Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[outlander]

evening @Smc
sounds tough atm. I do hope seeing the dr has helped your daughter.
im not one for social events to so can relate to your daughter on that level.
im one who runs and hides or leaves early or hides in the corner 😏

[Smc]

Yeah @outlander. She does find social settings exhausting.

Turns out she's got a bacterial secondary infection. (Sinusitis) So she is genuinely unwell, and is now on medication to clear that up. She so often goes to doctors or the hospital with "aliments" which either test negative, or are reported as being much worse than medical examinations would suggest they are, so it's hard to tell when she really is sick. She seems to be unconsciously reliant on other people caring for her, which is very difficult to balance.

[outlander]

sorry to hear about the infection @Smc I am glad there is a reason behind it though. Does she have health anxiety/hypochondria? I cant diagnose but it does sounds similar to what I experience with my anxieties around health

[Smc]

@outlander, she certainly has anxiety. A psychiatrist has diagnosed Factitious Disorder, which is pretty much somatic (psychological not physical in origin) pain and illness at an unconscious level. i.e. she has no self insight into what's happening, and genuinely believes the pain or illness is physical. She even really experiences the pain/illness, but it's like the signal is working in reverse, with it originating in her brain and being felt in her body, rather than bodily pain sending the signal to her brain.

[outlander]

oh I haven't heard of that disorder before @Smc I do experience real pain too even when its psychological. it can be hard to determine the difference but without that self insight it makes it even harder. When it first started happening to me if I had a stomach ache I would think it was cancer, but now ive learnt that it could be about 100 reasons what it could be including stress and anxiety.
I do hope that she will be able to learn more about her condition and manage it abit better

[Smc]

Yeah @outlander, it sounds like yours is much more connected to anxiety. Being able to see what's happening is such a big help towards dealing with it. And that's a big part of why we're not seeing improvement with our Older Daughter. Until she can see what's happening, it's not possible to do anything much in the way of therapy. CBT for example involves "cognition".

Something I've found is that anxiety definitely increases the perception of pain. Things that might not be too awful normally gets caught up in a kind of feedback loop, not helped by the automatic tensing up that happens under stress. And yeah, another thing with our girl is that she frequently seems to overstate her pain levels. The level of pain (out of 10) that she says she's feeling doesn't match up with how she's reacting. I don't think I could carry on a conversation of any sort while experiencing 8-10/10 pain, let alone an unrelated conversation about how her latest craft project is progressing. That's sort of "having trouble speaking" level pain??

[outlander]

definently @Smc once she can see and understand itll be better for her to move forward. has there been any mention of other types of therapy such as ACT or EMDR?

ah I see, its hard to determine what sort of pain she really has is she over states. I have had some pretty severe pain and I can barely get any words out let alone hold conversations.

[Smc]

@outlander, I can't see ACT working because she feels like too many things are outsie of her control, including and especially her SH behaviour.

I could see the possibilities with EMDR, but again, there's a lot of things that she would class as traumatic, so going that way would be a very very long process and traumatic in itself. Maybe down the track, but I don't know if she'd handle it at present.

We're all in the uncomfortable position of really not knowing how to move forward unless she starts to take ownership and control of herself, even in small ways.

[outlander]

that is a really tough situation to be in @Smc I do hope she sees it soon so she gets the right help. for her sh behaviours DBT might be a good type for her.

[Smc]

DBT might be closer to the mark.