My Top Resources for Chronic Pain & Personal Growth

Let’s face it, there are a lot of websites, books, podcasts, etc. out there that are resources for both chronic pain and/or personal growth. So many, that it’s hard to sort through to find the good ones. I have been on a personal growth journey for several years, and that journey started just over a year after my UCTD/fibro diagnoses. So for me, they are fairly tied together. While I recognize that is not going to be the same for everyone, I just want to show that it is possible to learn to cope with chronic pain and engage in personal growth and development at the same time. Which is a little different that say Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, which states that basic needs – such as safety and health (I think chronic pain falls under these subcategories) need to be met before achieving self-actualization. If anything, it seems to align more with some schools of existentialism, like that of Viktor Frankl, who could find meaning even while living in a concentration camp (basic needs not being met).

One of many resources available on the internet.

All that said, here are some of my favourite resources for chronic pain and personal growth:

Websites
A Chronic Voice (blog) – I’ve actually guest-posted on this blog. Sheryl does an amazing job with blog and has a ton of informative and helpful articles and posts.

The Pain Toolkit (website) – Pete Moore is a person with lived experience who presented at the World Pain Summit that I attended in October 2021. His pain toolkits, workshops, and other resources are comprehensive and impressive.

Tiny Buddha (website) – This website probably falls under the “personal growth” category but because there is a ton of evidence of mindfulness helping improve the lives of those with chronic pain, you may find it beneficial as well.

Books
When the Body Says No – this book by Gabor Mate (MD) is quite informative about chronic pain itself, and includes real life stories about his patients over the years. It can be helpful for shifting perspective and gaining understanding of all of the biopsychosocial factors that affect pain and illness.

Full Catastrophe Living – Jon Kabat-Zinn (MD) writes about his mindfulness-based stress reduction program, research that supports it, and how it (and mindfulness more generally) helps with both physical and mental health. Definitely a read if you’re interested in mindfulness already.

Tuesdays with Morrie – this classic book takes us through several Tuesdays that author Mitch Albom spends with his former university professor, Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of ALS. It offers a lot of wise advice and can help with outlook and perspective in living with illness.

Podcasts
Admittedly I don’t listen to a ton of chronic illness/pain podcasts, but these are some with great overlap.

Unf*ck Your Brain – hosted by life coach Kara Loewentheil who has chronic pain and offers advice and coaching on a variety of topics. She includes a feminist perspective and some cognitive-behavioural inspired techniques.

Therapy Chat – designed for both therapists (and hosted by a therapist) and anyone interested in mental health, there are a ton of episodes on chronic pain because of the overlap of pain/illness and trauma (the hosts’ specialty is trauma). Not a substitute for therapy, but definitely a resource for psychoed.

The Happiness Lab – I think this is just a fantastic podcast for anyone because we all have misperceptions about what will make us happy, and we can learn a lot about what will actually make us happy from Harvard Psychology professor Laurie Santos and her guests.

YouTube
Okay, I’m actually just going to plug my own content here – don’t hate me for it.

Kelsey L Harris Meditations – I offer a ton of mindfulness and meditative-type exercises, many of them that work great with chronic pain, and most based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which has been shown to be helpful for chronic pain.

Aligning Mindfully – my other meditation channel which include a 5 minute meditation challenge (with more meditations and challenges coming soon!).

I hope you all find these resources helpful! If you have any others that you think should be on the list, please comment so I can check them out as well! Keep making the most of it!

Video: Mindful Drinking

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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My Experience at the World Pain Summit ’21, Part 2

If you read last week’s blog post then you know that I recently attended the World Pain Summit, put on by the Alberta Pain Society. I did this as both an allied healthcare practitioner (as a clinical counsellor) and as a person with lived experience. By the way, this event is apparently always free to people with lived experience, so keep an eye out for it next year. The summit was 3 days and had so much info, that this is going to be part 2 of a 3-part post, and focuses on the content of Day 2. Without further ado, here’s what I learned.

