This year has started with a very challenging time for me! I injured my back just before Christmas 2024 and ended up with a protruding disc in my lower back. This sent excruciating pain from my lower back down into my left leg. I can confidently say that this is the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. The pain was 24/7 and sleep was impossible.
As a very active person normally, I ended up not being able to move and not really able to work or study throughout December and January. This is very difficult for me as being someone who is Autistic and has a chronic pain condition, movement for me is medicine. Movement is the way that I stay mobile and manage my chronic pain condition. Movement through my hobbies of ice-skating, yoga and walking outside in nature helps me to feel confident in my body and mind and to express myself.
To not have this freedom can make life feel very isolated and very small. With the only social interactions outside of my home being seeing my GP and the Osteopath - who has been helping me piece my spinal health back together! So why am I sharing this?
I am sharing this with my followers and people who come across my website seeking some counselling support for chronic pain, or for dealing with other health conditions. I want you to know that I see you and I can deeply empathise with the difficulties that you are experiencing right now. Helping people to navigate this life-changing journey and to find the path towards healing is one of the reasons that I decided to train as a counsellor.
I know from my own journey of being a client in counselling, that it absolutely transformed my experience of pain and gave me the hope and confidence to believe that life could be different. That I could learn to live a meaningful and productive life alongside my condition. In some cases we can't take away the condition, but what counselling can do is to help you to start to change how you view yourself. Counselling alongside any physical and medical treatments that you need can give you the tools and the coping skills needed to live again.
Below is a picture of me in my local park with crutches. This is the first time I have ever needed walking aides in my life. Normally chronic pain can be an 'invisible' condition. What I mean by that is you look healthy and well on the outside and people - whether this be people who you know, or strangers in the street, can't see what is happening and how much you may be suffering on the inside. It was quite anxiety provoking at first when I first went out using walking aides. I worried what people might be thinking of me, that I might be a nuisance to people as at first I could only walk very slowly and had to stop to rest. I worried about getting in the way, or being knocked over by someone who was in a rush. Crossing roads became a nightmare, as I worried about not being able to cross the road quickly enough when there were on-coming cars and I felt very vulnerable.
This experience has really given me a new appreciation of how fortunate I am to be able to walk without aides normally and how even as a person with a chronic pain condition, I had taken this mobility and freedom for granted. This will be one of my biggest take aways from the back injury that I have had.
If you would like to find out more about me and my counselling approach please do reach out to me via a message on my website, or email at flourishingmk@outlook.com.
I mainly work during the evenings and at the weekends online as a counsellor as part of my private practice. I have another part-time role as a Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner (PWP) in a local NHS Talking Therapies service.
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