Pelvic Pain
“Not always, but sometimes, even the slightest memory of your trauma can lead to pain.”
Pelvic pain is described as pain that occurs below your navel and in between your hips that lasts for 6 months or longer. Pelvic pain can and does occur in both men and women. It is common that the cause of this pain is from any type of trauma. In this case, trauma can be defined as any type of physical trauma or emotional trauma including but not limited to: verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, rape, sexual harrassment, high stress situations, depression, or phsycial trauma to the area such as infection, pelvic/abdominal surgery, or child birth. After any sort of trauma to this area, the pelvic floor muscles (PFM) typically want to protect you, so they will tighten up and go into a spastic state. This can lead to consistent pain that doesn’t have much of a rhyme or reason as to when or why it is occuring. Pelvic floor therapists can help retrain the muscles to lengthen, relax, and decrease the spasms.
Psychological research has also shown that trauma can result in chronic centralization of pain. Centralization of pain is from inflammation in the nervous system tissues, creating muddled signals from the body to the brain which results in a complex, often indescribable, perception of pain. Not always, but sometimes, even the slightest memory of your trauma can lead to pain. Thus, cognitive behavioral therapy is strongly encouraged in conjunction with pelvic floor therapy to address the emotional components contributing to your pain. I had a patient who was raped several months ago, and when she saw her perpetrator in public her back immediately went into spasm and she urinated herself. Cognitive therapists and pelvic health physical therapists can help retrain the body and the mind so you can regain control of your most beautiful, joyful life that you so absolutely deserve.
Here are a few helpful tips to get you started while you are waiting to see a pelvic floor therapist and a cognitive behavioral therapist.
Meditation: I know. It sounds terrible to sit and breathe. I too for the longest time avoided it. Since I have started to meditate I have noticed the most beautiful shift in my life and now able to live more presently. Meditation can help calm the sympathetic nervous system and allow you to return to the parasympathetic nervous system state allowing your muscles and all systems to relax. This can help decrease pelvic floor muscle spasms. Imagine you living your best life with no pain doing everything you want to do. If you start to believe you can get there, you will. I promise you. You just have to believe in vagic.
Diet and exercise is really important as well. It is important you are treating your body well with nurishing foods to decrease nervous system tissue inflammation. Movement can help also rewire your muddled nervous tissue. The body really likes to move. Motion is lotion, so increase daily activity even if it’s just going for a 10 min walk everyday.
Sleep is huge. Sleep is when our body restores itself. If we aren’t sleeping well our nervous tissue will continue to be inflamed and muddled. The muscles will also have a difficult time relaxing.
Make time for what you love. Life can be stressful. I know. But what is life if we aren’t doing what we love to do. Take time to figure out what really excites you and makes you happy and make your best effort to go do it. You may need to meditate on it first and imagine it, but I promise you, you will get there.