People In Pain Acknowledge

It’s not just in our head. The pain is there and always would be even if there is no apparent reason for it. Our pain is real and will not just go away after we take some pills for a week or two. It would always be there and we have learned to live with it. Here are 16 more things we wish you knew about us!
1. We Don’t Make a Mountain out a of Molehill
You think you can imagine our pain? Now multiply that amount by 10. No matter how sympathetic you are, studies have proved that people tend to underestimate other people’s pain. Chronic pain by default is hard to imagine unless you have experienced it in your life. It’s invisible, but it is always there. We urge health care not out of hypochondria or the need for attention, but because of our severe physical state.
2. We Need to Balance Actions Carefully
We use the Spoon Theory: We have a limited amount of spoons each day we could use for different actions. Getting up, getting dressed, taking a shower, driving, walking, picking up the phone — each action requires us to use one of our precious spoons. On good days, we finish with a few spoons left, so we can do something fun. On bad days, we borrow spoons from the next day and need extra recovery afterwards. So if we suddenly cancel our plans with you or tell we can’t do it now — it’s just because we ran out of spoons today. Try to understand this.

3. We Struggle to Find a Good Doctor
Sadly, a lot of health care pros lack knowledge in pain management because it is rarely part of their training. We often visit numerous specialists before receiving a proper diagnosis and wait months to years to see a real pain specialist for treatment. Doctors often fall victim to the cognitive error of underestimating another’s pain and a small number of doctors are willing to take the legal risks involved in prescribing powerful pain pills.
Same goes with the nurses. Finding a good one who can really understand and help us relieve the pain is hard! Luckily, there are some online schools like Sacred Heart University that are training future nurse leaders to overcome these issues in the future and provide better care for patients.
While you may think it’s crazy, we’re willing to travel further to find a good nurse with this kind of training and rave about it when we find one.
4. We Are Not Lazy
Remember the limited amount of spoons we have? Now add the fact that it takes twice as much effort for us to complete even simple things. We try harder than other folks, yet we still manage to accomplish less.
5. We Try to Look Our Best
“But you don’t look sick” is one of the most common phrases you hear if you have invisible disease. Well yes, we try to look our best even on bad days when our body explodes from pain. We dress up carefully to cover up our bruises or swelling, take painkillers at the optimal time, and rest before going out. We would love to pass as normal as much as possible! Even if we feel pain, we would keep it to ourselves until the moment we step into our apartment and just collapse.
6. We Don’t Ignore You
Sometimes our pain occupies too much space in our brains and we simply cannot focus on anything else. Pain can be very distracting and mentally draining, so please forgive us when we can’t give all the attention to you.

7. We Know Our Illness Won’t Go Away
It’s always there. We can’t escape. And yes, we have researched all the possible options. If there was a cure, we would know about it!
8. We Are Not Drug Seekers
Sadly, we need to explain that both to the doctors and folks around. We don’t want drugs. We want anything to make the pain go away even for a little while. So yes, sometimes our treatment requires taking opioids or medical marijuana. We treat those just like any other remedy. And no, we are not particularly fond of the side effects either.
In fact, as the Cleveland Clinic explains: Addiction appears to be distinctly uncommon in patients without a prior history of addiction. Addiction is a psychological phenomenon that isn’t caused by chemical components of the drugs and typically requires a setting different from the one we have. We take our drugs under supervision and come back home to the loving family unlike the street-users.
9. We Don’t Always Know How to Manage Our Pain
Just because we have been dealing with it for ages doesn’t mean we always know how to tame it. Sometimes, we have very bad days when no previous routines help. We just close our eyes and wish those would pass faster.
10. We Get Super Active on Good Days
Physically feeling good is just about the most exciting feeling we can have! We can do our chores normally, go on a day trip, meet with a bunch of people at a time, and even think of running a marathon. On a good day we are super active and excited with everything, trying to get as much done as possible!
11. We Don’t Want You to Stop Inviting Us Out
No matter how many times we have said “no” we still want to be part of the gang and go out when we really can do it.
12. We Don’t Have a Job for a Reason
Again, we are not lazy. It’s just that we often lack spoons to work on the top of our other activities and daily chores. Besides, most employees refuse to take staff for a few hours per week and tolerate the fact that we can leave at the middle of the day if our pain gets unbearable.
On the bright side though, thanks to technology we can work from home in our own pace, doing various jobs online, selling stuff on eBay, learn everything we need from self-help and nursing to jobs online. If we don’t have a regular job, it doesn’t mean we can accomplish nothing in life. Multiple sclerosis did not stop Vanessa from creating an award-winning music company!
13. We Don’t Want Sympathy, We Want Acceptance
Instead of making that “I’m so sorry for you” sad face, treat us like equals. It’s not that you should completely ignore our condition, but show us you are ok with it and ready to make small adjustments for us.
14. We Don’t Want Your Medical Advice
Believe me, we have heard enough already and feel frustrated, as they don’t work. Thanks for the thought, but let’s just talk of something else. My disease does not define me. I know a lot of other interesting things, I would love to discuss with you instead.
15. We Need to Know You Are Here for Us
No matter how self-sufficient and independent we try to appear, sometimes we just need you to be here with us and hold our hand on a bad day.
16. We Appreciate You and Everything You Do for Us
You should never forget that We are eternally grateful for supporting us and making us feel loved!

