How to Manage & Heal Chronic Pain
If you suffer with Chronic Pain it can be an isolating experience, but did you know that a recent study by the University of Boston estimated that about one in five, or about 1.5 billion people, globally, suffer from chronic pain? In America, this has become a leading public health issue over diabetes, cancer and heart disease combined. People who are suffering from Chronic pain also have a lower quality of life.
Chronic Pain is still misunderstood by many and often misdiagnosed leaving sufferers debilitated and alone. But before we talk about healing chronic pain let’s look first at what chronic pain is in the scope of this discussion.
So, What is Chronic pain?
According to the International Association for the Study of Pain “Chronic Pain is pain that extends beyond the period of tissue healing and/or with low levels of identified pathology that are insufficient to explain the presence and/or the extent of pain. The pain has persisted for more than three months.”
The type of pain that we are talking about is pain that does not have a physiological explanation. The tissue has been healed, but the pain persists. This is when the doctors and the body workers work has been done but you can still feel the pain. It can also happen that the pain arises after certain shocking or traumatic events in someone’s life.
For example, someone can experience a loss and start to have pain in the chest. Many times, the pain is not felt all the time, it may come and go without any logical explanation. If you tried the medical cure and after 3 months the pain still subsides this pain can be categorized as chronic pain. The context of this post does not include nerve pain, pain due to tissue degeneration and ageing, or pain due to a recent injury or operation.
The Most Common Types of Chronic Pain
Chronic pain can be experienced in different ways. It can be that the pain is present all the time, many times in moderate to high intensity and it restricts your ability to live your life. The pain can be felt with small intensity but still present all the time and still affects one’s ability to trust they are well and fully capable to live their life fully.
There are situations when chronic pain is felt randomly or on some days more than others. Chronic Pain can also have triggers and can appear as an automatic response to a certain event. Some of the most common types of Chronic Pain are:
Back Pain
Headaches
Nerve Pain
Joint Pain
The impact of chronic pain is not just physical, as with any pain it can often leave a lasting impact. But for sufferers of Chronic pain, the impact is often misunderstood.
How Can Chronic Pain Impact You?
Currently, 50 % of chronic pain sufferers in Europe having to wait at least 2 years before their pain is adequately managed, understanding the impact of this condition is critical.
Most people, unfortunately, underestimate the impact of chronic pain. Pain in our body reduces dramatically our ability to function properly. First, we become preoccupied with the efforts of healing and the feeling that our bodies are not well and that we need to do something to them. That reduces our availability for other activities in our lives and reduces our self-confidence to engage fully in activities.
Secondly, our body continuously responds to the sensation of pain, there is always a sense of alertness in the body so it cannot relax. This leaves us in a continuous state of stress and difficulty to rest properly. In more serious situations this can extend to symptoms of depression or anxiety.
We tend to under-evaluate ourselves and our abilities when we are dealing with chronic pain. Feelings of powerlessness, worthlessness, confusion, and lack of confidence are very frequent among people dealing with chronic pain. This directly affects our ability to be successful and strive in life.
A recent Florida State University study of 2,000 employees, found that people who suffered from chronic pain lost 5 hours of productivity at work on average per week. This cost the business an average of $5,000 per employee.
Due to the frustration, it causes, chronic pain can have us feel misunderstood by employers and unseen by the ones close to us which in extreme cases can lead to social isolation and withdrawal. Overall, the physical and emotional state of not being complete impacts most aspects of our life. The longer the history of chronic pain, the more intense the negative emotions and restrictions from our potential. These negative emotions and beliefs have a direct impact on the quality of our life and they affect us at all levels. We are less emotionally available for the ones close to us, we feel less equipped to follow our hobbies and the company of our friends, and we have less energy or even no ability to perform our work and maintain our financial security.
There is one more serious impact that chronic pain has on our being. Due to the traumatic imprint that is activated at the time of an accident or incident, we lose the ability to feel ourselves and our bodies. This is called a state of dissociation. We feel pain but we cannot feel the rest of our body and what is going on with us physically and emotionally. Without proper training, dissociation is not a state that can be recognized by the ones that experience it. We are not aware that we cannot feel ourselves, we think we do but, we are disconnected from the sensitivity, the breath and the power within our bodies and emotions.
Before we look at how to cure chronic pain we need to acknowledge the complexity of the condition and why there treatment has been so ineffective.
Why is it so Difficult to cure chronic pain?
The pain sensation is an echo signal. The body has recorded an injury or traumatic event that was too fast or too intense to be fully felt in the body or at the emotional level. Because the body or the emotional level has been overloaded, the stress is stored deeper in the nervous system. The nervous system remains activated in a state of threat that creates the response of pain from the nervous system into the periphery (the physical body). Even after the event or the injury has disappeared, if our bodies do not discharge the impact of these events, the signals like pain and stress keep being triggered in the body.
