Chronic pain and the eldest daughter
Sitting here burning yet another incense thinking about eldest daughters. As a fellow eldest daughter myself, it’s hard. Expectations of self, hyper-independence, and overexertion have blatantly consumed me throughout my life. Where are the eldest daughter support groups located? I can’t speak for everyone, but I think we all might have some similarities, and to be frank, I think chronic pain might be one of them that is at least expected.
Now, chronic pain isn’t something that is typically talked about. However, when you think about the internal and external pressures eldest daughters can experience, along with the suppression of feelings and emotional burdens, things have to manifest.. don’t they? In simple terms, chronic pain is pain that persists longer than it should. It’s pain that sticks around when it should’ve left and pain that isn’t consistent. Migraines for 5 years? Chronic. Back pain for 10 years? Chronic. Knee or foot pain that comes and goes over the last 15 years? Chronic.
Chronic pain can feel like it just “happens” out of the blue. But I can promise you, that’s not the way it works. When thinking about an eldest daughter and her nervous system, it probably has been dysregulated for quite some time. By dysregulated, I mean it has trouble managing stress and returning to a calm, balanced state. This simply means that the mind has yet to get out of fight or flight mode and is constantly feeling like you are being put in danger.
Traditionally, I can explain fight or flight as someone being chased by a bear. Your flight or flight system will naturally activate because we view bears as dangerous and our brains know we cannot physically fight the bear. Now, on the flipside, your fight or flight system activating when danger is not present is abnormal. An example of this that almost every eldest daughter will relate to is stress. Stress, whether internal or external can activate your fight or flight system. That fight or flight system can become activated because stress is interpreted as dangerous.
Imagine this… throughout most of your life you probably encountered stress. Self induced stress about what direction your life was going in, external stress because you had to help your siblings with their homework or cook dinner for them or take care of other responsibilities. Overtime, this stress begins to normalize and it becomes apart of your daily life.. until your brain quite literally cannot take it anymore and *boom* now your body hurts. Now the cycle of chronic pain begins.
Our brains can only withhold so much. Think about putting too much air into a balloon, what happens? It pops. What happens when you put too much water in a pot on the eye of the stove? It boils over.
This is what happens to our brains when they’ve had enough, and now our bodies begin to pay the price. Anything can trigger pain at that point. Going to work or even thinking about work. Interacting with a friend. Working out, cooking. The list can go on and on.
Chronic pain feels like an ongoing headache because you didn’t drink enough water that day, or having shoulder pain when you’re putting your hair in a ponytail, or having back pain every time you pick up your 7lb dog. As someone who’s experienced this exact pain for several years, I firmly believe it’s possible for stress, emotional burdens and suppression of feelings to cause chronic pain.
So, to my eldest daughters who were not taught how to regulate, who were taught how to be hyper-independent, how to wear their stress with grace and to bury their emotions because they were ”too much”.. in the same way that we take care of everyone and everything else: siblings, parents, work, etc., it’s important to shower ourselves with that same love, acceptance, compassion and grace.
Besides, our nervous system is begging that we give ourselves a break.
-Your favorite eldest daughter.