We acknowledge our pain and try to move forward, even though at times we can become depressed at times as people can also be crewel and abuse us verbally in front of us and mostly chastise us behind our backs. Real Friendships we cherish and love. We also support many others as we do know and understand what others go through as we have already been through so much. We can still have great courage. And we do get tired, mentally, socially, physically and spiritually.

Traumatic Memories Hid in the Brain!!

Some stressful experiences – such as chronic childhood abuse – are so overwhelming and traumatic, the memories hide like a shadow in the brain.

At first, hidden memories that can’t be consciously accessed may protect the individual from the emotional pain of recalling the event. But eventually those suppressed memories can cause debilitating psychological problems, such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or dissociative disorders.

A process known as state-dependent learning is believed to contribute to the formation of memories that are inaccessible to normal consciousness. Thus, memories formed in a particular mood, arousal or drug-induced state can best be retrieved when the brain is back in that state.

In a new study with mice, Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered for the first time the mechanism by which state-dependent learning renders stressful fear-related memories consciously inaccessible.

“The findings show there are multiple pathways to storage of fear-inducing memories, and we identified an important one for fear-related memories,” said principal investigator Dr. Jelena Radulovic, the Dunbar Professor in Bipolar Disease at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “This could eventually lead to new treatments for patients with psychiatric disorders for whom conscious access to their traumatic memories is needed if they are to recover.”

It’s difficult for therapists to help these patients, Radulovic said, because the patients themselves can’t remember their traumatic experiences that are the root cause of their symptoms.

The best way to access the memories in this system is to return the brain to the same state of consciousness as when the memory was encoded, the study showed.

Changing the Brain’s Radio Frequencies

Two amino acids, glutamate and GABA, are the yin and yang of the brain, directing its emotional tides and controlling whether nerve cells are excited or inhibited (calm). Under normal conditions the system is balanced. But when we are hyper-aroused and vigilant, glutamate surges. Glutamate is also the primary chemical that helps store memories in our neuronal networks in a way that they are easy to remember.

GABA, on the other hand, calms us and helps us sleep, blocking the action of the excitable glutamate. The most commonly used tranquilizing drug, benzodiazepine, activates GABA receptors in our brains.

There are two kinds of GABA receptors. One kind, synaptic GABA receptors, works in tandem with glutamate receptors to balance the excitation of the brain in response to external events such as stress.

The other population, extra-synaptic GABA receptors, are independent agents. They ignore the peppy glutamate. Instead, their job is internally focused, adjusting brain waves and mental states according to the levels of internal chemicals, such as GABA, sex hormones and micro RNAs. Extra-synaptic GABA receptors change the brain’s state to make us aroused, sleepy, alert, sedated, inebriated or even psychotic. However, Northwestern scientists discovered another critical role; these receptors also help encode memories of a fear-inducing event and then store them away, hidden from consciousness.

“The brain functions in different states, much like a radio operates at AM and FM frequency bands,” Radulovic said. “It’s as if the brain is normally tuned to FM stations to access memories, but needs to be tuned to AM stations to access subconscious memories. If a traumatic event occurs when these extra-synaptic GABA receptors are activated, the memory of this event cannot be accessed unless these receptors are activated once again, essentially tuning the brain into the AM stations.”

Retrieving Stressful Memories in Mice

In the experiment, scientists infused the hippocampus of mice with gaboxadol, a drug that stimulates extra-synaptic GABA receptors. “It’s like we got them a little inebriated, just enough to change their brain state,” Radulovic said.

Then the mice were put in a box and given a brief, mild electric shock. When the mice were returned to the same box the next day, they moved about freely and weren’t afraid, indicating they didn’t recall the earlier shock in the space. However, when scientists put the mice back on the drug and returned them to the box, they froze, fearfully anticipating another shock.

“This establishes when the mice were returned to the same brain state created by the drug, they remembered the stressful experience of the shock,” Radulovic said.

The experiment showed when the extra-synaptic GABA receptors were activated with the drug, they changed the way the stressful event was encoded. In the drug-induced state, the brain used completely different molecular pathways and neuronal circuits to store the memory.

“It’s an entirely different system even at the genetic and molecular level than the one that encodes normal memories,” said lead study author Vladimir Jovasevic, who worked on the study when he was a postdoctoral fellow in Radulovic’s lab.

