Say you are going to the gym 4 times a week, then one day, while running, you feel a sudden pain in your knee. Knee swells but nothing too bad, except that every single time you move your knee, some sharp, nagging pain comes back and gets you to stop whatever you're doing. You then touch your knee, move it left and right, and scratch at the pain. Makes it a bit worse.
You should rest, says your aunt and her bridge friends. You don't really want to rest, but at the same time... that pain! Right? Can't really go to the gym now.. could I?
So, you stay home for the next two weeks. After two weeks, the pain is still there; you leave it for another two weeks before going to the doctor. Doc can't find anything wrong, so you get Ibuprofen for 2 weeks and rest, perhaps a little contention for your knee.
After the two weeks are done, you feel a bit better, and you gained a bit of weight, so it's really time to go back to the gym.
You go back to the gym, pumped. First move, bam! Knee pain comes back. As sharp as ever. WTF.
Thing is. Not moving for a month or two and avoiding the pain has made all the muscles around your knee grow weak. Your threshold for pain is lowered by the inactivity in the limb, and your general fitness has severely diminished.
Is having knee pain as bad as your story? Of course not. Is that a helpful story? Well, maybe, you tell me.
I believe in both cases letting the pain control your life is a mistake. Even if it is the worst pain imaginable, do whatever you can to work AROUND it. What does it mean in your case?
Your pain does not forbid you to take care of your lifestyle:
- Do not indulge in useless behaviours that kill your soul and increase your self-deprecation: (re)Build a discipline.
- Eat well, sleep well and rise with the sun.
- Do every bit of physical activity you can, regularly, like clockwork.
Can you do 20 pushups? 10? 1? Well, then it goes in.
Can you run for 5 min ? You start there.
Can you stretch your back ? Bam, in.
You find out what you can do and make it a doable and improvable routine that you do EVERY SINGLE DAY, in the morning, preferably.
Work around the pain. Do not let it control you, build what can be built.
Your pain does not forbid you to take care of your mindset:
- Find goals, start small, and keep growing
- E.g. "I can't hold a job" --> that's a useless generalisation.
Change it to rational thinking: are you cognitively diminished ? yes/no ? if yes, how much? Are there job for cognitively diminished people like you ? (probably, given that half the population has an IQ below 100).
Are you physically dimished ? yes/no ? How much? Can you find a job that would work? Remote? Coding ? Job X ? You don't know how to do X ? Replace video games by Coursera. Get a certificate in X.
Is it you can't keep a job because you aim too high ? Would it be ok to aim lower ? How low ? How much time would it be ok to be there ?
- Keep a vision of what the future could be. Even with the pain, even with all the failures and broken dreams. Find out what it could be as if your life depended on it.
Anyways. There is no silver bullet. You are, or have been, at a threshold for a while, a fork in the road between extinction and rebirth.
My advice is to take the Ibuprofen or whatever antidepressant you can get, whatever can help you stand a bit taller and feel a bit less of the pain. But go back to the gym, work around whatever pain is left after that, and wean yourself off everything you thought you needed to go through the days. Progressively.
Also, obviously. Stop taking benzodiazepine, weed, alcohol or any other drugs. Get help if you can. You are in a fight for the rest of your life.
Good luck.