110. Living With Chronic Pain as a Mother with Lauren Rose

Lauren Rose reveals her story of chronic pain, which was caused by a combination of emotional and physical trauma. Lauren experienced rejection, abandonment, verbal abuse, bullying, an eating disorder, and sexual abuse. She eventually escaped the abuse and is now in trauma therapy.

Lauren provides practical tips and advice to help others manage their chronic pain and trauma. She also emphasize the importance of spiritual health in managing chronic pain.

Lauren shares four tips for parenting with chronic pain: talking to family about it, getting help, practicing self-care, and being present. She also discusses how to manage a household, including online grocery shopping, planning ahead, having frozen dinners on hand, and using seating to do chores.

Lauren discussed her experience living with chronic pain, how she manages it, and how she has learned to take care of herself. She also recommended a book called "A Day Without Pain" which talks about the physiology of pain and different treatment modalities. 

You can find Lauren Rose and "It Hurts to Mom" podcast here:

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/it-hurts-to-mom/id1644750334

Spotify Podcasts:

https://open.spotify.com/show/08had0GX7HvdhYwvh1d3BI?si=39562ead24284393

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ithurtstomom/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/ithurtstomom

Full Transcript:

00:16 - Anna Esparham

did and all kinds of stuff. Oh, sorry, oh, this is, oh, is this a new app? Hold on, let me see, oh, this is like a new app from, I don't know what it's doing. This call is being recorded by Zoom. What? Let me see It,

00:41 - Lauren Holland

did you hit the record button?

00:44 - Anna Esparham

just like did it It there,

00:45 - Lauren Holland

oh.

00:47 - Anna Esparham

there's these new apps on the side. Oh okay, I don't know if it's recording on read, oh it must be recording the transcript,

00:59 - Lauren Holland

hello.

01:00 - Anna Esparham

Well I, I have to hit record still though for recording on the computer, okay, I don't know what it just did, but hopefully it works,

01:08 - Lauren Holland

okay.

01:11 - Anna Esparham

And then, we can kind of go into a lot of your big um, you know, messages that you've learned from chronic pain and trauma and how you've, kind of adapted a lot of skills to Mo, you know, parenting and um, cleaning and, and social life and relationships and um, we can even touch on your spirituality, just all kinds of stuff you want to get into, just you can also lead it too. Just be like, hey, I want to talk about this, feel free to just go ahead and say that I'm totally cool with that, is that it's pretty casual,

01:53 - Lauren Holland

okay, so if I need to call anything, you'll edit that out, right?

01:58 - Anna Esparham

Oh yes, yeah, no worries. And it's actually it's no big deal because we can just, you can just say, hey, sorry, I have a little cold, that's what I typically do. I'm just like, sorry guys,

02:07 - Anna Esparham

I'm run down and they just have to deal with it. It's not everyone kind of likes it to be. They like to see you and natural element anyway. I my, no, they do. It's so funny. I cause I remember I was so sick for like three weeks straight and I was like snorting and coughing and I was like sorry. If you need to stop and just take a minute, just like put up your hand and that way we can be silent.

02:37 - Anna Esparham

That way I can edit it a lot easier. And then I might have a package come and so my dogs will bark and I will stop and then, I'll probably mute it for a little bit so I can edit it out.

02:50 - Lauren Holland

Sure.

02:51 - Anna Esparham

Okay, that sound good.

02:52 - Lauren Holland

That sounds perfect.

02:55 - Anna Esparham

Okay, all right, let me just get okay, all right, here we go, let me hit record. I hope this works. I don't know what is going on here. Okay, okay. Hi, welcome to the Health is Pow hers podcast. This is your host, Dr. Anna and I have a very special guest with us on the show today. Her name is Lauren Rose and she's actually a mom with a history of chronic pain, and she actually threw her chronic pain. She kind of turned her pain into Herr Purpose creating the it hurts to Mom podcast and blog, which I've also been following, and it's super awesome.

03:47 - Anna Esparham

So I highly encourage you to check her out, especially for those of you who are living with chronic pain. She just has a lot of good tips and tricks and adaptations, to help you just live your life and thrive. So welcome to the show. Lauren I'm so excited to have you.

04:05 - Lauren Holland

Thank you for having me. I mean, statistically one out of five people in the world hass chronic pain and one out of twelve has chronic pain that significantly. One out of twelve has chronic pain that significantly affects their daily life. So I imagine that a lot of people listening to you have some sort of pain. So thank you for having me.

04:28 - Anna Esparham

No, it's it, it's way more prevalent than we know and a lot of us, like some of some people that you're even around, you don't even know they're having chronic pain, of course, unless they're complaining about it all the time. But oftentimes we just have to kind of get through life and, and a lot of us it's so incredibly amazing to watch all these people having chronic pain and just getting through life just as any normal person would.

04:58 - Lauren Holland

And I, the reason that I started my blog and my podcast is because I've had chronic pain for nearly 30 years, most of my life, and it's just felt incredibly lonely because I didn't wear a tattoo in my face that said I'm in significant pain right now. And so I was just doing my best to deal with life. Is a normal person, but it was just incredibly difficult and once I found out the statistics, I just thought, you know, if I felt lonely, surely a lot of other people are feeling lonely in their chronic pain journeys as well.

05:30 - Lauren Holland

So I just wanted to bring community and awareness and encouragement to those people.

