Chronic pain is defined as pain that persists longer than 6 months. Chronic pain is a common problem in many long-term illnesses. Chronic pain often has a mental, as well as a physical component. Pain is not all in you head, but you thoughts and feelings about the pain often affects in any way on how much pain you feel. Feeling is anxious, angry, frustrated, or out of control will not do any help in easing the pain and in fact it only makes the pain worse. Our minds and bodies are important allies in effort to manage the pain. There are different guidelines and policies implemented in treatment procedure because of the sensitivity of this case. It is useful to distinguish the two types of pain and how they greatly differ from each other.
Chronic Pain– Different types of chronic pain are not clearly understood. It may or may not be associated with an acute or chronic pathologic process that causes continuous or intermittent pain.
Acute Pain– Caused by soft tissue damage, infection or inflammation.
Dealing with Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is often caused by arthritis, osteoporosis, back problems, cancer or any other conditions. No medicine offers complete and total relief; it only relieves our pain for a short time. And taking up too many medications can be bad for our body since some active ingredients of the medicine can cause a negative side effect despite to the relief that it offers. It is important to learn how to cope with chronic pain and regain control of your life. While the pain may not go away completely, it is possible to lessen pain levels and, significantly improve the quality of your life. To do so, you need a multidisciplinary approach to chronic pain. Although many people with pain have tried available medical intervention without great success, it is possible that some therapies can be most effective when performed together in a controlled setting.
A multidisciplinary pain program will provide you with the necessary skills, the medical intervention, and the direction to cope with chronic pain effectively. If you have been just operated on or have undergone a certain procedure, chances are your road to recovery would require the expertise of therapy as well. Therapy is meant to make sure that your body does not get shocked with the events of going back to your normal life. For most, they do not take therapy seriously. This is why most would not get back their normal life in the proper way it should. The hours you need to undergo therapy may indeed be a drag. However you should remind yourself it is really for your own good and proper road to recovery.
Chronic pain when compared to those with almost all other medical conditions, suffer dramatic because it persists. The pain signals keep firing in the nerves for weeks, months and sometime even years. Reductions in physical, psychological, and social well being, becomes a problem to a point that people cannot work and appetite falls. An exhausting and aggravating pain overwhelms the body relentlessly that depression creeps in with feeling of hopelessness.
Chronic Pain and Stress
We all know what stress is, even though it means something different to each of us. Stress is the catalyst for many good things – we hear a car coming when we are in the street, our body reacts and we move out of the way. Ok, situation handled, stress relieved. Now, what happens when we can’t “move out of the way”? Our body reacts anyway, moving blood to bigger muscles, stopping digestion, pumping chemicals into our bloodstream – all so we are in the flight or fight mode. I’m going to add another option to that – freeze mode. So now we have a stressor, can’t fight it, can’t run from it, can only freeze and weather it. Unfortunately, our animal brain is still taking care of us, even when we can’t react. The body is still primed for action, adrenaline and cortisol are running rampant in our blood streams, our tummy is contracted and our muscles are tensed but there is no outlet.
When stress is not alleviated this becomes our natural state and we can even go into adrenal fatigue. The body says it’s too much, I can’t cope, I’m shutting down and we feel tired, or sick, and are subject to injuries we would have avoided before. It’s no wonder we don’t feel good! We’re constantly in a state of distress! The body has no time to recuperate and rebuild itself. We often have sleep issues that only make the problem worse because we can’t rest effectively. The emotion and feeling of stress then becomes a physical problem. This is why addressing the stress in your life can make such a difference in your physical conditions.
Treatments for Chronic Pain
There are many successful treatment of chronic pain. Factors such as undiagnosed diseases, mental disorders, emotional distress, personality traits, and personal beliefs must also be addressed directly to ensure that every barrier to the relief of chronic pain is addressed. Studies show that over 70% of the population suffers from some kind of pain or limiting health conditions. That’s a lot of people that suffer but yet try to live their lives, take care of their home, their work and finances, their family and friends. It is a proven fact that emotional stress and trauma contribute to physical pain. If you suffer from chronic pain, you are more than likely to have a link to conditions of pain patterning and PTSD. Finding out what is contributing to pain patterns can break that cycle and reduce or relieve your physical symptoms.
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) for Chronic Pain
Emotional Freedom Techniques or EFT is a wonderful tool that can help break patterns and induce relief. It uses the energy pathways that are already in the body, called Meridians. Once thought to be invisible (or imaginary), science can now literally see these pathways in the body. Learning to unblock your energy system opens up new ways of thinking and healing. Pain is reduced or relieved, health improves, you feel more energetic and clear minded, sleep improves, and much more. Using EFT for stress relief helps one get to the root emotion, usually something in our past that has shaped a subconscious belief that we are still acting on later in life. Now, just trying to think positive and get your subconscious to change is a bit like thinking the chocolate cake won’t have any calories in it; it just doesn’t work. Your subconscious is there to protect you, and it does a great job, sometimes too well. EFT is clinically shown to affect the amygdala, the animal part of the brain that governs much of our subconscious behavior. When you physically affect the brain with EFT, you can uncover and resolve many of the subconscious beliefs that no longer serve you. You can actually change the way you think and react to stress, which changes your physical reaction allowing you to be calmer and more relaxed. You will also be able to think more clearly in situations that would have triggered a stress reaction previously.