This different system is regulated by a small microRNA, miR-33, and may be the brain’s protective mechanism when an experience is overwhelmingly stressful.

The findings imply that in response to traumatic stress, some individuals, instead of activating the glutamate system to store memories, activate the extra-synaptic GABA system and form inaccessible traumatic memories.

Traumatic Memories Rerouted and Hidden Away

Memories are usually stored in distributed brain networks including the cortex, and can thus be readily accessed to consciously remember an event. But when the mice were in a different brain state induced by gaboxadol, the stressful event primarily activated subcortical memory regions of the brain. The drug rerouted the processing of stress-related memories within the brain circuits so that they couldn’t be consciously accessed.

Depressed people often find themselves preoccupied with guilty, shameful, or self-defeating thoughts for large parts of their day. These thoughts not only distract from other activities but also fail to resolve the underlying life issues. Further, the ideas that receive focused attention in these depressive ruminations are frequently quite distorted and lead to distress.

Stanford University sheds light on the brain mechanisms giving rise to these symptoms.

Their work highlights the interplay of a brain region implicated in depression, the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC) and a brain network involved in reflection, sometimes called the default mode network (DMN). The DMN becomes activated when the brain’s task-oriented circuits are not engaged, i.e., during times of self-referential thought.

By reanalyzing existing studies, Hamilton and colleagues show that depressive ruminations are more likely to emerge in depression when the firing of the sgPFC, signaling depressed mood, is more tightly coordinated with the firing of the DMN. They propose that the observed increased connectivity reflects a functional integration of sgPFC and DMN processes which, in turn, support rumination in depression.

“This study shows that depression distorts a natural process. It would seem that normally the subgenual prefrontal cortex helps to bias the reflective process supported by the default mode network so that we can consider important problems in the service of developing strategies for solving them,” commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.

“However, in depression it seems that the subgenual prefrontal cortex runs amok hijacking normal self-reflection in a maladaptive way. This may be one reason that electrical stimulation of the sgPFC is helpful for some patients with severe or treatment-resistant

Nothing wrong in Dating:Birds of a feather flock together when they cannot take responsibility for their own lives.

Imagine a private conversation between the man you are dating and his closest friend.  It's a conversation never meant to reach your ears.  Your boyfriend is discussing both the good and the bad of his experience with you so far.

"Don't get me wrong, I really do like her.  I like her a lot, but her friends kind of..."
What do you think would come next if this was your boyfriend talking?  How would he finish this sentence?  "Her friends kind of..."

Your friends can help or harm your relationships in many different ways, but today I am just pointing out one issue you may want to check on.

Here's the issue.  If you hang out with people who are a lot like you, they will attract guys into your life who are kind of like your friends.  Hopefully that's a good thing in your mind.  If the idea of attracting men who fit in with your friends makes you happy, there's nothing you need to do.  You're set.

However, several different problems can arise if you don't like the idea of dating a man with similar habits, hobbies, interests, economic status, lifestyle choices, or other traits your friends have.
Which of these two folk sayings is actually true?

• Birds of a feather flock together.
• Opposites attract.

Opposites generally do not attract.  If they do, the long-term satisfaction in the relationship will be lower, then again many have lasted a life time together enjoying each other and their different attributes and core belief's.

They both enjoy the differences which they both bring to the relationship as they never get bored with each other to stray into another few lovers arms. Friends come and go in everyones life. Many friends, close, love to control the friends life by stating dislike in friends ears. Then they become controled by their friends... depends on how close you are.  Yes, birds of a feather really do flock together.  The more similar you are to your lover, the longer and more satisfying the relationship will be.  I'm not making this up.  I'm just relaying to you what social psychologists have discovered when they researched this question regarding those two common proverbs.

If your friends are very similar to you, they can actually help you filter out men who are not right for you.  When your friends are very much like you, a guy who is not like you will not enjoy spending time around them, and it will become clear he does not fit in.  This will help you make a decision to end the relationship if he does not end it himself.

If you have been spending a lot of time with people you think are fun, but not the kind of people who represent your deepest core values, your lifestyle, or some other important aspect of who you are, you might be accidentally repelling men who would otherwise stick around.
Am I being heartless by suggesting you re-evaluate the people you spend time with?  Don't get me wrong.  You should not dump your friends just to please a guy.

What I'm saying is, friendships often come and go with the circumstances of your life.  They don't move across the country with you when you get a new job or decide the air in Arizona would be better for your allergies.  If you're in the dating game in search of marriage, a husband will stick with you through these circumstances.

Just keep in mind how important it is to attract the kind of person you want to spend your life with. Not what your friends say you need but what you feel you actually want and need in your life. After all Responsibility for your life lays in your hands only, not your friends and family.

Taking responsibility for you life.