feedback loop happens, more pain signals are produced as it’s not been attended too, more disconnection /dissociation. Pain messages ramp up until feels huge and as you’ve said you present with a physical issue to be investigated and diagnosed.
It may come and go as well due to disconnection/dissociation. There may then be anxiety about what this pain is which can cause more disconnection etc. And as you’ve said emotional pain in the brain feels like other pain and can be felt or not felt in the body. If dissociating from current emotional pain as well as done in the past, then there may well be periods of feeling great and feeling awful. In my experience when I started connected to my body, didn’t even realise how disconnected I was, it felt like being plugged into the national grid and it caused more dissociation. Mostly because of ham fisted therapists pushing mindfulness and connecting to your breath as an answer to everything. Not saying mindfulness is not helpful or breath work. It definitely has its place. For me though and going back now to 2015 it was too overwhelming at the start especially just sat in a small room with a man and him wanting me to do all that. It wasn’t an issue to try it or raise it, it’s rigidity of therapists who put it on the client at fault for not engaging with it, trying hard enough or basically giving them the outcome they want, right away. It would have been better in my view for the therapist to see my deterioration and think this isn’t helping, plus the client is telling me. It does probably come down to lack of awareness in therapists of dissociation ( including depersonalisation/derealisation), and assumption of one size fits all and the commodification of mindfulness. Plus there is a lot of in my experience in the therapy world, I am the 'expert', I am 'right', and a rigid mindset. I found yoga and movement helped reconnect to my body. Just my thoughts and experience shared.
I love this comment. I find myself agreeing with everything you say- it seems we've had similar experiences.
In particular I love your description on "ham-fisted therapists"- the imagery of someone with gammon hands jamming mindfulness down my throat saying "cOnNeCt To YoUr BrEaTh!!!" does makes me chuckle 😂
Great video and very important topic!
Definitely.
I seem to be the odd one yet again. I've had severe pelvic pain since I started to menstruate with 12 which got worse and worse with every cycle. I needed to wait until my mid 20s for my partner at the time to report to doctors how severe it was to be taken seriously. 6 hours of surgery later it was confirmed that I have severe endometriosis. Pain wasn't that much better after surgery, all the trauma erupted about a year later and I got diagnosed with cPTSD and DID. From this time on, it was all psychosomatic again and I wasn't believed by anyone. It got so bad that I was unable to do anything half time of the month and after years of fighting and getting diagnosed with adenomyosis as well, I had a hysterectomy in October. Severe endometriosis was found again, also in places in which it causes a lot of pain like on the bowel, bladder and around nerves. Long story short: I was in less pain immediately after surgery and I'm not even completely healed now but have 3 days of mild pain instead of 14 days of severe pain with throwing up, passing out etc. I'm also experiencing a whole lot less brain fog and can feel my body and emotions so much better now. Dissociation was the scapegoat for all of this and it was just wrong and harmed me a lot because my uterus was the main cause of all this excruciating pain. It's so important to not just brush things off as psychosomatic because in my case it wasn't!
This explains my atypical hip, knee, thigh and calf pain that comes on suddenly, more intense in one of the places. It lasts for a day or more and the weird part is it just disappears. It comes back random times but mostly when I'm dressing. It made no sense, the I've wondered if it is related to certain alters or just psychosomatic. Thank you for the knowledge.
I used to live with pain that I know it's coming from my traumatic experience but now the identification in different parts are found, they are holding up the pain accordingly. I don't notice their pain or the psychosomatic experience but between my chests I feel the physical soreness sometimes or sometimes it gets even quite unbearable. The arthritis pain can even be felt different places in my body depending on the day.
Some alter presence can be much heavier than others too.
So glad someone can help us explain the logical of our trauma pain in a way that can be understood or hopefully it will get to that level of achievement.
With gratitude,
❤🌻❤️
Thank you for this we are currently experiencing great pain and trying to get support from the insurance (govt dep here in New Zealanders ) to understand this link. Your video expresses this perfectly.
I hope you are successful, and am glad this may help in some way for you.
When I was 10 I learned headaches could be psychosomatic. One day my friend was complaining of a headache and I told her to close her eyes and tell herself she didn't have a headache. She opened her eyes astonished and asked me how I did that. Our bodies and minds are more powerful than we know.
I thought this video was going to be about pain and dissociation. Because my experience is much more that I have difficulty identifying, feeling my physical pain and at time it leads to much more serious problems because I don’t take care of it in time.
Thank you for posting your videos doc! We have a lot of trauma regarding medical care but since we started watching your videos it has been helping us a lot with getting us to warm up to the idea of starting therapy again.
Glad to hear it, thank you!
at 3, you are very kind. doctors here that say it's all in your mind are , well, being mean. Another one we hear is , "oh, you're one of those " How many of your clients have Fibromyalgia and ME (also dumbed down to mean Chronic Fatigue) would be curious to know . There was a fabulous pain specialist here that used only magnesium and small amounts of freezing to release knotted nerve centres; and i mean 'cure pain' -I remember some of the body reactions being shaking from head to foot - and certainly things would come to the surface later. He would always ask his clients if they had therapy support as well. Sadly both him and my therapist that worked together are gone - they were a fantastic couple of men and helped alot of people.
Thanks, Doc, I feel that I know you, you respond to my current and chronic issues! 🌼🌻
You are so welcome
Speaking of psychosomatic, that makes the psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES). What have you witnessed and know about these? Sure do appreciate these videos.
Pain is not just from the mind it comes from the heart.
