Chronic pain is considered in the health and wellness field as any thing that lasts for more than 3 months. I have personally seen people that have pain for many years. Pain that lasts this long is not the norm. I want to talk a little bit about what is known about chronic pain and some coping strategies to help you deal with it. Most of you want to avoid opioids and following will be some techniques to help you avoid them.
What Causes Chronic Pain?
Chronic pain is not pain from an injury. Unless you have a severe issue with healing, your body will heal most injuries in 3 months or less. Ruptured discs heal, sprained ligaments heal, and broken bones heal.
If you have an MRI today that shows an injury, in 2 years, it will look different. The injured part heals. This is why you old images don't really matter.
So if you heal, why do you still hurt?
This has been the question that has been puzzling for decades.
The answer is not a simple one.
Pain that lingers for a long time is the result of changes in how your body works. Your nerves, which are adaptable, change. They adapt to your original injury and start to register any sensation in that area as painful.
Sometimes simple movements register as pain due to the adaptation of the nerves.
The good news is that the nerves can adapt to work closer to how they are supposed to. Just like you can adapt to walk or run after an injury, your nerves can adapt to new normals.
Your pain is real, even if your injury is healed!
Methods To Help You Deal With Chronic Pain
This list will include some brief descriptions, but it is really up to you to pick and choose what you think you can do and to give it a try.
Breath Control - Work on controlling your breathing. Breathing with your diaphragm can lower your sensitivity to pain and relax your system. You may have heard the term "belly breathing" and this is what it means.
Mental Anesthesia - This is using your imagination to find a quite place and imagine that you receive an injection of a numbing agent, such as Novocain, to calm down your pain.
Mental Analgesia - Similar to anesthesia, but this time you imagine a pain control medication being injected.
Transfer - Using mental imagery to create a non-painful body part, such as your hand, to be a cold pack or a hot pack and then to lightly touch the painful area.
Altered Focus - This involves focusing on a non-painful part of your body. It can be anything; nose, hand, foot, knee, etc.
Sensory Splitting - This is useful if your chronic pain brings up multiple sensations such as pain, hot, numb, tingling, etc. The intent of this is to focus on the sensation that is not pain. So you can focus on the numbness or other sensation.
Age Regression - Imagine yourself as younger, before you had your pain.
Age Progression - Imagine a future self without pain. What will your life be like?
Dissociation - This involves imagining that the painful body part is separate from your body. If it is your neck, imagine your neck lying on the pillow on the bed.
Counting - When you are experiencing an elevation in pain, focus on counting. This can be anything that you can see or visualize; breaths, blades of grass, pebbles on the ground.
Positive Imagery - Basically go to your happy place. The beach or vacation. Picture it in your mid.
Symbolic Imagery - Find a symbol for your pain. A bright light or a loud noise works well. Put yourself with that symbol and gradually dim the lights or turn down the sound.
Pain Movement - Use your mind to move your pain from your painful body part to another body part. It is good to start nearby and then over time move it farther away and gradually out of your body.
Some of these may be difficult and may require a professional to help. These will take practice and many tries before you get the hang of it. Remember to start slow and work your way in.
I recommend picking one to start with and trying it for at least 2-4 weeks before you try something else.
Constantly changing can make your pain feel worse.
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