This video is meant for psychoeducation only. Please consult appropriate healthcare/mental healthcare professionals as required. When we have difficult and painful thoughts, feelings and sensations, we can easily get swept away from them, as they pull us from what’s important to us and how we’d like to be. We can also learn to effectively manage ourselves when these thoughts, feelings and sensations arise.
Keep making the most of it!
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The chronic pain cycle is essentially what happens to us when we are in pain and let it consume us. First off, this is normal! I totally remembering being there myself. Usually we try to address only part of the cycle, without managing the whole thing (i.e., we like those prescribed medications from our doctors but still get frustrated when they don’t fix everything). I thought today we could talk about a few different versions of the cycle, and address a few ways to address them so that pain is less consuming and we can get back to a life that is closer to what we want.
First off, some of the examples of the pain cycle are pretty basic. Pain leads to sleep problems leads to mood problems leads to decreased activity leads to low energy leads to decreased pain. Or pain leads to muscle tension leads to reduced circulation leads to muscle inflammation to reduced movement leads to pain. And any case, you can start pretty much anywhere in the cycle, but you always end up with more pain. A more comprehensive version of this cycle is shown in the diagram below.
Here’s the problem: our brains tell us that we shouldn’t move, we shouldn’t be active, that things will never be good for us, that we will never have normal lives, etc., etc. because they are trying to keep us safe. Unfortunately, all the research shows that our brains are incorrect and that these thoughts really don’t do us any service. They keep us trapped in the cycle. I remember when I first decided to start making changes for myself. I took myself to physiotherapy (physical therapy for you Americans), the chiropractor, the naturopath, massage therapy, and psychotherapy, because I wanted some relief. What I was encouraged to do was break the pain cycle. How?
Where am I in the pain cycle? Look, to be honest, some days it’s not perfect and I fall right into the cycle. However, most days I can openly and curiously acknowledge and accept my pain, breaking the cycle before it begins. I use all of these tools and healthcare providers because it helps. I know from experience that chronic pain does not have to be life consuming.
I’ve linked episodes of the podcast and my meditation channel throughout this post if you want more information. Until next week, keep making the most of it!
I know there are those of you who don’t like meditation or really believe that mindfulness can have powerful effects on our minds and bodies (there is loads of scientific research on this). What we have here is a why to be mindful, without meditation, and while engaging in an activity we all do – drinking! This can be water, tea, coffee, juice, pop, alcohol, it doesn’t matter. What matters is bringing nonjudgmental, purposeful awareness and attention to your experience.
There are more informal mindfulness practices on my YouTube channel which you can find here.
Let me know how this practice is for you, and keep making the most of it!
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Today I want to take a slice of Pete Moore’s Pain Toolkit and share it with you. Who is Pete Moore? He’s a chronic pain warrior who came up with this incredible Pain Toolkit to help others struggling with chronic pain. Here’s the website: https://www.paintoolkit.org/ . The truth is, we can learn to self-manage our chronic pain. Like Pete, I have also learned to do so to a point where, yes I have pain, but no it does not affect my day-to-day life (that’s not to say I don’t have bad days, heck I had bad pain the other night and had difficulty sleeping). One thing we want to do when we have chronic pain is cultivate resilience. Now, I’ve written about resilience before in the past, so I’m not going to go into detail here. For those who aren’t familiar with what resilience entails, here are a few things: optimism, self-belief, willingness, self-control, being able to adapt, psychological flexibility, problem-solving, emotional awareness, social support, and humour, to name a few. So, here are 5 ways we can learn to do this.
I hope this helps you with some pain management. I know it’s things that have helped me and many others. So, just keep making the most of it!
This meal, with meat instead of a meat substitute, was a staple in my house growing up. I’ve modified it to fit my current dietary/nutritional restrictions and it’s just as good. It also shows that you can cook really delicious vegetarian/vegan meals. Make sure to speak with your healthcare team before making any drastic dietary changes. Check out this interview with Emily Marquis on how to make the changes once you’ve decided on them. Keep making the most of it!
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For those of you who are against yoga, because some random person said to you once, “But have you tried yoga?” when you were telling them about your pain or illness, just stay with me for a second. No one likes unsolicited advice, but I’m guessing that if you’re here, reading this blog post or looking at this blog at all, it’s not really considered unsolicited. There is actually a lot of evidence that yoga can be helpful for pain, and I have personally found a huge difference after beginning to practice restorative yoga at the beginning of the pandemic (circa April 2020 is when I began).
