Chronic Pain
A Vicious Cycle
Managing your pain feels like a full-time job. The persistent pain is relentless, your quality of life diminished, and your energy depleted. You push through as best you can, but it’s becoming more difficult to keep up with your typical day, the demands of your job, your relationships, and responsibilities. Your experience can be an isolating one because you’re at a disadvantage that no one really seems to understand. You’re stuck in this cycle and looking for ways to manage your pain is becoming futile. It’s getting harder and the disappointment of yet another failed attempt at resolving your pain has left you feeling helpless and jaded. It seems like you’ve tried everything to no avail.
Pain Management Attempts
You’ve tried various medical interventions, alternative medicine approaches, and possibly even medical procedures or surgery. Remaining hopeful is becoming more difficult as the pain persists, new symptoms emerge, and you’re not progressing in your treatment as expected despite your dedication to your recovery. You’re losing control of the situation, and you’re left wondering, “When will this pain ever end?”.
The fear is palpable; you feel as though you are running out of options. A continuous cycle of hopelessness, disappointment, frustration, fear, and pain can leave you feeling anxious and depressed. You’re living in survival mode, and you may have been for months, years, or decades.
Beyond Pain Management
We’re evolutionarily hardwired to believe pain is a result of a physical injury. However, pain can occur despite a bodily injury, a physical structural problem, or after an injury has healed due to neuroplastic changes in the brain. Your brain can learn pain and stress fuels the pain-fear cycle.
If medical interventions haven’t resolved your pain, the source of pain may be due to brain-generated pain (also known as PPD and TMS). Therefore, interventions designed to target pain neural pathways can provide relief when treating neuroplastic pain.
If you have a medical condition and are not responding to treatment as expected, pain relief psychology can complement your medical interventions by targeting psychosocial stressors that may be contributing to your pain.