Pain, stress, and tension are closely related. Muscles tighten and put pressure on nerves resulting in even more pain.
It’s possible to activate your body’s natural relaxation response to help reduce the tension using mind-body tools like:
Helpful videos
Free Apps Chronic pain can make it easy to feel overwhelmed, reduce our activity levels, and become isolated. Goals help restore a sense of order, build self-efficacy and sense of control, improve mood, and provide direction by helping with planning daily activities.
One of the tools we learned at the Mayo Clinic Pain Rehabilitation Center was goal setting to help us plan our days and keep us on track. We set goals each day. They didn't have to be massive, but they had to be SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Some SMART goal examples:
Did you notice none of the goal examples included pain reduction? Our focus should be on reducing stress, improving our quality of life and increasing functional ability and activity, not pain reduction. Focusing on pain reduction is an easy trap to fall into - leading to frustration and depression. Just as the headline of my website says - we can live well, despite the pain. A friend of mine, Sara Villa, a molecular neuroscientist who lives with chronic pain, recently posted an insightful Twitter thread about working with pain.
While her post was specific to working with pain, I saw in her tweet some key messages for anyone living with chronic pain and collaborated with her to distill the messaging into nine helpful tips:
Thank you, Sara! How do you think about and react to your chronic pain? Are you the victim? Are you overly-worried about the pain?
We all experience pain. That we can't choose. The choice we have as humans is how we respond to the pain. We can either choose to let the pain control our lives or we can choose to live life, despite the pain. For many people with chronic pain, a vicious circle can form between pain and suffering. Research has shown the psychological and social distress associated with pain is often more important to the pain experience as the perceived pain severity.* Resilience is important I just watched a great TEDx Talk from Dr. Trung Ngo about resilience that everyone who lives with chronic pain or treats chronic pain should watch. He talks about how there are three types of people: those who are victims, those who are catastrophizers, and those who are resilient. I can identify with all three types during my personal journey with pain. Early in my journey, i was the victim. It was the surgeon's fault for my pain. I was set on on making that doctor pay for his mistake and make my pain go away. As the pain continued, I became the catastrophizer. It quickly became gloom and doom. I become fearful of the pain. I worried about all the bad things that might happen because of the pain. And I worried about my future and the future of my family. Fortunately, my mindset changed to resiliency. Many thanks to the Mayo Clinic Pain Rehabilitation Center for helping me transition to that stage. How to be resilient According to Dr. Ngo, the keys to being resilient:
* Ojala, T., Häkkinen, A., Karppinen, J., Sipilä, K., Suutama, T., & Piirainen, A. (2014). Chronic pain affects the whole person – a phenomenological study. Disability and Rehabilitation, 37(4), 363–371. doi: 10.3109/09638288.2014.923522 There's still a core you despite the pain.
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WelcomeChronic Pain Champions is an information resource/blog/support group to help people living with nonmalignant pain, their families and friends, as well as healthcare professionals. Learn more about this site and the author. Archives
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Tom Bowen Chronic Pain Champions |