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Easier Living With Nerve Pain

8/24/2016

Because I've recently run into a number of people who are struggling with nerve pain, I wanted to offer a practical post to help address this.

At least in my experience, nerve pain does not always respond well, if at all, to medication. It can present major challenges to live with every day, and often becomes very debilitating and exhausting. Below are some simple ways to help quiet the nerves and reduce the pain on an ongoing basis.

Easing the Body Around the Pain

Since nerve pain sometimes increases when we try to push it to heal or use manipulative treatments, I've found that the best way to ease it is to use an indirect approach, creating more well-being in the body around the pain. Once the rest of the body begins to feel more soothed and relaxed, there is a higher likelihood that the inflamed nerves will respond. And the pain that remains is easier to deal with when our overall sense of well being has been lifted.

I know that some of these suggestions may seem very simple and obvious, but, honestly, I would have been very glad for someone to have pointed them out to me at the beginning of my journey with nerve pain so I didn't have to sort it out for myself when I wasn't feeling my most resourceful. For that reason, I include them all here.

Relax and de-stress as much as possible. Limit interaction with things that would normally “get on your nerves,” such as stressful situations, toxic people, crowded stores, and rush hour traffic.

Stay on an anti-inflammatory diet and try to avoid inflammatory situations that activate fright, tension, or adrenaline rushes, such as suspenseful or violent media, argumentative people, or being argumentative yourself.

Get more rest and sleep by staying calm. Make doing less a priority. You might use herbal teas, such as chamomile, to help with sleep or read yourself to sleep while listening to relaxing music. Avoid staying up late on the internet which tends to keep us stimulated past a healthy bedtime.

Choose activities that not only suit your physical limitations, but also soothe the mind and soul, such as meditation, listening to beautiful music, singing, walking in nature, talking with loved ones, and reading inspiring words.

Spend time every day in nature walking and focusing your attention on the soothing feeling of the air on the skin, the breeze, the sunlight, and the sound of birds. Bare feet on the ground or in sand can be exquisitely soothing to the nerves.

Keep moving in any way you can that doesn’t exacerbate the pain. It’s important to keep the blood and oxygen flowing to keep your muscles from stiffening up and adding to the pain. Stagnant blood and stagnant energy do not help you heal.

Take long soaks in bath salts or products using aromatherapy. Let your body relax into the warmth and the delicious smells.

Calming the Emotions to Soothe the Nerves

Aside from helping your body feel better physically, I also recommend taking care of yourself emotionally. Here are some pointers:

Find the little pleasures and things you enjoy and appreciate. Don’t wait for the pain to leave before you enjoy yourself and your life. Find the places that don’t hurt and revel in them. If there aren’t any, look beyond your body and find the things you can take pleasure in around you, including nature, the creative arts, the community, and your family.

Don’t try to turn your life off to avoid feeling pain. Don’t close down your ability to laugh or have fun. This is still your life. It is the only one you have. Make the most of it, even if you have to include pain in the equation. Just let it be there. Even invite it along.

Be kinder to yourself. Create a self-love routine around taking care of your body and your emotions. Wash yourself with soothing hands. Buy things that have calming smells rather than sharp chemical odors. Indulge your need for more softness and kindness in your life. Wear clothes that feel soft against your skin. Talk to yourself using soothing words. Give yourself a break more often.

Make Friends With Your Nerves

Finally, consider making friends with your painful nerves. Talk to them kindly. Tell them it’s safe to calm down. Tell them that you’re paying attention to your body and you’re doing the best you can to heal.

Let them know that you hear them, you honor them and you respect what they have to say to you through the pain. Let them know that you understand that they are in alarm mode right now, but you have heard them, and it’s okay to tone it down a little. It’s okay to let their message be carried to you a little more softly, a little more quietly.

I think one of the tricks to working with nerve pain is to understand that we have one central nervous system that lives throughout the body. Even if we are feeling nerve pain mostly in the face, neck or hands, it relates to and affects the entire nervous system and therefore the entire body.

I believe we can positively affect nerve pain in any part of the body by treating the whole body with calming, soothing, relaxing, and restoring activities and approaches And anything we can do to bring any of our pain down a notch or two is well worth it.