Image from: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/wps21

How Living with a Dog Can Improve Quality of Life and Well-Being in People with Persistent Pain. The first bit of interesting info was a bit of an aside – only 1% of the curricula for healthcare professionals is on pain, which means if your doctor doesn’t understand (and isn’t attending these kinds of conferences) that is likely why (definitely not an excuse – all healthcare professionals should be attending conferences/summits/etc throughout their careers). The most interesting parts of this session was the statistics on dog/pet owners (cats and other kinds of pets count):

• they report lower pain
• less depression and anxiety and loneliness – i.e., better mental health
• improved well-being and meaning/purpose in life

Having a pet also gives you a non-judgmental listener whom you can talk to, and petting an animal releases oxytocin in our brains, which has a calming effect. Yay for pets!

This is my parents’ dog, Beau.

Is Supported Pain Self-Management Your First Choice or Last Resort?: 5 Key Coaching Support Skills. This was present by Pete Moore, a person with lived experience, who wrote a book on the subject. The 5 key skills he talked about were: (1) goal setting and action planning; (2) practicing daily activities – I know ADLs can be hard for some people but they are important to well-being; (3) problem solving; (4) keeping active, moving, including stretching and exercise; and (5) knowing what to do if you have a set-back (i.e., planning for that in advance). Much of this involves having a support team, pacing, prioritizing, being patient with yourself, learning relaxation skills, tracking your progress, and resilience.

Pete Moore presented this cycle, which really resonated with me and probably many others.

How a Pain Doctor is Using Social Media to Spread Knowledge About Chronic Pain. This was a session more for healthcare professionals on how to start a YouTube channel (and why they should). But some interesting factors for Spoonies: the current quality of medical information on YouTube is very low, so please be careful and look for trusted sources (i.e., trained healthcare professionals in different areas).

My YouTube channel is for meditations (with an emphasis on pain and illness).
Let me know if I should include other psychoeducational content and skills.

Trauma, Illness, and Healing – Dr. Gabor Mate’s keynote. I’ve written a ton about Dr. Mate’s work in the past, and there was obviously some repeat in content about trauma, childhood abuse, insecure attachments and stress and their relationship to chronic pain and illness. A couple of things I will share:

• mind body practices (like yoga) should be included in chronic pain treatment
• a lot of back pain is associated with psychoemotional stress (tension, stress, trauma)
• Go to a physician for what they can do (prescribe medications, perform surgery, etc.) and find other practitioners to help you with the other parts of treatment
• diagnoses are descriptions, not explanations
• psychological and spiritual support is important

If you’re not familiar with Dr. Mate’s work, check out When the Body Says No (I also did a post about the book awhile back).

Dr. Gabor Mate is world leading expert on the trauma-stress interaction with illness.
Image from: https://californiahealthline.org/news/addiction-rooted-in-childhood-trauma-says-prominent-specialist/

Challenging Chronicity Thoughts: Words Matter. So this was a mental health session, if the title isn’t clear! It emphasized that psychological factors are an important component of pain experience and are the most powerful psychological predictor of adverse health and mental health outcomes associated with pain – they even affect our treatment responses to medications, injections, physical therapy, and most other treatments. Recovery is not just about talking (to a therapist), needs and activity but also about ways of thinking. Two important notes for my fellow Spoonies: (1) pain is perceived by your brain (all in your head) but it is real; and (2) the word pain takes you right to thinking about/feeling pain (check out this podcast episode I did on externalizing language and pain/illness).

Chronicity thoughts are about way more than language. I highly recommend seeking therapy if you find you think about your illness/pain a lot.

Next week I’ll bring you a post on the information from the final day of the summit. I hope that you find some of this helpful when thinking about illness and well-being. Keep making the most of it everyone!

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Daily Mindfulness: Notice Your Hand

This mindfulness practice is a good introduction to meditations and mindfulness in general, especially if you have a hard time with some of the more formal practices. It can help you get present just by focusing on one part of your body – your hand (alternatively you could use any part of your body that you can see fully, including using a mirror to do so). Mindfulness is mentioned by Dr. Richard Harris in this podcast episode as being beneficial for chronic pain and illness.
For all of my meditations, subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Be mindful, and keep making the most of it!

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