Pain psychologist

[MLE]

Hi everyone,

I've been having severe severe pain with my dry eye recently, and it's made me feel so desperate, so depressed and so anxious. It has interfered with every aspect of my life- my family, my job, my hobbies. I just started the process to try to get in to see a pain psychologist, to try to help me with these feelings. Have any of you done this? Did it help you?

Also, I'm still looking for some scleral lens opinions from you wearers out there.

Thanks, MLE

[Cali]

Yes, MLE. There are a number of us on here that are in your same shoes. You can look back a see a history of posts where I wanted to take my life. My pain was SEVERE as well. Add waves of anxiety and waves of depression for the last 3 months …..well it’s really hard to put on that heavy social mask and go out into the world.

Acute, chronic pain makes you crazy. I wish I started with a pain psychiatrist months ago. Just talking about the anxiety and depression that comes with dry eye is really, very helpful. I now do see a psychiatrist to help me get over my feelings of distress and anxiety. Maybe if I started talking earlier, I would not be on this mad mix of meds. Yeah, I’m now on antidepressants as of 4 days ago. A combo of Remeron (fast acting happy pill seldom used except to pull the hopeless back from the brink and low on the dry eye side effect scale) and Xanax.

A psychiatrist or pain specialist with additional certifications in psychiatry is a good place to start. I think I waited too long and under chronic acute pain, for months on end, you end up with zero serotonin in your brain. My psychiatrist is not a pain specialist, but has truly helped me.