Re-Releasing my Previous Post, I was too scared to keep up--Why I use “Mind over Matter” to Manage Pain; in the hopes that maybe just one person can benefit from my experience...

© T. B. Cooper

I originally posted this on May 24th of this year, but then chickened out, pulled it down, and wrote a post about Chickening out--instead.


**Original Post (Except I am now 37 so I updated that):

I don't want to claim that I suffer from any ailments. I don't believe I suffer. Instead, I want to say that I battle daily to defeat several afflictions. Most of the time I win. But when I fail, I fail miserably and I fall hard.

Here is my personal list of medical problems, all of which I take no medicine for, save a low dose aspirin every day(When I remember to!): Bipolar Depression, Hypersexuality, PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome, Endometriosis, Heart Murmur/Leaky valve, Arthritis, Ulcer.
​I'm 37 years old.

You should also know a few things about me, some current life details.

• I have four children and a grand-baby that are/have been home-schooled by me, personally (I only have my youngest & the Grandbaby currently still 'in-school')
• We live on a farm in the hot, Southern Nevada Desert.
• I tend to think of myself as a great mom. Not because that's what most moms think, but because of how I deal with life, and how my children reflect my life choices, in such a “beneficial to society” kind of way. I have been open and honest with them from day one. I have raised them to depend on themselves.
• I was a single mom for a long time. There were times they (my kids)had to fend for themselves while I worked a full-time job. Being able to home-school them after my second marriage, has truly been a blessing.

​​Why? What does any of this have to do with my medical issues?


Because I've had moments where I have been incapacitated and unable to move, think, or care. If they'd been in school, my children would've never gone. I wouldn't have been able to take them, and if I didn't have their help, things could have gone quite badly.


But this article isn't about homeschooling and why and how I do it. That I'll write later. This is about what I go through when I'm not on my toes.


When I'm not vigilant.


Let's start at the beginning....

Warning: Some of the following material may not be suitable for younger readers. Some of it may even be disturbing. **Reader Discretion is advised, as the following topics are of a sensitive nature. 

​​In middle school and high school I went through depression, as do many teenagers. But mine came in such uncontrollable roller coaster rides of emotions. I didn't realize (then) what I really was, was bipolar, and I had bipolar depression. All I knew was that I was horribly hyper-sexual, and that did not make me depressed. Having sex and a lot of it with many different partners made me feel good. My home life sucked. My father was abusive. My mom was always at work. I could only go to school and come home via my dad giving me rides to and from.


So I cut school. Back then there weren't calls home for the occasional absence, and I was good at forging my dad's signature on my excuse notes. And so it continued. I had relationships, but three kids by three different dads, and a failed marriage later (not for infidelity btw)..... I would be back at it again after each break up. Sex controlled my moods. I didn't do drugs. In fact a doctor tried to prescribe meds once, but I rejected them.


In front of my kids I was stable. I could maintain a level of sanity long enough to move them productively through the early years. Then as my youngest approached her first birthday, and I was really hoping to rekindle the romance with her father, I began to go insane. I'd stopped having sex four or five months prior to seeing him again.


I felt like I had to “prove” myself to him. He insisted the whole time we were together I'd cheated on him. Which is one thing I've never done. Don't get me wrong, any time a breakup happened I was quickly hopping into this bed or that one. Not because I just had them waiting, but because I'm not stupid. I could tell who wanted me and who didn't. The moment I was single, I called their phone or rang their doorbell.


But anyway.


At work the weeks prior to seeing him again, I was intolerable. They started calling me Sybil. They would ask before approaching me, “who am I talking to right now?” Then one day I went outside with my boss for a smoke break. She smoked, I didn't. She accidentally dropped her cigarette prior to lighting it and I picked it up. She jokingly asked if I was going to smoke it, but I surprised her by saying yes. That led to a roughly 10 year period of a new level of control. Until I finally quit about three years ago, I thought I needed to smoke. That it was the cigarette/smoke that helped me. I discovered later that wasn't exactly true, but I'll get to that in a little bit.


Meanwhile, since the beginning of my childbearing years, I have had issues that all started out as annoyances at first… a heart murmur detected during my first pregnancy, severe pains during ovulation, strange stabbing pains that doubled me over in the middle of my gut... As time progressed these annoyances became more pronounced. They all pretty much “came to a head” shortly after my 2nd husband and I got together. Our relationship was good but there was a lot of stressful transitions occurring within our families that compounded an already complicated life.