05:37 - Anna Esparham

I mean I when I 1st had chronic pain. To the point where it was you know very scary for me just because it was so excruciating i had never felt anything like it i totally felt alone and i was working in a huge you know nine thousand employee hospital it's just great that you have this podcast to support others that are going through this, and just creating a community of all of us. So I, that's why I just love to get together, I love to hear your story, I'm sure the audience would love to hear your story.

06:11 - Anna Esparham

It just helps us, you know, that way we don't feel alone and then we can residence. Nate with each other and reach out to one another.

06:20 - Lauren Holland

Sure, yeah, and so a lot of things I'm gonna say in my story, you know, some audience members might think, why in the world is she bothering to tell that? But I think it's all related to the chronic pain. So that's why I'm including certain details in here that may not immediately seem related to physical pain.

06:39 - Anna Esparham

Tell us, you know, from the very beginning, did it come about that you began having chronic pain. Because I know there is a lot going on in your history. And it, it kind of all connects.

06:57 - Lauren Holland

That's, that's what I believe, just, you know, even learning that, you know, the research shows that 50 to 80 % of physical pain is from emotional pain. So that's why I'm including all this information. So I mean my birth story. I was, immediately put up for adoption a few minutes after I was born. My mother was 15 when she got pregnant. She was 16 when she had me and I didn't know hardly anything about my birth mom growing up except that she was 16. And I knew my birth name, but I didn't know if that it was Susan Perkins.

07:27 - Lauren Holland

I didn't know if Perkins was my maternal last name or my paternal last name. In twenty i actually dna matched with the first cousin and he went to his dad and was like apparently you know i've got a first cousin who is this and his dad broke down and said yeah my sister you know had a baby when she was a teenager and his dad actually said but you know just drop it you know we don't want to upset her we don't know how this is gonna affect her but he and his fiance didn't think that was right to just leave me out in the cold and pretend that they never found me so they kept pursuing me and eventually i you know a few months later called my birth mom it went great she was super excited that i contacted her and i got to meet him in person a few months later at that same cousin's wedding so that's been really exciting, but I think, you know, being a put up for adoption and going through the adoption process and the adopted life, you know, that started my rejection and abandonment issues.

08:30 - Lauren Holland

Then as a child, my dad was verbally abuse and my mom was pretty much submissive to him. We were expected to be perfect all the time, my adopted brother and I, I complied, I was, I was the perfect child. My brother decided to seek the negative attention, so he was the complete opposite, he took the rebellious route and we weren't allowed to feel feelings unless they were happy feelings. If we felt sad or angry, my dad would say you're just a child, you have no reason to feel angry or whatever the feeling was.

09:01 - Lauren Holland

I feel like I've had depression and anxiety since I was about eight. My parents, because I was good in school, they put me in an accelerated, you know, academic school and I just started becoming more withdrawn and more shy and more introverted. And then I was frequently bullied because I was really thin growing up. Like extremely thin and people just thought that it would be a great idea to just make fun of that. And then when I was 15, I developed an eating disorder. So, as most people these days probably know, eating disorders are about control, not about body image or weight.

09:40 - Lauren Holland

I never thought I was fat, I knew I was thin, but that wasn't the point. The point was I needed some element of control in my life and that's how I was getting it, cause I live in a very controlling home. Dad, you know, being the jerk that he was knowing when I was suicidal, he on three different occasions and within about a week's time said to me. Lauren, if you want to try to kill yourself, I won't try to stop you. And of all the things my dad ever said to me, all the sage wisdom, the advice that that's what I remember the most is him saying that to me.

10:17 - Anna Esparham

Oh wow, yeah, that is something that definitely can hurt a child. Just thinking about that, especially a parent who is supposed to love you no matter what and take care of you and guard you and protect you. So wow, that was a big trauma.

10:37 - Lauren Holland

And I mean the same age as when I started developing daily. I didn't know they were migraines at the time, but daily headaches. And I think it was a combination of migraines and severe or muscle tension headaches. That's what I was diagnosed with later. So that's when my chronic pain started. I was, I was about 15, incredibly stressed out, you know, going through an eating disorder, feeling helpless and out of control. Then when I was 18 a out of, out of nowhere, it seems, a cousin started sexually abusing me and I was too ashamed to tell anyone, not just because of what he was doing, but because of the fact that I tried to fight him off, and he laughed at me, and I felt completely humiliated, completely powerless.

11:27 - Lauren Holland

I didn't tell anybody till i was twenty eight and i found out he was doing the same thing to his daughter so i told my family to try to stop it but i i guess they didn't believe me or they blamed me because nothing ever came of that she never i could never save her that is stayed with me. I mean to this day I've been in, in trauma therapy, partially because of that, because of my own trauma and because came out my trauma.

11:54 - Anna Esparham

wow,

11:55 - Lauren Holland

It was, it was bad.

11:57 - Anna Esparham

Okay, yeah, I know that's pretty, intense and it's so hard because people want to hush that up for to protect people in the family when we really can't do that because we really have to protect the children, we have to protect their innocence because of the significant damage that it can cause. Of course, we can always heal from it, but it takes a toll, it definitely takes a toll. That is one of the biggest hardships that a lot of children go through. And it's such higher prevalence than we know because it is so hushed and um, nobody wants to believe the other person because of the amount of shame that it brings.

12:46 - Anna Esparham

So it is definitely a tough situation in families.

12:52 - Lauren Holland

And then within the next year, I mean, my relationship with my parents just got worse. We were just arguing all the time and um. And so I, and when I was 19, I just turned 19 about a month before, and I, I got to house sit for some family friends while they were out of town. And I just in those five days felt so much freedom from the drama, from the dysfunction, from the conflict. As soon as I came home, I mean immediately the conflict started again. My mom was like, why do you love them more than you love me?

