How I Recovered From Pelvic Pain

Mar 16

If you are reading this because you are currently dealing with pelvic pain, I want you to know something right away.

Recovery is possible.

I know that statement can feel hard to believe when you are in the middle of it. I NEVER thought my pain would go away. Pelvic pain can make your body feel unpredictable,fragile and like dealing with it is a full time job. It makes your life smaller and immensely more complicated.

I know this because I lived it (twice!)

About ten years ago I went through a period of severe pelvic pain that lasted for several years. At the time I was told many different things by different practitioners. Some believed I had neuralgia. Others believed I had a hypertonic pelvic floor. At one point sacroiliac dysfunction was suggested. I even convinced myself that I had pudendal neuralgia, although looking back that was not really the case.

Like many women with pelvic pain, I was collecting diagnoses without truly understanding what was happening in my body. Every time a new “theory” was presented to me, a new mental spiral was started. I never, ever felt like I fully understood which made my brain jump to “this is permanent.”

My symptoms were very real. The pain was horrible & the explanations often felt incomplete.

My first experience with pelvic pain lasted about four years before I finally recovered.

Then several years later it happened again.

The second time around looked very different.

The First Time I Had Pelvic Pain

When my symptoms first began, I approached the problem the way many people do. I tried to fix the body. I went to my gyno, I went to pelvic floor PT. I went to the “best” specialist in the state who had zero answers for me annnd horrible bedside manner which left me feeling worse than when I came in.

At the time I was extremely active. I have a background in exercise science and believed that movement and discipline could solve almost anything.

Unfortunately my relationship with exercise was not entirely healthy at that point in my life. I was pushing my body very hard and ignoring signals that something was not right.

Even when I was in significant pain I felt like I had to keep working out.

Or else.

Or else I would lose my progress. Or else I would gain weight. Or else I would undo all the work I had done on my body.

Looking back now I can see that my nervous system was under a tremendous amount of pressure during that time.

Instead of allowing my body to calm down and recover, I kept trying to push through symptoms.

That approach did not work.

For years I searched for answers. I tried different treatments. Some things helped temporarily, but nothing seemed to create lasting change.

Eventually I gave up! I decided to just live my life in pain. After years of spending so much time and money going to doctors, physical therapy, alternative therapies, I was just over it. I accepted my fate and chose to focus on other things.

Not long after that, I woke up one day with no symptoms! After 4 long years of hell, I was pain free. Looking back, I didn’t put the puzzle pieces together that when I stopped obsessing over the pain and trying fix it, I was no longer feeding the fear & pain cycle. I was pain free for 5 glorious years after that and wanted NOTHING to do with pelvic pain as I was still pretty traumatized by what I had experienced.

When Pelvic Pain Came Back

5 years later, I experienced another pelvic pain flare.

This time I responded very differently.

Instead of pushing through pain, I went to the opposite extreme at first. I became very afraid to move at all. I stopped working out completely because I was worried I might make things worse.

For a period of time I did almost nothing physically.

Eventually I realized that avoiding movement completely was not the answer either.

So I began reintroducing movement in a very slow and intentional way.

At that point I had also become certified in the Restore Your Core method. That training helped me understand how the deep core system and pelvic floor actually work together.

I went back to the basics.

Very simple bodyweight movements.Learning how my deep core and pelvic floor coordinated with breathing.Allowing my body to rebuild trust in movement again.

Everything was extremely gradual.

Instead of trying to force my body to perform, I focused on creating a sense of safety for my nervous system.

That approach made a huge difference.

Within a few months my symptoms had largely resolved.

What Actually Helped Me Recover

Looking back now, there were a few key things that made the biggest difference in my recovery.

The first was understanding the role of the nervous system in chronic pain.

For years I believed something in my body was damaged and needed to be fixed. Once I began to understand how pain can become learned within the nervous system, everything started to make more sense.

The second was changing my relationship with movement.

Movement is still incredibly important to me. But the way I approached it had to change. Instead of pushing through symptoms, I learned how to scale movement appropriately and reintroduce it in a way that felt safe to my body.

The third was learning to stop constantly scanning my body for symptoms.

When you live with pelvic pain, it is very easy to become hyper aware of every sensation in the pelvis. I was constantly trying to monitor whether things were improving or getting worse.

That level of vigilance can actually keep the nervous system stuck in protection mode.

Learning to step back from that constant monitoring was an important part of recovery.