At one point I went to work part-time to help add money into the home so we could clear our credit, save etc. to buy a house. This turned out to be disastrous. The so-called straw that broke the camel's back. Part-time turn to full-time, and in the four years I worked I also home-schooled three of our kids, we moved an hour away to the farm we have now, and we lost more than 10 family members, one was my dad which led to moving my mom in to live with us.


These pronounced annoyances became problems I could no longer ignore. After countless doctors visits and tests I finally learned what the debilitating pains I'd been living with were, and could no longer manage without “knock me out drugs.” It was a combination of endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome. I still had the heart murmur/leaky valve which contributed to my lethargy and severe chest pains, my ulcer hadn't flared up since 2000, but my arthritis in the hip was getting worse.


When they ended up doing a laparoscopic surgery to find what no other test could – the source of my pain (which I like to describe as someone shoving a red-hot poker, or cactus branch up inside my coo-kaa, while simultaneously a violent weevil (beetle) chews its way, burrowing into my belly button – trying to meet with said poker/branch). They ended up removing over 10 pounds of connective tissue, some of which was slowly strangling my gallbladder.


The fact that the tissue made it that far up my body cavity away from the uterus, was itself incredible. They told me there was no guarantee it wouldn't come back – which I know is true. In fact when I feel a flareup I feel it near my lungs, as if it is attaching to the lungs themselves. I know that probably seems unlikely, but it is how it feels. They also found many cysts on both ovaries, but dominant on my left – where most of the pain during ovulation occurs. These ones are about the size of marbles, and the ovary is literally covered in them.


I'd been prescribed Percocet, Lortabs, Vicodin, you name it… but some days it just wasn't enough.


I finally broke down and quit my job to stay at home full time. This did alleviate a good deal of stress- I wasn't commuting anymore, working weird/long hours, I had more time with my family, and the farm. But my timing was all kinds of wrong. My husband just got laid off one month prior. Neither of us were able to get unemployment so we (a family of six) were living off of just my mom's social security. Talk about tight. You'd think I would've quit smoking at that time, but I couldn't. We'd go and recycle stuff or sell off things we didn't need, just to buy the dirt cheap cigarettes. The house was paid for and our only bill was electricity (house is all electric and we are on well water), besides cell phones and insurance, but still. You add in the cost to feed the farm animals, and it was tight. But we managed. Budgeting thankfully is something I excel at.


A little into one year after quitting and “living off the land,” my brother remarried, we adopted a daughter who was already a mother, my nephew graduated the Air Force and we visited, via road trip to Texas, and our AC went out – all within one hot week at the end of June. I popped so many pills and energy shots just to keep up...and then I broke. I laid in bed incoherent for almost 6 days. My family was worried, my friends worried, everyone wanted to call an ambulance and send me to the hospital. Luckily I'm just that much of a bitch – no one did.


Warning: This part might be a little weird and may be offensive to some. You may skip to the rest of the story down below under the title (Safe Zone) without missing too much.
___________________________________________________________________________

My husband never left my side, except to feed the animals, take care of the kids, the farm etc. At one point I felt myself dying – truly dying. My body had remained immobile, I hadn't eaten or drank anything, I hadn't gotten up – in days. I was delusional. I didn't care. I didn't care about breathing, let alone living at all. I had no will. And then I hate sounding cliché, but something extraordinary happened.


I was laying there, on my bed, numb. My eyes were closed, but I saw myself looking up – up from the bottom of a deep hole. At the very top I could just barely see light coming in. Not “a light at the end of the tunnel,” no, this was like I was at the bottom of a well looking up. Then my eyes began to close (yes they were already closed – but in my “vision” they were closing). The hole was getting filled in, and I was okay. I could feel release in being buried. The pressure was soothing. I was letting go and I was okay with that.


Then I felt my husband squeeze my hand. He was saying something but I wasn't listening. The hole was almost filled, the light was just about gone. And then I saw his hands reach in. I felt his arms wrap around me. I felt him kiss me. I heard him say “don't go, stay.” He held me close and kept kissing me. Then he had sex with me until I came back. Until I wrapped my arms around him and cried. Until I kissed him.


