The Pain Companion Blog: insights and resources for moving beyond chronic pain

Living Past the Sadness of Chronic Pain

10/16/2021

The time I spent in chronic pain often felt like lost time, like I was losing my life to pain.

I felt like I had not only lost the present, but also feared I would be losing my future too.

Over time, I learned to see pain as a landscape I was passing through and not a forever thing.

I also had to learn to make new meaning from living through something that required me to go deep within myself to find the strength to carry on.

I talk about these things in my new video: Healing the Sadness of Chronic Pain

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Feeling the Fatigue of Living with Chronic Pain?

10/3/2021

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I found living with chronic pain hugely tiring. Everything took more energy, and BEING in pain was exhausting in itself. If you've been living with pain for awhile, I'm sure you've felt this way too.

There are several kinds of tired. We feel physically tired, of course, from sleep deprivation and the amount of energy it takes for our bodies just to deal with the pain and try to heal while we're also attempting to live our lives within all that.

We feel mentally tired because we're having to address our regular daily concerns of finances, family, work (or lack of it) and added to that are medical appointments, trying to plan for the future in a lot of unknowns, our worries about healing (or not healing), and the whole disability and/or workmen's comp and/or insurance system maze.

We feel emotionally tired because we're trying to keep as positive as we can and maintain hope in the face of things that may not look too bright right now.

All of these kinds of tired are a lot to carry all at once. In the next video, I read Chapter 12 of The Pain Companion: Physical and Emotional Exhaustion and give you simple, practical methods of chronic pain management that ease the physical and emotional exhaustion and fatiguing drain we feel when we're in chronic pain.

I hope you find these useful!. You can view the video here: https://youtu.be/4snDboN8xyY

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Feeling Invisible? Let's talk...

10/3/2021

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Living in chronic pain, I spent a lot of time withdrawing into myself. I didn't want to talk about my pain all the time, I didn't want to have to explain myself (why I couldn't do things) over and over again, I didn't want to worry other people, and I didn't want to have to hear their advice (usually not very helpful) over and over again. So, I learned to stop talking about my pain.

The only problem was, my silence contributed to a loss of a sense of self.

It felt like I was disappearing inside my pain. My pain was invisible to others and, over time, I felt like I was becoming invisible myself.

This lead to even greater feelings of alone-ness and isolation in my pain and, in the long run, wasn't the healthiest option. I had to learn how to share my pain, who I could (and should) share my story with, and how much.

Keeping your pain to yourself solves some problems, but creates others. In the video, Do You Feel Invisible in Chronic Pain? I talk about these issues and make suggestions for how to balance your silence and your sharing in ways that will be more supportive of your healing.

This isChapter 11 of The Pain Companion: Invisibility and Silence and you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/qGrkrh92gHM

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Healing Chronic Pain on Your Own Terms

9/6/2021

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An atmosphere of compassion and loving self-care is key to finding your own way through pain to full healing. Too often we blame ourselves and our bodies for being in pain, and we may forget that the body is crying out for compassion, caring, and tenderness.

You can gently shift your perception and experience of the pain in your body using intention, active imagination, and guided imagery. Starting with right where you are (and right where the pain is now), you can gently allow the pain to relax and release as you learn to relax and release the body areas around the pain, and holding the pain.

Try playing with breath, allowing the pain more space to breathe, exploring breathing into the pain-free space around the pain (even if it seems to be outside the body). You can also imagine what the pain would look like if it were sitting across from you and begin an imaginary conversation with it. What is your pain asking of you?

To help you explore these ideas, I've created a free, 11-minute self-healing meditation that takes you through a step by step process to change your perception and experience of the pain in your body. Making any small change in your experience of pain at all helps you realize that more change can come and, with it, more healing. Use this self-healing meditation any time you want to feel a shift in your relationship to pain, be it chronic or short-term, and the level of pain in your body. The more you use this guided pain-relief meditation, the more effective it becomes.

I hope you find it useful. You can find it on The Pain Companion YouTube Channel HERE.

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The Loneliness of Chronic Pain

8/12/2021

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One of the first things we do when we're in pain is contract. We contract our body around the pain, and we also contract our lives.

We are often not able to interact with others socially at the same level we have been used to, nor do we want to. We withdraw into ourselves as a natural response to pain, in order to heal.

But when we're living with chronic pain, pulling away from social gatherings and friendly interactions often leads to feelings of immense loneliness and isolation.

In my latest 10-minute video, I read from The Pain Companion, Chapter 10 on Loneliness and Isolation which talks about how to mitigate the loneliness of living with chronic pain without having to wait to be healed to feel part of life again.

Many of my suggestions are simple and easy to implement, but often overlooked by those of us in pain because

we didn't think we would be in pain this long, so haven't adjusted our social lives
we don't have a whole lot of energy and brain power to think of these solutions for ourselves.

It is my hope that this little video may give you an idea or two that you can feel good about implementing which will help you feel more connected to your friends and life in general. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/SlZSQ9fcPsA

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Welcome to The Pain Companion Blog! Reflections and sound advice on living with chronic pain - a peaceful way station on the path to greater well being.
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