13:26 - Lauren Holland

And just push my button and push button. So a little after midnight that night, I packed a bag and I went out my bedroom window and never, never came back home to live,

13:37 - Anna Esparham

wow. How did you do that?

13:41 - Lauren Holland

Well i've been on the phone with this guy a physical therapy tech that i met i didn't know at the time that he was twice my age so i was nineteen he was thirty eight he told me he was twenty eight so on the phone that night i was complaining about how just incredibly unhappy i was and he was like well if you want you could stay with me and that's all i needed so i packed a bag i went there um ten days after staying with him, on my 10th day he became violent with me and on my 14th day with him, he raped me.

14:14 - Lauren Holland

And then for almost the next two years he was obviously physically abusive and horrible in controlling I stayed there for almost two years, but then finally one day after he body slammed me into the floor causing me to black out and ended up with a concussion, I finally ended it. And again, you know, even though a police officer that evening was urging me to file a police report, I just wanted it to be done. I just wanted to forget it ever happens, stuff it away. Like I stuffed everything else away and just live my life thinking it was just gonna go away if it wasn't part of my life anymore.

14:50 - Lauren Holland

So like all the emotions, all the other trauma, I just, I just internalized it and kept it in.

14:58 - Anna Esparham

You know, it's interesting, how like wonder. It's like, why didn't you file that police report? Why didn't you report that bully? Why didn't you talk to your supervisor after you saw malfeasance or misconduct. And it's like a lot of people who are undergoing that trauma, I mean, people don't realize how much energy and how much strength it takes to actually do that. Unless we have a ton of help and a strong foundation it just, we do, we stuff it away, we internalize it, we shove it down, we run away from it and that's how we cope.

15:44 - Anna Esparham

It's just a coping skill and we don't know any better at the time.

15:49 - Lauren Holland

Exactly. And when I walked out that door, I had no idea where I was gonna go. I had my purse and my cell phone, luckily we had cell phones, you know, at that time, and I just started walking and no idea what I was gonna do. I just knew I was done and I, I couldn't, I couldn't be there anymore, I was just, I was, I was done.

16:10 - Anna Esparham

Oh, my word, I can't believe you've gone through all of that. I'm sure that's not the end of the story, but it that is so. Intense and difficult and how far you've come is so amazing and you're so incredibly strong. I mean you should su be super proud of where you are at right now.

16:34 - Lauren Holland

I've heard people say that I'm strong. I don't feel strong. I just feel like what choice do I have but to continue to move forward? You know, I'm not going to get stuck in that misery and I'm not going to identify as a victim for the rest of my life. That's not how I want to live. That's not going to be fun or happy or pleasant. So I just.

16:59 - Anna Esparham

It's interesting how you say that you're not a victim anymore, because. We do feel like a victim, it's almost like that manifest in our outer reality, and we continue to be a victim, and so a lot of these things can continue to happen when we finally say no more. I'm taking, I'm taking back my power, no one can take the power away from me, I'm setting up my boundaries, no one can hurt me again, you know. And so it's just like taking that stance and all of a sudden it's like that outward reality just expands to match that.

17:43 - Lauren Holland

Um then i was in my early twenties i was you know going through stuff relationships with men in late two thousand four i met a guy named Thomas that i worked with we became friends, we were, we flirted for ten months before he finally asked me on a date. But after our 1st date we were pretty much inseparable. We've been married for 16 years now. We have a daughter who just turned ten on saturday and i mean life is good as far as that goes but uh our daughter was born in twenty thirteen i was still suffering from daily migraines and then in twenty fifteen when she was three i ended when she was in two thousand fifteen she was two i entered a four week inpatient pain recovery program because i just could not physically emotionally mentally spiritually take the daily migraines anymore so i entered a hospital and that's when i learned that how you know how much physical pain is related to our emotional pain that we've you know buried and un and not processed i also realized that my physical pain wasn't my enemy so we had this meditation where we had to picture our pain.

19:02 - Lauren Holland

And so I pictured my pain as this black figure with spikes all around it in this mean face. And I, I said in my head, I said to it, why are you trying to hurt me? Cause that's what I felt like, my pain was just trying to hurt me. And immediately it sounds like Strange, but immediately kind of with hurt feelings, my, my pain figure said back to me, I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm trying to communicate with you. And that's when I realized that my pain was actually a tool to help me realize how much unprocessed, buried stuff I had.

19:43 - Lauren Holland

And so that was really powerful to me. So I try not to think of my, my pain as my enemy anymore. Yeah, I don't like it. I'm not necessarily friends with it, but it's just a communication device telling me that there is stuff inside of me that still needs to be addressed. Pretty soon after I got out of that program, I learned I have autoimmune disease, spinal apathy, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and Des disease. So my spine and my joint thro my body are both degenerating and inflamed.

20:17 - Lauren Holland

So that's fantastic. And then throughout twenty six i know and i was only thirty five at the time so the next year i had excruciating spinal pain my low back my l five fs one discs um i was wearing a back brace every day i worked from home as much as i could barely walk before i got up to go anywhere i would plan out exactly what i was gonna do while i was up so i didn't have to sit down and get back up again in january of twenty seventeen i actually had to stop working because the pain was so bad i was getting steroid injections and i didn't think that pain could get any worse but it did that set of steroid injection normally i've had great success with steroid injections but for some reason this set just inflamed me and infuriated my body a lot more so i had to go on short term disability um i was on short term disability for six months during that time i you know did physical therapy i you know tried to process some of this, you know, emotional stuff, but arthritis ended up spreading throughout the rest of my body.