Now I don't care how that sounds. The fact that he basically had sex with me, while I lay there, willingly dying. He did what he could when nothing else worked. He could've called the ambulance, but I had urged him not to. I wanted to die peacefully at home. No amount of medicine could bring me back. Someone who was that exhausted. Someone who was giving up because there was nothing left to give. To me, he saved my life. He spoke my language and brought me back –back to him, to my kids, to my family. He brought me back to life. I still don't really know fully why it worked. I think because I could feel his love, his desperation... I still cry painfully every time I remember that moment...Remembering what I was willing to let go of. Realizing that it was just another stepping-stone in my path. Like right now as I write this, I can still feel the pain. The anguish. The emptiness that he pulled me back from.

__________________________________________________________________________________
(SAFE ZONE)


It still took a couple weeks for me to recover enough to be active in life again.


I didn't know it then, but that was the beginning of the next chapter in my life.


Part of me did die that day. The part of me that didn't care about myself and my well-being. The part of me that found my self-worth in the value others put on me. If they needed me, depended on me, then I was truly important. Never-mind that it was absolutely killing me. I had my kids, my husband, my farm. These were very important to me, and I was happy I had them. I had been okay with my identity revolving around my wifely/motherly accomplishments. But I remember telling one of my good friends when this was happening in 2012, that I felt as though I'd be dead in five years if I continued the way I'd been living. That was not acceptable. Something had to change. I had to get healthier. I had to get control over these periodic downfalls.


I got to that point in my life by being a strong, bad-ass-bitch – but for everyone else's well-being and happiness. I fought hard and made some tough yet beneficial decisions for my family as a whole, securing at least part of their future stability. We would never have to move again. If there was a zombie apocalypse we were and would be adequately prepared and protected. If my kids never wanted to move away but instead want to stay here, well we have enough land we could build onto.


After almost dying, I took a long hard look at what I had that I had been willing to give up on, and asked myself if I was truly ready to start a new battle – the battle for my happiness.


I'd been scared all my life of succeeding. My father told me and my siblings and my mom daily – that we were “shit” and “fuck-ups” who had failed him and dishonored him, pretty much for being so indecent as to be born.


Years of hearing that can destroy even a non-mentally disturbed person.


Overcoming that fear, and being brave – that shit is hard. Everyone has their own battles, their own stories. I'm proud of mine. I regret nothing, and I'm grateful for everything and everyone.


It was now my time.


So I started writing finally, and really focused on getting the whole “farm thing” going. And in 2012 when I was certain the world would end, but December 21st came and went – I found myself heading into the new year and a new life…


...and a New Year's Day with only three cigarettes to my name, and not a penny to put towards a new pack. And no prospects in the near future for obtaining said pennies. So, I decided that since I smoked a pack a day from the moment I started smoking, and at 11:45 PM December 31, 2012 I had just the three cigarettes left – I quit. It was silly to consider I'd be okay with just three cigarettes. I had some old Commit Lozenges laying around that my sister-in-law had used when she tried to quit. So I ate about 20 of them on the 1st. but then I couldn't find them the next day, so I had no choice, I dealt with it. I steeled myself against the cravings, withdrawals, and emotions. I kept myself busy.


Remember the level of control I talked about earlier? That feeling that it was the cigarettes, the smoke, the nicotine, that I needed?


It hit me about two months into my not smoking that the cigarettes had really helped me control my moods, especially around my periods and the rush of hormones. This idea scared me because I had not craved a cigarette since the second week in, but there I was desperately debating whether I should start it up again, since I was struggling to control my depression, my rage, and my mind.


Cue *Aha moment.....


It was the “act” of smoking. It was a distractive habit that kept me away from an even worse destructive habit – multiple partners (and a life that would've never included my husband), and other habits I might have formed. This revelation gave me strength.


I needed a distraction.


No, I had plenty, that wasn't it.


I needed a habit – no, not quite.


I needed focus. I needed to use my incredible mind to fix me, like I'd used it to solve everyone else's problems. I needed to operate in a constant meditative state. And that's what I did.


Mind over matter, it exists.


I started telling myself that it didn't hurt every time that it did. That was a good start, but I'd hit setbacks, and then if I got hurt (like stepping on a nail and the subsequent hobbling aggravated the arthritis in my hip), I'd succumb to the pain and be down for a week or more.


Well that would do nothing for my depression. This was unacceptable. I was better than this. I couldn't take pain pills because I didn't have anything stronger left, other than OTC ibuprofen and it takes six (200 mg) just to take the edge off. But, I have a slight reaction to it – bilateral numbness (both arms from armpit to fingertip – go numb for hours).


