Wrong Even When You’re Right

On Pain, Silence and the Shitty Lessons We learn

It’s 2015. Trudging around to maternity appointments before having my second child, with a huge belly and a bigger orange folder, full of medical paperwork. The most important document in there was one I wrote myself.

Going into the birth of my first child, I had one of those wishlists also known as a “birthing plan”. Not much went to plan, until we all got out of the hospital a week later. Honestly I didn’t really process much of this until it was time to do it all again, and I realised how what I’d said, and not said at the time, had badly affected how things went.

I minimised my feelings and didn’t object when I had a bad feeling about one staff member, who went on to make critical errors.

When we arrived at maternity triage, they reluctantly agreed to examine me because I wasn’t presenting as if I was in the later stages of labour. I wasn’t making enough of a fuss. In fact I was well past the admittance criteria and went straight to the birthing unit.

When a doctor gave us potentially life-altering news, with a breezy delivery that made it sound like it might almost be fun, I went into freeze and said nothing.

I didn’t protest when, exhausted after 40 hours of labour and a difficult birth, the nurse on duty told us we couldn’t come into the NICU — luckily the ward sister arrived back after a break and whisked us in to see our son.

I didn’t speak up because I was a people pleaser.

I didn’t speak up because I didn’t want to be seen as difficult.

I didn’t speak up because I was deep in fear about becoming a parent, with none of it happening as I’d expected.

I didn’t speak up because I knew nothing about processing emotions, years before any neurodiversity diagnosis, so I just got stuck.

I did scream at the ward sister on the birthing unit who was being loud on the phone when I was struggling in labour, and to her credit she took it in her stride. Because we’ve been trained enough by the media to know that when women birth babies, they bellow and roar. It’s allowed, didn’t you know?

Second Time Around, I Brought a Translation

For this birth, there was a lot of extra admin, thanks to me being a ‘geriatric’ mother. Love that term, just love it. Thanks to admin errors, nobody really clocked how geriatric I’d be on giving birth, and when they did a whole extra layer of appointments and scans suddenly popped up, and a consultant who told me that I “would be” induced on my due date.

That was not the time for my PDA to kick in, but alas, dear Reader…

This time around, things would be different, I decided. I would be heard. Yes, it required dragging my incredibly polite and diplomatic husband to some of the appointments to make it sink in (don’t even get me started on this) but this time, there was no birthing plan. Instead, there was a letter. The most important sentence in it wasn’t to do with staff, or procedures.

“NB: when I am in pain, I will go quiet.”

When Pain Makes Me Go Quiet

It’s dentists. It’s chronic pain. It’s any time my body and brain are in conflict and the brain just doesn’t know how to negotiate or mitigate what’s happening to me. I’ve tried suffering in silence - literally - as a dentist prods at my gums and tells me, with an accusatory tone, that I’ve had the maximum dose of anaesthetic, that it must be working. It took me a long time and an unfortunate experience with stitches to comprehend what was happening: anaesthetic takes a lot longer to kick in for me than for most people so now I tell the dentist to prep me, treat the next patient or two, and then I’ll come back for my procedure.

Photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash

When I had issues with my spine in my 20s, it became known amongst our group of friends that at some point in any gathering, I’d probably slip away to a quiet place and close my eyes, maybe even sleep, no matter how loud the music and laughter. I still remember the particular one or two people who’d make sure to slip past and drape a blanket over me, or softly rub my back. Keeping me included.

By this point, having had so many frankly odd medical conditions and diagnoses, I can spot medical gaslighting in a flash. My patience for tackling it has also burned out, which is why now I only go to the doctor when something is so chronic that I just can’t ignore it any more.

I choose my battles carefully. The pain, you get used to, but the bureaucracy is what exhausts you, sometimes. Also, fun thing, it’s not just physical pain! It’s emotional overload too.

What Happens When I Speak Up

Many years down the line, I understand that my body’s reaction to a perceived threat is to get very quiet. Try to make myself very very small to avoid the danger I’m perceiving. Because our bodies don’t know the difference between a sabre-toothed tiger and someone criticising us. Straight into shutdown. Can’t catch a ball to save my life but my freeze response is always on point and ready to do whatever’s necessary to keep me safe.

Social occasions can be tricky, especially with new people. I try to not let the people-pleasing persona drive the car, because that’s not my authentic self and wearing that particular costume gets tiring, very fast.

I am not a ‘banter’ girl. My RSD flared when I was with a group of friends because the style of conversation felt adversarial (to me.) The safest option for me was to make myself small. Go quiet. I was in pain — emotional, and also it felt physical, as RSD often can. Suffocating. Threatening.

Quiet is not my default.

Seriously, when I go quiet, it’s never a good sign. Especially among friends.

