As someone who lives with chronic pain and periodic pain flare ups I know how important it is for me to know as much about my pain and pain management as possible.  If you’ve read any of my articles or other publications you know that my premise has always been that knowledge is indeed power in chronic pain management. 

One of the areas I need to focus on the most today is regarding my periodic pain flare ups and my intermittent migraine headaches.  If you or someone you love lives with chronic pain or periodic acute pain episodes please know that effective pain management is possible.  One of the first areas I teach my patients with is how to identify and manage the psychological/emotional components of their pain.  Then I teach them about the connection between stress and peoples’ perception of their pain.

Emotional management and stress management are part of what I call the nonpharmacological (non-medication) component of chronic pain management.  Over-dependence of potentially addictive medication is where many people get in trouble with their chronic pain management.  Another trap is when people start fearing or becoming overly angry with their pain. 

I believe that for true healing to occur people living with chronic pain need to make peace with—or even friends with—their pain.  After all our pain really is our friend in the sense that pain is hardwired into us to warn us when something is wrong or that there is damage to the system.

To learn about effectively managing anticipatory pain please read my article Coping with Anticipatory Pain that you can download for free on our Article page.

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 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.

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.