The reason why it is so difficult to alleviate or even heal chronic pain is because the symptoms seem to be in the tissue, but the actual problem is not there. We are attempting to treat the posture, the muscles, the connective tissue, or the inflammation but it either does not help or it only helps for a short time after which the symptoms return. The actual problem sits within the central nervous system and it ripples effects in the physical, emotional and mental body.
Working with just one of the bodies is not enough to undo a traumatic connection in the nervous system, all bodies need to be involved in this healing process and there are specific ways in which the physical, emotional, and mental body can be approached to bring these blockages safely and integrated peacefully into consciousness.
These blockages in the nervous system also cause states of dissociation. This means we cannot truly feel our bodies and emotions. Because the neuronal connection to the body is reduced, we cannot absorb the change from physio or bodywork in our physical body and we cannot process the emotions correlated with the stress of the event and the stress of dealing with pain every day. We may benefit from a session for a short time but because of the states of dissociation, we will return to the pain and discomfort that we felt before.
There is another dynamic present between the physical, emotional, and mental levels of our being. The way we feel and think has a postural imprint on our bodies. And vice versa, the way our body sits and moves is mirrored by an emotional and cognitive state. Here is a simple example: self-confident people walk with their torso open while people with lesser self-confidence orient their torso inwards. When we practice yoga or other conscious body practices, and we learn to open our torso we can also notice a boost in our self-confidence. But if the lack of self-confidence is not consciously known and explored, very shortly after the yoga class we will be pulled down into low self-confidence states.
The more self-awareness we develop the more change is available in the physical body. The physical body becomes more relaxed and easier to transform through movement or therapy. Until the dissociation state is integrated, the emotional expressions are not opened, and the mindset awareness is not active, the body will keep returning to its old posture and movement patterns. And for this reason, also, treating chronic pain at the physical level is helping very little or is just temporary, it rarely offers a complete recovery from pain.
Managing Chronic Pain Versus Healing Chronic Pain
The obvious approaches to healing pain are concerning healing the tissue inflammation, muscles, connective tissue, posture, and movement patterns. And these approaches help us mainly manage chronic pain. There are also psychotherapeutic approaches that help us cope with the change caused by the chronic pain condition in our life. And all these approaches are a great support to help us manage chronic pain and have a life as close to normal as possible. They teach us how to live with the limitations of our bodies and make the most of the abilities that we have. They can also teach us how to cope with various levels of pain and even self-regulate to bring comfort and easiness into our lives
However, the pain is still there. Many times, we cannot manage much by ourselves, and we continuously need body work and painkillers to help us cope with this pain. Unavoidably we end up feeling doomed, limited and not being able to make the most of our life. Despite all the treatments, there is still this recurring or constant pain that restricts the expression of our complete potential.
To move from the threshold of recurring or consistent pain in the body to a situation where you can completely soften your pain and even have it be gone for good involves healing or discharging the initial stress that the pain has created in the nervous system and that the emotional, cognitive, and physical bodies have recorded subconsciously. This is an individual journey into deep reconnection with one tissue and oneself.
This journey leads us into territories of a deeper experience of the connection between tissue, unexpressed emotions and views about life and people. These attempts are awakening feelings of deeper self-compassion, respect, and love for our bodies, and for ourselves. It involves knowing ourselves more intimately than what we have been used to and reaching the inner parts of ourselves that hold the hurt parts that are causing the stress in the nervous system and the body.
During this journey we learn to feel the subtilities of what is going on in our bodies, we connect with deeper abilities to feel our emotions and start to hear the real aspirations and desires that reside within us. There are many ways in which Chronic Pain can be managed, and using a combination of holistic therapies can be a successful pathway for some. These treatments can include:
Chronic Pain is a symptom of all the unexpressed emotions and disconnection between our bodies, our true self, and the ability of unrestricted expression of our potential. Once we learn how to let this true expression free, we gradually start to notice ourselves transforming, our posture correcting our behaviour changing and our patterns of pain softening and gradually disappearing completely.
Moving Forwards On Your Chronic Pain Journey
The journey of healing chronic pain is an individual journey in reconnecting deeply with our bodies, with feeling and trusting ourselves so intimately that we can let go of the stress that we are unconsciously holding inside of our bodies.
When we experience chronic pain the level of disconnection from ourselves is a lot deeper than what we can imagine.
The journey that I assist in my 3-month Healing Chronic Pain program teaches you how to develop these skills of deeply feeling and reconnecting with our bodies from a physical, emotional, and cognitive level and letting go of the stress and pain that we hold within. It is a journey that leads us to increased self-awareness with compassion and deep self-acceptance that help the bodies relax deeply and let go of the stress and pain that they hold.
If you would like to explore how I can help you and whether my 3-month program or another holistic therapy is right for you, please book a free consultation call with me.