Don't let pain take away your friends!

Sometimes living with chronic pain and being a stay at home mum feels like you're living in another country to the one you did before your injury and children…like you’re a million miles away from your old life and your old friends, and having to get used to a whole new way of life. It's lonely, isolating, and hard to get used to. Depression and anxiety run rampant, and the isolation plays tricks on your mind.

After Charlotte was born I had lots of friends contacting me. Everyone was wondering how the baby was, if I could post more pics on Facebook, when they could come and meet her, and if I was better from whatever that problem was I was having in my pregnancy. Slowly, as I replied that I wasn't better and I wasn't really up for visitors yet, the messages came through less and less; I had fewer friends reaching out to me asking how I was doing, and even though I knew I couldn't cope with visiting I craved adult interaction. I convinced myself it would all change once I had my surgery and was ‘fixed’. Except it didn't change. The pain stayed and my friends stayed away. 

In the year after my daughters birth I had to learn how to cope with chronic pain; adjust to the fact that my pain was permanent, learn to manage anxiety and depression, come to terms with the likelihood I would never return to work, as well as realising the big group of friends that I had before pregnancy had suddenly shrunk to very few. I felt like I had plenty of frenemies…people who would be happy to grill me about what was really wrong, what treatments I had tried, if I had tried hard enough to find a solution, and usually ended up telling me I really looked just fine to them. 

I started to feel like everyone was judging me, and waiting to catch me out for lying about my pain. If I tried to act normal people would make snide comments about how I didn't look in pain. If I talked about my pain people would start interrogating me like I was a fraud. I started to get anxious about social situations and withdrew further away from the few friends I still had, fearing they too were judging me behind my back. 

I mourned the friendships I had lost. I spent hours talking about it with my husband and my mum, about how the friends I thought I could count on suddenly disappeared when something went wrong. I spent many sessions discussing it with my psychologist, talking through the pain that I felt at being dropped and abandoned, like an unwanted puppy, just because I was physically injured. My depression was rampant at this stage and I struggled to reign it in. It made me appreciate the handful of friends that I had that never wavered in their commitment to being my friend. 

Late last year though something changed. A friend told me that another mutual friend of ours was going through a rough time. I hadn't heard from her in a long time and had thought that she had abandoned me because of my injury, but I decided to reach out to her, knowing that she was doing it tough too. I was nervous, and scared, because I felt like I was putting my heart back on the line, waiting for it to possibly be hurt again, but amazingly – and happily, she was happy to reconnect and we have been rebuilding our friendship in the months since. 

I found out that while I was going through all my injury and pain difficulties, she was facing her own challenges, and she hadn't intentionally ignored me, just had her own stuff going on to deal with. I felt so sad and ashamed that I had not been there for her, and that I had been so selfish to assume that the lack of contact was all about me rather than that she just had her own dramas going on. It opened my eyes, and stopped my selfishness. 

I had another friend I had been close to for years but hadn't heard from her in a long while. I saw something funny in the news that reminded me of her, and instead of thinking how we would've laughed about it in years gone by, but then keeping it to myself, I decided to send it to her and see how she had been. We arranged to meet up after that, and even though she filled me in about what had been happening in her life, it felt like no time had passed at all. It made me realise something important - something that has changed how I view my friendships moving forward. 

My friends have their own lives. They are concerned about me, but I'm not their focus. And now that I'm not working anymore, a lot of the friends I had made through work don't get the chance to accidentally see me in the corridor and have a quick chat, or quickly catch up for coffee during a break. Of course it sounds so silly and so self absorbed saying it like that, but the point is that everyone has so much going on themselves that it's easy for the intention of reaching out to contact someone to fall by the wayside. And that's ok, because they have work and kids and their own dramas happening too. In the midst of my depression though I couldn't see this simple fact, I just couldn't see past my own pain.

Here's what I've learnt that might help you avoid feeling so isolated:

• I am trying to be more proactive about contacting friends. Instead of waiting for a message, and assuming I've been forgotten or intentionally ignored, maybe reach out more; trying to make an effort to fit into their lives, even if that is only through a few text messages or emails here and there. 

• Out of sight – out of mind. This saying rings so true when you're at home and out of the workforce because of your disability or with children. It's easy to feel like people are avoiding you on purpose but it's much more likely that they have gotten busy and unintentionally forget to contact you. I try not to take it personally and remember it's also ok to initiate contact instead.

• I've learnt that friends often don't know what to say to you after going through such a huge change; they don't know if they should ask you how you are or if they should pretend your pain isn't a problem to avoid making you feel worse, and sometimes that's the reason why it's easier for them to wait until you contact them, in case it's a bad time for them to get in touch. Help them out by initiating contact.

• Be honest about what you can and can't cope with. Some friends may suggest meeting at the shops or somewhere that's not easy to travel to, and instead of making an excuse and cancelling it's ok to be honest and say that doesn't suit, instead of just cancelling. Sitting on a hard café chair for 2 hours isn't going to do me any favours so sometimes I just say it's too much, and offer an at home catch up instead. 

• If you constantly feel judged by friends and they don't seem to be supportive then it is ok to move on. My psychologist was very big on promoting only having good people around you. If a friend makes you feel judged and like you can't be yourself then it's time to stop calling them a friend - you've got enough bad things going on in your life, you don't need anyone else adding negativity unnecessarily.

• Some people are just not long term friends. I have accepted that some people are only in our lives for a finite period of time, and that's ok. We don't have to be friends forever. It's not necessarily that it ended badly, sometimes people just grow apart. It doesn't mean I don't appreciate the friendship we once had, but I'm happy to let go and move on once it's not working anymore.

Having said how lonely I have been at times over the last few years, I also have to say I do have a handful of friends that have been absolute rocks of support to me – never judgemental, never turned off by my inabilities, always happy to work around what I can manage so we can still catch up and maintain our friendship. Sometimes it's been just by text messages, fb messages or emails, and sometimes visiting, but there's always been an easy flow of conversation that’s comforted me during hard times as well as the good. They know who they are and they know I will love and appreciate them forever.