21:26 - Lauren Holland

I developed fibromyalgia while I was on short term disability. I was planning on going back to work. I applied for this great new position. I worked at a great company and had a great career. My career was about to be, you know, jettisoned into an even greater career, but my short term disability expired and my company eliminated my position, as one of my doctors told me they were gonna do.

21:50 - Anna Esparham

Oh,

21:51 - Lauren Holland

me Um,

21:51 - Anna Esparham

wow, what were you doing?

21:54 - Lauren Holland

I was in my degrees in communication, so I did a combination of like marketing, advertising work, and executive support. I've been on the, the regional senior leadership team for a few years and I was just about to get another position doing a lot more in the advertising, communications, sales support, research and development kind of field.

22:18 - Anna Esparham

Oh wow, okay, yeah.

22:21 - Lauren Holland

I was really excited about it. After I lost my job, I spent the next two years in a really deep, dark depression. I felt like I lost my purpose in life. I barely got out of bed. I mean barely taking care of my daughter. I did the best I could, but I ended up joining a women's Bible study at my church. It was the 1st Bible study I had ever done, even though I'd been at my church for like a decade. They happen to be reading this book called it's not supposed to be this way by the mate,

22:46 - Anna Esparham

oh, I wanna read that w who's it by

22:50 - Lauren Holland

Lisa Tks. Her name is L ys a t r k e u s t, and I've read a couple of books by Herr. Her other book, forgiving what you can't forget, I've read, and that was life changing as well. But it's not supposed to be this way is it was a book exactly like it sounds when your life is not supposed to be the way it's not the way you would imagine it. Like life is not supposed to be like it is right now. So between the book helping me realize that God could take my broken life and make something new and beautiful out of it.

23:23 - Lauren Holland

And one of the ladies in my group who has started an organization called Grateful Gratitude, whose purpose is intentional, daily gratitude, she encouraged me to do that. I realized that somehow I could take my pain and use it for good, use it for something beautiful, right? The beautiful started showing up as I started joining forums and this app called the Mighty. Getting on Facebook groups and connecting with other people who had chronic pain, who had anxiety, who had depression, who had previous trauma, and I would encourage them or let them know what I went through or, you know, give them advice.

24:04 - Lauren Holland

And I felt so much joy from that, from helping other people going through things that I have gone through or am going through. So I started in my blog and my podcast as ways to show people that even though we have to live with chronic pain, we don't have to. Suffer from it, living with it, you have to live with it, but suffering from it, being in that victim mentality is a choice. So I mean, yeah, I still struggle, but it's a mindset shift, mindset shift to decide that our pain is not in control of our lives or our attitudes.

24:39 - Anna Esparham

It's beautiful, that is. Phenomenal. And that's what I found, too, with living with my uh, chronic pain is, it was a message for me and I just had to figure out what I had to learn from it, how I had to grow and somehow now it was all meant to help other people with what I went through and what I experienced. And so it, it's always interesting how God turns our pain into our purpose.

25:08 - Lauren Holland

Right. That's exactly how I feel. I feel like the reason that I'm having this pain right now and maybe it's not for the rest of my life, maybe it is, I don't know, but I think my pain is to equip me to help people going through the and I couldn't do that if I weren't going through it.

25:26 - Anna Esparham

I totally one hundred percent agree and just i hold on to that and meditate on that um as much as i can and i know we don't have to have chronic pain forever we just have to understand it be aware of it. And um, once we learn that message and typically for me it's always been from God and every time I sit with him and rest in him, it's like it just gets better and better.

25:56 - Lauren Holland

Yes, I'm working on that too, definitely.

26:00 - Anna Esparham

I just, it's always about setting aside time and working towards it and I mean, there are different techniques and therapies and methods, but like the biggest thing for me is just that spiritual component and just resting in him, giving it up to him and prayer.

26:18 - Lauren Holland

And I love hearing that from a Dr., because you know doctors. Don't have all the answers to chronic pain. They just don't if they did, so many of us wouldn't be in chronic pain. And so there's obviously an element or elements that are missing from what doctors are giving us. So I love the spirituality aspect of what you're talking about.

26:39 - Anna Esparham

Unfortunately, you just can't get that from the current, you know, conventional healthcare system. And I, I mean, I wish we could, I wish we could incorporate that because there have been, you know, even though there's not great research, there has been several research studies that show that this actually improves the spiritual health, improves the physical health.

27:02 - Lauren Holland

That's.

27:03 - Anna Esparham

Important to, have that be a part of, you know, care and management. But again it's just not reimbursed obviously. So it's, it's definitely, probably not going to be in the healthcare system. So tell us a little bit about your podcast, your blog, and just some of the things that you've learned along the way as you are living your life not as a victim anymore, but you're more empowered and just walking on God's path so that you can help others. And so tell us a little bit about what ways you're helping others.

27:39 - Anna Esparham

What are some of the things that you share? For other people living with chronic pain.

27:46 - Lauren Holland

I started my blog 1st, but then as soon as I start on my podcast, that's kind of taken up a lot of my time because I've just been so blessed to have so many guests that, you know, I, I don't have as much t from my blog anymore, but I'm gonna get back to that. But I've had episodes on my podcast, about, I've got one episode, that's called Healing Pain by Healing Trauma. So I've got some parenting episodes. I've got an episode where a guy talks about how he uses mindfulness and meditation and mind body connection to manage his chronic pain.

