If you’ve got pain I’m sure you’ll have asked yourself “why me?” “what did I do to deserve this?” and other such unanswerable questions. I don’t think any one of us with chronic pain will have escaped wondering if we’ve done something to create the situation we’re in – or wondered whether we’re just plain…
Some of you will know what complex regional pain syndrome is – others might not, so I’ll describe it for you. Imagine your hand (or it could be a foot, an ear, or any part of the body really). If you couldn’t imagine your hand, but instead your brain told you not to even think…
Do you have a really nagging mind? One that chatters on even when you don’t want it to? Making little asides like “You should just keep going”, “you’ll never get through that”, “do you really think your pain is real?”, “what are you going to do about ….” Minds are like that. They hold a…
If you have chronic pain of any type, you’ll know what I mean when I say that half my brain seems to have gone to sleep, especially on days when my pain is intense! There’s a reason for that, and it’s nothing to do with my age. When we have chronic pain, at least some…
By far the most popular post I’ve written was the one about sticky back beliefs. You’d think from the response that I’d revolutionised the world! But basically, all I said was how we view our pain makes an enormous difference to how we experience it. It’s the same for exercise. Exercise can be such a…
Do you know the truth about your back? Let’s check it out: What did you say? Backs are actually amazingly well-designed. The vertebrae are linked together by strong ligaments, supported by powerful muscles, and yet they’re flexible enough to let you curl into a wee ball or twist to look behind or reach high above…
Do you smoke to deal with your chronic pain? Do you wish you could quit but feel like it’s too hard, your pain’s too much, you need to smoke to deal with the stress? You’re not alone! Smoking must be the hardest addiction to quit. Each time you inhale, it takes nanoseconds for the nicotine…
Widespread body pain that is accompanied by fatigue, brain fog, and, often, mood problems is no joke to live with. It can take a while to even pluck up the courage to go and see a health professional about it because no sooner than a pain in one area appears, it disappears, only to pop…
Every now and then I get the chance to review a new book on chronic pain. This week I’ve had the chance to review TWO – one of them is the book Pain: A textbook for health professionals reviewed at my Healthskills blog and this one is written for people who have chronic pain and…
Pain Management Centres are the heavy-duty work-horse for chronic pain management. They’re also a bit scarce – but if you do get lucky enough to be referred, and get in to see an interdisciplinary team for your pain, they’re worth knowing a bit about. When should you get referred? Preferably as early as possible –…
Most of us know that a placebo is something like a sugar pill – it doesn’t do anything very much, and definitely doesn’t affect pain. But at the same time many of us also hear that if you respond to a placebo it means something odd is going on, and usually for people with chronic…
Hope. It’s a small word with profound impact. A lot like love, or stop. When I talk to people about accepting chronic pain, very often I hear “Oh but I don’t want to give up hope.” Fair enough – I don’t want to stop hoping either, but at the same time, if I’m thinking about…
Exercise. How on earth could anyone expect a person with chronic pain to exercise – surely it’s only going to INCREASE pain? The short answer is “YES” it’s likely to increase pain – BUT without exercising you’ll be able to do less and less over time. Exercising is good for chronic pain, but it’s got…
Anyone with chronic pain knows the feeling of going to sleep after tossing and turning, waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble getting back to sleep, then finally getting up in the morning feeling as if you’ve had NO SLEEP AT ALL! There’s a number of reasons for sleep being a…
You are the only person who knows what it’s like to have your pain. No-one else can feel it, can know what you think about in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep, can remember who told you what, and no-one else can do the everyday things that need to be done to…
Healthskills for people living with chronic pain 