Everyone noticed. Probably because if I’m subdued in a group of friends, people I’m comfortable with, it’s like someone removed the colour blue from the world, or the letter ‘H’ from conversations. There’s something noticeably wrong.

When I finally spoke, it was because I couldn’t handle feeling so unsafe any more — just from conversation!! — and realised I had to voice it, and get things realigned. Essentially it was asserting a boundary, because that’s one of the ways we can keep ourselves safe. I explained myself and said what I needed.

It didn’t work out great, and it was a shitty lesson to learn. But one that I needed.

Wrong Even When You’re Right

Because sometimes you are wrong, even when you’re right. Hell, we all probably have stories reaching back all the way to childhood that taught us that shitty lesson (accurately correcting my 5th class teacher’s pronunciation of “Don Quixote” is an early standout for me.)

The shitty lesson is that even while you’re learning to trust your gut, which is a vital skill, it can still go horribly wrong. Staying quiet is not always right but it generally feels safe. Easy.

Now I have to work on convincing my nervous system that these things are wrong: “Speaking up makes things worse.” “Going quiet is safer.” “Don’t trust yourself.”

When Pain Makes Me Disappear

The physical pain thing sucks too, because oh my god it’s so boring — don’t I deal with it so well? — and also rigorous. Chronic illness could qualify as a profession, it occupies so much of my time and mind. I keep hoping I’ll learn to manage my capacity. Maybe after I adopt that unicorn and visit Atlantis.

It’s a running joke that I need a wheelbarrow to collect my meds from the pharmacy each month. It’s my weights routine. Genuinely, it’s tiring. So tiring. That tiredness probably makes the PDA and the pain worse, which is why I sometimes manifest as a 5’6” toddler in need of a nap. When I’m in pain, I go quiet. I’ve been quiet here. I’ve needed a lot of naps. (Combined with lots of revenge bedtime procrastination, doubly dangerous.)

I gauge my emotional health by how many times I’ve cancelled invitations, not shown up to classes I’ve paid for, put off evenings out. By whether I’m writing.

I haven’t been writing. I’ve been evading. It’s surprisingly easy to find that weeks have passed without my darkening Substack’s doors - and even I can’t blame it on time blindness.

Why I Can Help Everyone But Me

It’s the ol’ empty cup thing. I know I should prioritise a baseline of health, financial stability, emotional regulation for myself, before I can try to show up for anyone else. All very grown up, and easier said than done.

My ability to overestimate my capacity is so vast. My hard drive is a graveyard of online courses and workshops that I’ll never attend, because I buy them to assuage my feelings about being ‘unable’ to finish a novel and then don’t use them either. Too bloody tired, most of the time.

While ignoring my own writing, I help stuck writers to get past their self-sabotage and perfectionist tendencies to finish their books. It’s nothing short of miraculous how much fun I have when “working” — I could talk about stories all day.

Unless it’s my own.

Upon sitting down to work sometimes suddenly I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I think it’s my brain going straight into shutdown. (True story - I was writing notes last week and fell asleep during a sentence. The words dribbled off the page, and the last sentence fragment was absolutely unhinged, and came directly from what I was dreaming about.)

Rest Is Not Failure

So I went and had a nap. I can cat-nap for hours and then still sleep at night, in fact I think I may sleep better after a disco nap? Maybe I’m not a toddler after all.

Taking a rest when I needed one worked a treat, what a shocker. I tell clients to do this sort of thing all the time, yet think I need to “power through” which is nonsense.

I was trying to work out why I was so tired that day when I realised that it had coincided with some bad pain days. Not because I was lazy or broken, weird dream-writing notwithstanding, but because my body needed a rest.

Resting isn’t only napping, I’m frankly more pleasant to be around when I’ve been reading, making art, gardening and writing. Writing.

Everything is better after writing.

Unlearning Silence

My body doesn’t send subtle signals, it’s all air horns and party noise blowers. Going absolutely full pelt one minute, both brain and body and then needing three days of rest - which I so rarely give myself. Heroic, no?

Some form of deranged Protestant work ethic kicked in and I thought ignoring it was the stoic, wise thing to do. Push on through everything. Except I’m then so floored, I fall over and it’s a ridiculous cycle. One that I need to spot sooner and disrupt. Somatic work helps though but again, that’s another new skill to acquire.

I am desperate to learn how to create a better balance. Exercise my brain, and my body, within my capability, then rest appropriately. I’m working on accepting that the pain is there and it’s real.

It’s so bloody hard. A shitty lesson to unlearn.

Does this sound familiar?

Do you go quiet when you’re hurting?

Do you dismiss your own pain because you’ve been taught not to trust it?

Tell me. I want to know.