28:25 - Lauren Holland

I've got an episode on parenting with chronic pain, cleaning with chronic pain, you know, handling the Holidays with Chronic Pain I've got an episode on, you know? You know, chil children and their sleep and how to improve that. So it's a combination of, of parenting episodes and health and wellness episodes and just practical tips, because that's my goal is, I don't just want to talk about the struggles, I want every episode to and, and even every blog post to have something encouraging and helpful at the end of it, some kind of lesson, some kind of advice, some kind of tip or trick or something that somebody can just go out practically into the world and take with them.

29:08 - Anna Esparham

That's what i love about your podcast is just actionable steps that you can take away from your blog or your podcast um even though you know we also want to focus on healing from chronic pain we still have to adapt um in the meantime um some a lot of times chronic pain doesn't go away overnight it does take effort and you know it's taken me gosh like seven ten years or so and little symptoms come up here and there are little flares that i still have to pay attention to it's just interesting to me how your podcast, is just so different than others in terms of how you adapt to this chronic pain in the meantime while you're on this healing journey.

29:56 - Lauren Holland

Oh, thank you.

29:58 - Anna Esparham

No, it's beautiful, it's really great. I, I love it. It's so fabulous and the other thing too is there's, some main messages that you also get across, and so I wanted you to share a lott of your, you know, main points that you like to get across for people living with chronic pain.

30:23 - Lauren Holland

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess let's talk about parenting 1st. So when it comes to parenting with chronic pain, I have four main tips and I talk more about these in my 1st and 2nd episodes. But number one, talk to your kids and your family about your pain and illness, let them understand what you're going through. They've got, you know, books, there is one called Wh is Mommy hurt? And it's to help really young kids kind of sort of understand what, what fibromyalgia, chronic pain is it?

30:52 - Lauren Holland

It's about fibromyalgia. But when I was reading it to my daughter, I would say fibromyalgia and arthritis. So you can absolutely adapt it to whatever your illness is. You could, you know, talk about anxiety or depression and make it a conversation. It's not just a one time thing. It's often so like when I'm playing with my daughter and I'm just really getting to the point where I can't stand the pain anymore, I'll say something like, okay, we need to wrap up playing dolls. Mommy's hips are really starting to hurt a lot or if I'm looking at a, a cleaning task and I'm freaking out because I have really bad anxiety.

31:24 - Lauren Holland

I will say Mommy just needs a minute. I'm having really bad anxiety. My, my Bob, which is what I call my AMD. My daughter and I both named our Amd's. Like my Bob is in, in control right now, but I'm trying to get it under control. Hers is named chip. So when her Adella is out of control, she gets to say shut up, chip. And she's not she, she's not allowed to say shut up at any other point in time. But I'm like, you can say shut up to your anxiety, you know, your anxiety. That's fine.

31:53 - Anna Esparham

Well, I like that too, because you're dissociating from symptom being a part of you. It's like it's not yours, it's somebody else basically. And so that's actually a good way. That's what we teach also in our pain clinics. Is that it's not your pain, it's something else. It's like you have to dissociate from that. So it's a, it's actually a good therapy.

32:16 - Lauren Holland

I'm really glad to know that, my, my 2nd tip is endless. Helps. So that could be, you know, obviously from other people, from a partner, from your kids, from, you know, a housekeeper. It also supplies. So if you need a back brace and a knee brace, a walking stick, a grab claw, one of my big tools that I used when I had migraines, ear plugs. I used ear plugs when I was putting dishes away, when I was dealing with a crying baby. I mean it was just, it was a life. They were life savers. My 3rd huge tip is self care, and I know there's that, that's kind of a buzzword these days, but for me, self care isn't selfish, it's essential.

33:03 - Lauren Holland

So it needs to be frequent daily if you can manage it. I mean most days you needed to be doing something because I feel like I like to give it kind of a metaphor. So let's say you're under water and you get to the point where your lungs just can't take it anymore, you need air if you're waiting until your lungs need air to come. Come up, you come up for air, you're gonna be gasping and as soon as you go back down, you're not gonna feel calm and restful and, and filled with air. You're gonna still be freaking out.

33:33 - Lauren Holland

Your body is still gonna be in that fight or flight mode. But if you frequently come up for air on a consistent basis, when you go back down, your body is gonna be just a lot, a lot calmer in that. I think its the para synthetic mode, is that right? The calming mode,

33:49 - Anna Esparham

Yep, parasympathetic. Yep.

33:51 - Lauren Holland

Parasympathetic, that's right. Sometimes I get parasympathetic and sympathetic, compute, but so like I've got a cult, what I call a calm down box or an anxiety box, so it's got something for each of the five senses in it. So when I need to ground myself, when I'm feeling just totally freaked out, I'll go and touch something that's soft or eat a chocolate truffle or, you know, smell of smell that I like, and there are, you know, obviously lots of other, you know, forms of self care.

34:20 - Lauren Holland

Just a few minutes every day, like I get up 30. Minutes before the rest of my family, and I eat a little bit of breakfast and I just do whatever I want to do, whether that read or scroll on my phone to look up the news or play Wordle or just something that will get me prepared for the day. So. Self care can also include therapy, even if it's just once a month, there's online therapy and one big point with therapy is your therapist's job is for you not to need him or her at some point. So if you've been in therapy with the same therapist for ten years, dealing with the same thing, then it's not working.