Let’s start off by reviewing some of the research as to what yoga can help with and if it actually is beneficial. Guess what? The research is overwhelming a yes, yoga is helpful for chronic pain. There are tons of studies on it but I just picked three for the purpose of this post. Tal, Unrah & Dick (2011) found that pain patients in their study were able to “reframe what it is to live with chronic pain.” What does that mean? Well, not all of there patients actually decreased in the pain itself, but most found that the pain bothered them less. In other words, it was less interfering in their daily lives. Skip ahead to 2019 where Uebelacker et al. found in their study that pain patients who did yoga saw their moods improve, decrease in their anxiety levels and decrease in their pain levels. That same year, Schmid et al. (2019), found that pain patients who engaged in yoga had better occupational performance (they could return to work, do well at work), were more engaged in their regular daily activities, and had less depressive episodes.
This research is all well and dandy but the original intent of my post was to look at the meaning of the word “yoga” and how that in itself shows how it can be helpful to us chronic pain warriors. Yoga is derived from the Sanskrit word “yuj” which means to unite (or unity). This describes unity between the individual with the universe, person with nature, and importantly, mind with body. This is likely why we see things like mood improvements and decreases in anxiety in people who practice yoga, which is mindful movement. A yogi is someone who is self-realized and self-realization leads to freedom. Linking back to the research, freedom to work, freedom to engage in activities, and freedom from pain being “bothersome.” Finally it’s important to note that health (both physical and mental) is a natural result of practicing yoga, for all of the above reasons. Do you have to practice yoga? No. But I also don’t see the harm in trying (assuming you have consulted with your healthcare team).
I hope this brings some insight. Keep making the most of it!
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Watch this video first:
Now watch this one to see how the struggle switch relates to chronic pain:
For me it always comes back to this question: Is it easier to struggle or to accept? And I guess also this question: Is the struggle helping you out long term or just short term?
Just some food for thought. Keep making the most of it everyone!
How much time do you spend thinking about your pain or illness? Does it consume most of your day? Just a little bit? I remember the time when I was spending a lot of time thinking about being in pain, and wondering “why me” or what my life would be like going forward etc. These are often referred to as chronicity thoughts. Happily, this was the past for me and is not my experience anymore. I know that many of you may be having this as your current experience though, so I wanted to take sometime to talk about it.
First of all, I want to say that this is a totally normal experience for anyone with chronic pain or a chronic illness. Our minds are literally trying to help us (or they think they are trying to help us, which is what they evolved to do). The problem is, this kind of constant thinking about pain makes our lives worse, not better. There are three types of common chronicity thoughts: (1) ruminating about being in pain/sick – I keep thinking about it, it’s all I can think about because it hurts; (2) magnifying our pain/illness – it will get worse, something terrible is going to happen; and (3) thoughts of helplessness – nothing I do makes it better, nothing I can do will ever make it better.
If you went to a doctor (Western or functional) or a therapist, they’d likely assess this with a tool called The Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS). My commentary is that I don’t like the name because “catastrophizing” sometimes has the connotation that it’s all in your head, but that’s not what it means in this case – it’s really referring to chronicity thoughts. The questions on the scale include:
So what can we do about all these chronicity thoughts? First, I will always suggest that working with a therapist is the way to go. Remember this blog is educational and not mental health/medical advice. We all have unique situations and unique thoughts, so having someone you can work with one-on-one (or in a small group) is always the way to go. I will let you know about a few different approaches. First, let’s talk about classic Cognitive Behavioural Therapy approach, where we challenge thoughts.
As a therapist, I am well-trained in CBT but I prefer to use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on myself and with clients, especially those with chronic pain/illness. There is no step-by-step way to challenge thoughts in ACT because we don’t challenge them, but here’s now I might work with them.
So that’s it. A bunch of different ways to work with your chronicity thoughts so that hopefully you can improve your life and keep making the most of it!
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Mindfulness is a skill we want to develop because it can help so much with chronic pain and a lot of mental health issues. Meditation is the best exercise for that muscle. Looking back, I wish I had started practicing meditation when I was much, much younger. However, I’m glad I did start because there have been so many improvements for my overall wellbeing.
Be mindful, and keep making the most of it!
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Chronically Living 