So I read. I researched. I found “The Secret,” by Rhonda Byrne. Now I thought I'd need to learn more, but the concept was so easy in theory I figured I'd just try it. Especially since it sounded like what I was trying to accomplish already. Basically the idea behind The Secret, is the Law of Attraction. I'm not going to go into detail because I'd like to write a review on that book at some point…


But, the principle applied was this – don't focus on what you don't want, or on what upsets you. And don't focus or even think about anything remotely negative.


Example: don't think about being “debt-free” because “debt” is negative and in the thought itself. Instead, when you go to the mailbox, do not open it until you are convinced there is money/good news in it (meaning no bills/collection/debt). That was an easy one. For two and half years now the only bills in the box have been my standard monthly expenses. All collection notes/calls etc. (not that I have a lot, I never have) ended. Now, my mind believes I'm so rich that when I open the box it is full of catalogs and offers for me to spend my money on.


Being pain-free was a little harder. Instead of saying/thinking “no pain,” I had to focus on “I'm healthy,” or even harder, “I feel great!” I said and thought these every day, many times a day, for months. Then I woke up one morning and realized I hadn't popped a pill, used a heating pad, nor missed a whole day “from work,” in over four months!


This was phenomenal. My “thoughts of empowerment” were now my “cigarettes.” I had finally learned to control my crippling depression/mood swings. I do still have my setbacks. When life gets a little overwhelming, I'm okay. But if I get sick with the flu or injured – which is what happened in February/March of this year, then I sometimes fall back to the beginning, and have to build my defenses all over again. However when I do, it gets easier to triumph every time.


I know this process must sound a bit loony, but it is what works for me. I'm getting healthier. I'm getting things done. And I'm happy. I'm grateful for the abundance of love and great things in my life. If I stay focused on that which makes me happy, I will continue to receive more. I no longer leave anything up to chance. Instead I live in the moment, constantly alert. I change and adapt and evolve as necessary to achieve my optimum potential.


This is why I say I do not suffer from any of these ailments. And with the exception of writing this article, I do not talk about my health issues. Since talking about them is drawing attention to them, and therefore thinking about them, and attracting that which I do not want, more pain. And to be clear, my issues are not gone. Medically and physically I still have them. They just don't bother me anymore, as much. I am not in pain, for the most part. Again, I have to stay focused on feeling good, on feeling healthy.


So why did I write this article? Because if there is just one person out there that suffers from any one of these issues, I want them to know that they don't have to give up, and they don't have to rely on prescription medicines, or destructive personalities, or drugs and alcohol. They can rise above their afflictions. It all begins and ends in your mind.


Now I should say that I am not a doctor nor do I claim to have any medical expertise. So of course before you throw away your medicines or stop any treatments you are currently doing, You should probably consult your doctor or do your own research. This particular approach to your health should only be followed after thoroughly knowing what you're getting yourself into. I would no more suggest using “Mind over Matter,” than I would suggest praying to God for a miracle cure to cancer, and using that as your only method of treatment. I write this article only to tell you my experience.


Hopefully there's at least one person out there that can relate to me and my experience.


I would love to hear from you.

Of Course, negative comments will be deleted immediately.
This is NOT the place for that. I am all about being supportive, so please do the same, or don't comment at all.


Thank you for visiting, come back soon!


Love,
T.B. Cooper




For more information on Bipolar Depression, please visit: http://www.bphope.com/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-bipolar-depression/ or download this pdf: https://www.gstatic.com/healthricherkp/pdf/bipolar_disorder.pdf


For more information on Hypersexuality, please visit: http://psychcentral.com/lib/hypersexuality-symptoms-of-sexual-addiction/


For more information on Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, please visit: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pcos/basics/definition/con-20028841
or download this pdf: https://www.gstatic.com/healthricherkp/pdf/polycystic_ovary_syndrome.pdf


For more information on Endometriosis, please visit http://www.endometriosisassn.org/endo.html
or http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/endometriosis/basics/definition/con-20013968 or download this pdf: https://www.gstatic.com/healthricherkp/pdf/endometriosis.pdf


And please, if you suspect you or a loved one may be experiencing any of these diseases/disorders, please see a health professional immediately for a diagnosis and to discuss treatment options.