34:58 - Lauren Holland

You need to find another therapist and deal, you know, find somebody else who's going to, they need to be putting themselves out of a job so that you can go and deal with your life and have the tools to deal with your life on your own and the less element of self care if it need be medications, even if it's just for a short term, there's no shame in that, it just helps us be the best versions of ourselves. My daughter hates taking medications. I show her all the ones I take and I just explain to her, you know, I need all these medications to be the best me I can be for you and for Daddy and for myself and for the world.

35:34 - Anna Esparham

Absolutely, yeah, I agree with the medications even, even though, you know, I'm an integrative and holistic Dr., and a pain dock, and, you know, very spiritual at the same. And can use a lot of intuitive healing methods. I still, fully agree and am on board with medications for sure, as long as it's helpful and it's doing harm. Yeah.

35:58 - Lauren Holland

And my 4th and probably my biggest tip is just be present. So sometimes I can only play dolls or play pretend with my daughter for 15 min and she is happy. She doesn't care if I'm lying down on her bed to play with Barbies, she doesn't care if she has to move all the dolls while I just do the voices, she just wants the attention and wants me to spend the time with her. I had her on my 1st podcast and I just did a little interview with her. And I really got to hear from her perspective that she really does see that I try and she understands as much as, you know, then nine year old can understand that, you know, I was in a lot of pain and I'm doing my best and she knows.

36:38 - Lauren Holland

I mean, even though I can't do some of the things other moms can do, you know, I can't bake cookies for all the baked cells and, you know, do as much volunteering as I want, but I am still present with Herr as much as I can be and she sees that and that's what she's gonna see when she grows up. I don't want her to remember, you know, all the hours I spend in bed not being able to do anything and I don't think that's what she's gonna remember, I really just do try to be present with her.

37:04 - Anna Esparham

She was so cute on your 1st podcast. I was just a that's so adorable. I wonder more on the podcast. She's so fun.

37:12 - Lauren Holland

I know that was everybody's favorite part.

37:17 - Anna Esparham

That hooked me. That got me hooked for sure.

37:21 - Lauren Holland

I'll have her on again. Probably, cause she is a big kid. Those are, those are my tips for parenting. Then there's managing a household. So I've got other episodes on this. I've got some more to come out, but um, like shopping, my biggest thing is online grocery shopping for pickup or for delivery, right? That's got really popular with Covid. It's just been a life saver for me because I mean if I try to go do all my grocery shopping, I will literally be in the vestibule between the two doors, you know, in a squatting position, sobbing if I can make it to my car, you know, but sometimes I can't even make it to my car before I start having to break down and sob.

38:05 - Lauren Holland

It's just, it's been a life saver for me. Cooking my biggest thing is planning ahead because trying to figure out what's for dinner the day that you have to make dinner or figure out what your family is gonna eat, it's just a, it's very draining. It's a lot of mental and emotional energy. Gee, so planning ahead and at least if I plan ahead and I have things in the fridge, if I can't make dinner, at least my husband can't cause he knows what I was gonna make anyway, right? If I was gonna make spaghetti and I just can't do it, he knows that make spaghetti not a big deal.

38:37 - Lauren Holland

And I also have a lot of things on hand, like frozen dinners or um, you know, like frozen chicken nuggets, my daughter eats those quite a lot when I, when I can't cook. So we've always got things on hand that can just be made in a pinch. If I can't do anything um, clean, cleaning the house. My biggest tip is seating. So I learned that I can do just about anything in my house. Sitting down. So I have a bar stool in my kitchen, that's what I used to load my dishwasher, that's what I use to prep my meals, that's what I used to cook.

39:12 - Lauren Holland

I sit on it to, sweep and to mop in my dining room and living room, I use the seating there to sweep in, to mop and to clean. In my bathroom, I've got a shower chair that I not only used to take a, you know, a shower but I sit on it to do my make up, every day to dry my hair, every day to clean the counters, whatever it is. Seating is so big for me because it hurts me so badly to stand for more than a couple minutes.

39:34 - Anna Esparham

Wow, is the bar stool like a hard stool or is it like soft and cushy or okay?

39:40 - Lauren Holland

yeah, it's got, it's got a cushion on it Folds up, folds up a little bit flat. So if I'm not using it, we can just kind of put it against the wall.

39:47 - Anna Esparham

Oh cool, okay. I didn't hear, I didn't know about that. Oh me,

39:52 - Lauren Holland

I got it off from Amazon. It was about 50 bucks, so.

39:54 - Anna Esparham

Okay.

39:55 - Lauren Holland

Not that big of an investment. And then there are lots of tools to help, you know, I go through some of these on my cleaning episode, lots of tools and products. And another big thing when you're doing any kind of chores is pacing yourself. I know I can't clean the whole house on a Saturday. That doesn't work for me. I will be in bed for the next two to three days, so I have to do a little bit every day. So I try to do it in the mornings that wayy. I've got the rest of the day to rest up before I have to pick up my daughter and do family stuff.

40:28 - Lauren Holland

You know, also getting help. Like my daughter, she know she's got chores that she likes, so those are the ones that I have her do you know, besides just, you know, cleaning her room. But she loves to dust, she loves to sweep and mop, so that's what I as. And she loves to clean the, the bathroom mirrors, so you know,

40:45 - Anna Esparham

oh,

40:47 - Lauren Holland

give the people what they like, which I hate to sweep and mop. So that's perfect, right? We put on we just, we just jam while we do our thing. As far as getting help, there is also local centers for aging and disability, so if you qualify, they might actually send someone out to clean the house for you.