Thanks for this video and I am looking forward to the next two. I have DID and then all of a sudden I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and it is very hard to make people understand that the pain is real so I have started telling them that my arthritis is playing up and they seem to be able to accept that.
Glad it was helpful!
Interesting. I actually don't feel pain as much as I probably should. Mostly I feel numb, esp in the pelvic region. However, if I, for example stand on a plug socket, or stub my toe, I feel it, but because I've been so used to feeling pain + auto dissociation response = numbness / suppression. BTW, I wonder how my referral to you is going. I still haven/t heard anything. Especially after recent events. BTW, I hope you are well re E.L.
Where are people finding therapists? I'm in the U.S.
theyre not
psychology today site
Not even looking. Best support I find is here!
Starts from a therapist who's believed that DID is real and see if they know anyone who can do DID clients. That's how I got mine.
@arayasununkingpet8496 That is not my only issue.
@Rat_Queen86 I experience pain differently in different Alters, so I don't find it strange. It seems to be related to trauma specific to that Alter and the pain associated to the event or events that Alter was present for. I still get body pain when I am deeply upset, but I understand that is normal for me and try to deal with the pain and my specific parts attached to that pain. I hope this helps.
I fell off a cliff when I was 15 and have had intermittent pain ever since. Sometimes I’m fine for decades & then it will come back. I wondered if the pain I’m in now was due to that, but I’m thinking it may be related to the abuse I survived. If it is the case, then I feel pretty disheartened by it, because I’ve already done so much work with therapists and my Alters. It feels like another reason why I’ll never be okay - that there will always be something wrong with me.
I have never felt pain after major surgery. Not one. But ear infections? Omg
This is so important. I have noticed that the pain is different as well, I mean we have had lots of broken and fractured bones and other abuse injuries over the years and they have all now with time turned into inflammation which requires constant anti-inflammatory medications. The other pain, the one you are talking about feels different to that pain and it is so hard to describe to people as it does feel somewhat generalised. We have had a horrid few years therapeutically (hopefully about to end as we have a new psychologist who actually has experience with DID and we are so deeply grateful for that). We have noticed the generalised pain has gotten so much worse. It is like we ache all over all of the dam time. So you explaining that all the unprocessed stuff made us groan with that deep knowing how right you are. But there is also hope as knowing that is what our body and system are trying to tell us, means there is a way to fix it. Thank you so much.
Thank you for another great video. Can it be a mix of physically explained pain and traumatic? I have whiplash and concussions in my story. But the pain and the tension in the muscles are often connected with stress, anxiety and situations that trigger traumas.
Ive just started getting pain amd burning last two weeks in my tummy and other things even it horrific i get spasming and yeah thanks
Hello Dr. Lloyd, Have you done a video of headaches and DID? Are they related?
this video is the closest to dealing with such issues. As everyone is different, no way of knowing if related or not without assessing/understanding!
I have an alter who takes my pain, when it gets too much he steps in and basically carries it for me, I can still feel it but it’s like a shadow of me, hence my alter is called Shadow! But it means I can carry on with my day without it bothering me. I do think I may have actually created this alter for that purpose, on purpose if that is possible.
Hi Dr. Lloyd - Is it normal for pain to actually cause a dissociative episode? So the person has organic or psychosomatic pain and then it gets worse and worse until the person “checks out” mentally and then doesn’t remember any of the events? I suspect my ex drugged me because since we have split up I’ve not had another of these episodes even though I’ve had severe chest pain from a lung infection and other painful illnesses and it didn’t happen at all (I mean, I’ve been in hospital in pain and remained my lucid self for the full stay and remember everything that happened) When we were together I’d be going to the hospital for chest pain, he will tell me there’s nothing wrong it’s just my anxiety and then I would not remember what happened at the hospital- he would tell me I was aggressive with the staff or crying etc. and I had no reason to not believe this (I do have a severe trauma history). My current psychologist, previous psychologist I had seen for 4 years and my current psychiatrist have all said I have never been aggressive to them at all even when dissociated. It’s becoming a mess in my head trying to figure out wtf is true at this point. I have an unproven suspicion that he would put something in my food or coffee that would cause me to have chest pain and then blackout, possibly benzodiazepines or some other drug that can cause memory loss in a larger dose maybe. Trying to figure this out is all so confusing.These episodes started in the 4th year of our relationship and we were together for 16 years. Thank you for the excellent content!
I often have pain within the parts of my body that were directly involved with my trauma. (CSA) It can come out of nowhere and without a logical trigger. What’s the best way to deal with it? Is it better to actually spend a few therapy sessions focused solely on that particular pain? Or is it better to talk around it? I often dissociate when this pain occurs.
What's the colerration between complex trauma and Fybromyalgia? I have had both for years
The host and I were dating for months before being intimate (I believed consensually). Afterwards, she specifically said, "I wonder why my first time wasn't painful. I've heard people say it's painful." Years later, one of the alters told me they were &%$ed. Am I potentially responsible?
How do I handle this? I know alters can be highly suggestible.
Hi. Thank you for the video. So the pain isn’t a sign of processing? I’ve felt pain for a while but feel that there is some change in how the pain feels and some progress in how I view the past. Thank you!
I was wondering if this is related to a male alter that is very angry and aggressive, he inflicts injuries to me. They don’t cause pain until he’s gone then I feel them? People assume I self harm but I kind of don’t. I tend to alert for help saying someone is attacking me or I’ve been attacked. My traumas are mostly emotional 🤔