Nothing in this post constitutes medical advice and is not meant to be a substitute for the medical advice of physicians.
A version of this article also appears in Pain News Network as The Pain Companion: Living Better With Nerve PainImage courtesy of Pixabay

Sarah Anne Shockley is the author of The Pain Companion: Everyday Wisdom For Living With and Moving Beyond Chronic Pain and Living Better While Living With Pain. She is a staff columnist for Pain News Network.

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Magical Thinking Is Not Enough To End Chronic Pain

8/10/2016

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While the New Age movement certainly has at its core a plethora of valuable ideas that can help humanity, some of these ideas are not always entirely supportive of those of us in chronic pain - at least not at the superficial level most often touted by New Age evangelists and motivational speakers.

We are lead to believe that if we can only think positively enough, visualize enough, and do enough affirmations, we will end our pain. That's the way it's supposed to work. Right?

Clap Your Hands And Believe

Um…well…

When I contracted my painful condition I was working in a metaphysical bookstore. I had a library of New Age books on my own shelves at home, and all of them were well read from cover to cover. I could meditate, visualize, create intentions, and do affirmations with the best of them. These techniques had all been wonderful boons at various times and helped me create loads of great experiences. But…

None of these things helped my pain once I was injured.

Not one.

And, because New Age magical thinking says you can change anything, and this belief is becoming part of our collective consciousness, those of us who live with conditions that simply don’t improve, often feel like we've screwed up somehow. Why isn't it working for us?

Nice Ideas...For Some

So let’s look at two main tenets of the New Age which are becoming more and more popular and, therefore, increasingly part of our collective ideas about reality:

1) If you think positively you can have anything you want.
2) Sickness and pain result from negativity and/or denial of Spirit.

Okay. Guess what? These tenets are fairly useless when you’re in deep pain. Or, let’s put it differently. These ideas may have some truth in them, but neither of them are the whole truth.

1) If You Think Positively, You Can Have Anything: It's a nice thought, I just haven’t seen it work that well with chronic pain.

I’m all for thinking positively, just don’t tell me I’m in pain because I’m not doing enough of it. For those of us who find ourselves living with physical pain, thinking positively is exhausting. It’s really hard to get fired up with positive thoughts when you can barely stay in your body.

I don't know how any of the top New Age gurus would fare if they were plunked down in the middle of my life at the worst of my pain. It’s incredibly challenging just to live through it, let alone drum up some magical positive thoughts.

And, thinking positively for someone in chronic pain looks different than for someone whose body works. Positive thinking for someone in chronic pain doesn’t look like leaping through fields of daisies. It looks like deciding to keep going another day with as much dignity as you can muster.

2) All Pain is the Result of Negativity and/or Denial of Spirit: Most of us in pain go through times when we’re angry with Spirit, God, Creator, or whatever term we use for the divine being, but it doesn’t mean we’re in denial of our spiritual selves.

Many of us in pain have had to find a way to get closer than ever to the spiritual aspects of Self and Life in order to carry on. We have had to dig more deeply, believe more strongly, and pull up more faith and hope from within the depths of ourselves to get through one day than many people need in a year.

And, one could ask, who is in more denial? The one who lives with their pain and dances with it in it the best, most positive, way they can, or the one who tells us to wish it away through magical thinking and affirmations?

You're On A Different Path, Not The Wrong Path

So, it seems to me, that while New Age positive and magical thinking is great sometimes, it’s simply not the whole story. It doesn’t include the fact that sometimes we’re in a situation for reasons that our rational mind, our everyday consciousness, just can’t grasp. And, try as we might to "positive" ourselves out of it, it does seem that some of us are simply on a part of our journey that includes pain, and that’s not a mistake.

As with the journey through grief, or the journey through birthing a baby, ours is a journey that also includes a level of deep pain for the time being. But that does not make it any less sacred, less true, or less valid than any other path.

Because, as far as I can see, healing chronic pain is not about trying to magic it away. It’s not so much about constantly seeking a way to get around it, as it is living with as much grace as possible while living through it and all the way out to the other side.

Image: The Crystal Ball, John William Waterhouse, 1902 (Wikimedia Commons)

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