41:08 - Anna Esparham

Oh, cool, okay.

41:11 - Lauren Holland

It's definitely something to look into, sleeping. There are a lot of different things for sleep. There is weighted blankets, there's melatonin, there's, you know, Cvd and things like that. Um h. Gan basically my biggest thing is the seating, you know, hair washing for my hair, styling for my makeup. So that's a lot about just living day to day with chronic pain. And if we want to talk about relationships, I guesss.

41:40 - Anna Esparham

Yes, absolutely.

41:43 - Lauren Holland

So this is, this is another hard one because there are days that, that my pain does control what I'm able to do, right? Maybe I can't get out of bed and go to the family function, a lot of times I can, but I have to go and lay on the couch, you know, during game time or whatever, on more tolerable days. It's kind of a mindset thing, like I said earlier, you know, I just, I, I just try to refuse to suffer from it. So what I do is adapt. So like on movie night I, it hurts me to sit up for a long period of time, just like it hurts me to stand up for a long period of time.

42:18 - Lauren Holland

So I get the long couch and I get to lay down or move around as needed and you know, like I said earlier, like I can lay on the couch while my daughter, while play a board game with my daughter and she doesn't care if she's the one rolling the die and moving all the little pieces, she just cares. When I'm there, a lot of times I have to take breaks. Like at Christmas we are playing cards and I just couldn't sit in that hard dining chair anymore. So I had to go take a medicine, lie down, ice pack for a little bit and you know, they damped me out for a few hands.

42:52 - Lauren Holland

Then I came back so but I'm not, I mean, I'm not able to go to every family function and it stinks, but I go to as many as I can and, and I adapt to the ones that I do go to.

43:04 - Anna Esparham

Do you typically let your family know just, hey, I can't go as much as I, you know, would normally because I'm in a pain flare. Do they understand or do you just keep it to yourself?

43:19 - Lauren Holland

My family, it's, it's my mom and my husband's, you know, sister. Sure, mom basically. And my sister in law has chronic pain herself, so she completely understands.

43:31 - Anna Esparham

Okay.

43:31 - Lauren Holland

And my mom, after my dad died, dealt with, a lot of pain herself just from being his caretaker and overdoing it for two years, that Herr Body finally caught up with her body. They're very good. Sometimes my husband and daughter will stay home with me, sometimes they'll go. It kind of depends on the situation and who else is gonna be there. I do like hosting, like we host Christmas at our house, cause at least if I'm hosting, I know that I can go lie down at any point, right? And it, it's comfortable, but yeah, they're very understanding about all of that.

44:08 - Anna Esparham

That's great, yeah, good, cause the more you can communicate that, especially for people who are understanding and can accommodate and aren't going to be upset over that. I think that's a very healthy relationship.

44:25 - Lauren Holland

I think I've got another set of family members who probably wouldn't understand, but I don't, I don't have family stuff with them, they live elsewhere and they're, it's just a dysfunctional thing, so they're not really in my life very much anymore. So, you know, that's another thing that I had to do when we talked about boundaries earlier, right? Like cut out the toxic relationships as much as you can.

44:47 - Anna Esparham

Absolutely.

44:48 - Lauren Holland

That's been very, very helpful me.

44:50 - Anna Esparham

oh My gosh yeah. And then another thing that, all of us, I think continue to work on tooo, especially in chronic pain, because one of the main characteristics for people who have exacerbations of chronic migraines or chronic Pain is uh, the um, people pleasing and like approval, addiction and trying to impress others, trying to say yes for another person even though you deep down you don't want to. And then every time I do that, like trying to get approval from others is like, oh, I just always get these pain flares.

45:29 - Lauren Holland

Yeah, and I lived, I lived like that most of my life. I got, I mean I was so people pleasing that like in my twenties and thirties I realized I don't even know what kind of fashion I like, I don't even know what kind of music I like, I don't know what, you know, I don't know what restaurant I actually wanna go to cause I spent my entire life just you know, just people pleasing. And that was so important to me. And it's I still wish I could people please, I mean I I and I hate, I feel like a flake, right?

45:57 - Lauren Holland

I don't want to be the flake, but luck. Luckily, the people that I've got left in my life really do understand.

46:05 - Anna Esparham

True, yeah, same here and I always feel better, every time I make sure I get in tune with myself and my needs and try not to overdo it for other people. Because that just hurts myself and if I don't take care of myself then how am I going to take care of others?

46:25 - Lauren Holland

Exactly, I've had to learn that in the hard way. I, back when I was doing migraines and, and working, and I would just be in so much pain and I would ask my boss, like I, I'm in so much pain with this migraine, can I go home early? Oh, you can leave like 30 min early or whatever, and I was trying to leave like 5 min or 5 h early and I finally realized, you know, nobody's gonna take care of me except for me, you know, so I, Lear I learned that in my early twenties, I gotta do it.

46:54 - Anna Esparham

That is a big message. No one is going to take care of you except you. Yeah, so that is a big message. I had to learn to, and, and it's a very important one for those living with chronic pain, especially as the research shows. It's interesting how that has been researched, the people pleasing, the perfectionism, the worry, the approval, addiction. A lot of characteristics that could lead to chronic pain.

47:21 - Lauren Holland

Absolutely.

