Chronic Pain Management Needs a Plan

Written By: Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II Date: March 24th, 2009. Topic: Member Blogs.

Those who fail to plan; plan to fail. This is especially true when it comes so someone undergoing long-term chronic pain management.

It is important for people living with chronic pain to have a healthy support network in place as they undergo their chronic pain management journey. There are two crucial components of an effective pain management support network; (a) professional healthcare providers and (b) appropriate family and friends. Next people living with chronic pain need to objectively examine their current pain management program. They need to explore both their medication management plan as well as which non-medication types of pain management activities or procedures they are utilizing—if any.

People living with chronic pain also need to increase their understanding of pain and how to use that knowledge to improve their chronic pain management. In this step people explore the different aspects of pain—acute and chronic—and the bio-psycho-social components of pain as well as the difference between pain and suffering. They also need to recognize the stress-pain connection and how to rate their stress and pain levels accurately. Finally they need to explore how their thinking, emotions, behaviors, and social relationships change when they’re having a “bad” pain day and start looking at better ways to cope.

To ensure optimal outcomes people undergoing chronic pain management require information about depression, sleep disorders, or trauma disorders that frequently affect people undergoing chronic pain management and what constitutes effective psychological management. For example these people need to learn how to accurately rate the type and level of symptoms they experience and then start developing their own personal depression, sleep and/or trauma management plan.

Achieving freedom from suffering is possible if people are willing to stop being passive recipients of their chronic pain management and become proactive in their healing process. I have seen many of my patients come back from severe hopelessness and helplessness to become high functioning and enjoying a much improved quality of life. Most importantly they report they no longer see pain as their enemy and are not suffering anymore. They are past just surviving—they are thriving.

To learn more about multidisciplinary treatment for chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

To learn about two skill trainings coming up in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including disorders including addiction please Click Here.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the November issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.