Tips for Living with Chronic Pain
No one knows how hard it is to live with your chronic pain except for you. Chronic pain is a profoundly isolating experience that touches every aspect of your life. While it is sometimes associated with a specific diagnosis, most often chronic pain is unexplained which can make it hard to hope for improvement. Because of this, chronic pain can easily lead to depression and anxiety.
It’s common for people with chronic pain to grow tired of all of their appointments and to resist asking for help as often as they actually need it. It’s understandable that counselling isn’t among the first places that people think of for addressing physical pain, but it can be one of the most helpful. There is so much that a counsellor can do to help improve your life. Sometimes we can even reduce the pain through counselling.
For a start, here are some tricks and tools that you can use at home.
Choose a neutral focus. Likely you have a specific area(s) that gives you the most pain. That area constantly begs for your attention. Instead, take a moment to focus on an area that isn’t currently in pain. Maybe it’s your knee, your face, or your stomach? Choose a pain-free area and turn all of your attention toward it. Notice its temperature. Move it a little. Notice any friction against clothing and the feeling of the movement. Give it a squeeze and notice that sensation. Take as much time to focus on that area as you’d like.
What we’re doing here is really just remembering that the painful area of your body is not the only part of your body. You have a whole body, and most likely, there are still parts of you that are not in pain.Check out spoon theory! Spoon theory is a metaphor, just a helpful image for thinking about pacing yourself. You start by thinking about how many “spoons” of energy you have on an average day. You then prioritize your activities for the day, using only the number of spoons of energy you have that day. It’s best to aim to use a consistent number of spoons each day. As you know, it’s super common for people with chronic pain to have good days and bad days, but if you do too much on a good day, the next day is often that much worse. The goal with spoons of energy is consistency. You can check it out online!
Constant pain can keep your body in fight or flight. It just makes so much sense that your brain would register pain as an emergency that demands a response. We can engage the opposite system in several ways.
o You can give yourself a gentle massage up the side of your neck, right on the specific nerves we want to wake up. Start on your collar bone and continue up the side of your neck until you are under your ear. Then give your ear a little massage right to the top.
o You can put some ice in a thin towel and place it on your collar bones, under your eyes, or on the back of your neck. This wakes up the calming nerves to balance out that fight or flight response.
o You can use your breath. Every time you inhale, you wake up the fight or flight system. Every time you exhale, you wake up the calming system. Your heart rate is actually intended to go up and down slightly with each breath as each system takes its turn! We can use this to our advantage by counting as we breathe in and out. If you find that at some times in the day, you’d like to increase your energy, then you can make your inhale longer than your exhale. Perhaps you will count to 5 as you breathe in and then breathe out quickly, maybe just for the count of 2 or 3. If anxiety is high and you want to calm down, you can breathe in for a short count and breathe out longer. The more you practice this, the higher you’ll be able to count and the more effective it will be.
Get moderate exercise. Yes, I can really imagine that exercise seems like the last thing your body wants right now, and you should take all those pain messages seriously. In order to move forward, you might think about balancing those pain messages with the understanding that exercise can still have some benefit for you. Exercise releases endorphins that help your whole body, both physically and mentally. As you move forward with an exercise routine, aim to only make small changes gradually. If you are not exercising at all right now, just start with 5 minutes at a time, twice a day. If just standing up is problematic, then start with 5 minutes of seated exercise. You can stretch, tense and relax muscles, push or pull. Time yourself. Challenge yourself to increase gradually. Don’t do extra on a “good” day. Try to keep it consistent, regardless of what kind of day it is.
This tip is my favorite as I think it’s actually the most important for your overall health. This can also be the hardest thing to do. Take some time each day to see if you can speak to your pain with kindness. Most people are beyond frustrated with their pain. It’s super common to even begin to hate yourself for being in pain. Totally normal. The self-hatred that often develops out of chronic pain can also be a major obstacle to enjoying life and getting better. As with all things, start small. Do you appreciate that your hands aren’t in pain? Are you thankful that you don’t have migraines? Maybe you feel grateful that you didn’t receive that diagnosis, that things aren’t quite that bad? I encourage you to find the place where you can start, wherever that is, and give your body a little bit of gratitude every single day.
When we are in pain, we usually tense up to immobilize and protect the area. We do this automatically. In the short-term, it’s probably very helpful and protective. In the long term, it often makes things worse and leads to an increase of pain. Trying to relax around the pain can be totally counter-intuitive. Here’s a trick to see if you can relax around your painful area(s). You’ll first want to get comfortable. See if you can find a position where you are fully supported and as comfortable as possible. Take a few ordinary breaths, nothing fancy. Next, imagine that your painful area is being supported by a cloud or water or tons of fluffy cotton. Take a few more ordinary breaths. Imagine that the purpose of the cloud/water/cotton is to fully support you so that you don’t have to do the supporting. See if you can trust that lovely substance to support you for just a few moments so that you can take a break from tensing the other muscles. You might count to 10 and see if you can release the supporting task to the cloud/water/cotton just for the count of 10. Then take a few ordinary breaths and congratulate yourself. Supporting that painful area through tense muscles is a big and tiring job. Allowing an imagined substance to take over that task for you even just for the count of 10 is a big deal. See if you can increase that release up to 30 seconds. Then how about a minute? With practice, keep increasing the time and see how this affects your overall level of pain. (For similar exercises and more in-depth discussion about this, check out the podcast: Holistic Life Navigation, episode 9 Chronic Pain & Trauma with Dave Berger)
I know that chronic pain can feel lonely and that feeling defeated is par for the course. Yet, you don’t have to do this alone. These tips are a mere starting point. We can do so much more to help you live the best life possible. When you are ready to get started, we are here for you.