47:23 - Anna Esparham

So this was so amazing and you just incredible. Experience in and living with chronic pain, adapting to managing a household and taking care of your child and living as a wife and also trying to work and, and taking care of yourself with all the history of the trauma and overcoming all those challenges. It's just you, you're a fighter, you're a warrior, you're just like this woman, Wonder woman, warrior.

47:56 - Lauren Holland

Thank you. Doesn't quite feel like that, but thank you.

48:00 - Anna Esparham

It's, it's hard to see that, but yeah, you should celebrate yourself. That's super important for how far you've come. And I also think that is part of a lot of other people's healing journeys, is to celebrate yourself and look how strong you are and how far you've come and all the challenges that you've faced. And come out on the other side. So I'm so happy you were here on the show today is, is there anything else, that you wanna mention before we wrap up today in before we also talk about where people can find you, are there any other books that you, you mentioned, other people or other organizations or anything that you didn't talk about today that we need to touch on?

48:47 - Lauren Holland

There's a great book that I was reading when I was in the inpatient program. It's called a day without Pain. Talks about the physiology of pain, the biology of pain, right? Like where exactly pain signals are created, what happens with them. And I just found that incredibly helpful for me to understand that, you know, it's not all in my head, right? I mean technically to my brain, but I'm not just making it up. These actually are, you know, physiological things that are going on in my head.

49:17 - Lauren Holland

I, I love the book a day without Pain.

49:19 - Anna Esparham

You know, it's interesting. You mentioned that because. Learn about the neuroscience of pain, the physiology of pain. That actually is therapeutic to help chronic pain. They've actually studied that as well. It's called Neuroscience therapeutic education. I incorporate that in my chronic pain and headache coaching programs because it is actually its own therapy itself. Just knowing the pathways of pain actually helps. You know that it's not, it's not you necessarily creating this and that you actually can have power and change the physiology of the pain.

49:58 - Anna Esparham

So that is a great, I'll put that. I'll find that and see if I can put a link to. I haven't read that myself.

50:06 - Lauren Holland

Yeah, I loved it. It was, it was very encouraging to me. And he also talks about, you know, treatment modalities and, you know, things like that, you know, throughout the book. But it was just, it was therapeutic for me to be reading that while I was inpatient in a pain recovery program.

50:20 - Anna Esparham

That's amazing, so great. And, Lauren, where can people find you and talk about your podcast and your blog?

50:29 - Lauren Holland

Sure um my podcast is called it hurts to mom and it's on spotify and apple my website is at hurts to mom dot com uh my Facebook is Facebook dot com slash herston mom and my instagram is at it rtt mom pretty consistent I know i try to keep it easy.

50:45 - Anna Esparham

so easy. I'll have those links in the show notes and the podcast details as well, so you guys can check her out too. She's a great resource, so I highly encourage you to follow her. And thanks so much for being on the show. Lauren,

51:02 - Lauren Holland

thank you for having me. It has been a blessing. Thank you.

51:05 - Anna Esparham

Take care. Everyone we'll see in a couple weeks, okay, I think. My recording ended, I think the read is we'll see if it actually transcribed it. That would be cool if it did, okay, cool, we'll see.

51:20 - Lauren Holland

I don't know how to transcribe. I'll have to figure that out.

51:22 - Anna Esparham

So do you have Zoom? You did it on Zoom, right? So I'm,

51:25 - Lauren Holland

do it.

51:27 - Anna Esparham

Do you have the Zoom Pro version?

51:30 - Lauren Holland

I doubt. I mean I'm paying for Zoom, but I know I'm okay.

51:31 - Anna Esparham

yeah, so think you do. It should come up as these apps on the side and then And it's free for a year. So if you sign up, it's like no strings attached for one year and then you have to start paying for it, but at least you can just like play around with it and see which ones you like and get it transcribed for a year because I think read one of the apps that's on there does transcribe. I haven't played with

51:55 - Lauren Holland

okay,

51:56 - Anna Esparham

I'll let you know, see if it does it this time around because then I can just plug it into the web show notes.

52:02 - Anna Esparham

So uh, I don't know when this is gonna air. I'll let you know I have an organ Um,

52:06 - Lauren Holland

that's okay.

52:08 - Anna Esparham

the podcast interviews yet, but I'm hoping by the 1st week of February I will um, let you know when your date is and then that way you can, promote on your social media as well. And we typically market it that week, on our Instagram, our Facebook group, our, my Facebook and Linkedin. And so those are typically the places, well, where we will market it, you sent, did you send me a head shot and everything?

52:43 - Lauren Holland

I don't remember.

52:44 - Anna Esparham

I don't remember either.

52:44 - Lauren Holland

if

52:45 - Anna Esparham

Okay,

52:45 - Lauren Holland

if not, I'll send you one.

52:47 - Anna Esparham

Okay, good. And then, I think that's it. So um, yeah, but great,

52:54 - Lauren Holland

yes,

52:54 - Anna Esparham

was a great, podcast, thanks so much for Being with me today.

52:58 - Lauren Holland

thank you.

53:00 - Anna Esparham

Lauren and doing this, and sharing your story and, you know, being vulnerable and, I think that it is just so amazing, that you did that for the audience.

53:10 - Lauren Holland

Thank you.

53:12 - Anna Esparham

Let me know if you need anything. I hope you feel better, get some rest. And uh, we'll chat soon as I let you know when we're gonna air the podcast.

53:21 - Lauren Holland

All right, thanks so much. Have a good day.

53:23 - Anna Esparham

The Lauren.

53:24 - Lauren Holland

Bye.