The phrase ?maintaining your balance? probably makes you think about keeping your body upright without falling over. Although physical balance can be an issue when dealing with certain medical conditions and taking medications, there is another type of balance that is equally important and often overlooked in the treatment of chronic pain. When dealing with chronic pain ?the other balance? is your emotional balance.
Chronic pain is both a physical and emotional stressor. All patients who have a chronic pain condition also naturally experience chronic, pain-related emotional stress. Like physical pain, emotional distress is variable. It usually goes up and down with your pain level and makes you more emotionally sensitive to the influence of day-to-day stressors. Knowing how to effectively respond to and manage this emotional distress is a key part of developing successful pain management coping strategies. These coping strategies assist patients as they search to find ways to live with their chronic pain.
Over time, chronic pain patients learn a lot about the physical aspects of their pain. This knowledge includes medical terms and diagnoses, medication names and types of procedures. Unfortunately there usually isn?t much discussion or information about the emotional challenges chronic pain brings into your life and how to best handle them. Properly managing pain-related stress is very important. The longer pain-related emotional distress stays elevated, the greater the risk for losing emotional balance. When emotional balance is lost, the consequences can be much more than feeling stressed, depressed or frustrated. Loss of emotional balance is associated with higher levels of pain, decreased ability to tolerate pain, poor immune functioning, increased use of pain medication and loss of quality of life.
How do you keep your emotional balance while living with chronic pain? The right answer isn?t easy to find. As stated earlier, pain-related emotional distress is variable and influenced by several factors (e.g., pain level, poor sleep, time of day, how much emotional support you have, or what other problems/challenges you face). To complicate things further, a coping strategy (such as ignoring your pain or distracting yourself) may be successful one day but not the next. Considering the information above, it makes sense that maintaining your emotional balance can be very difficult and the best way to achieve and maintain it can be elusive.
The back of this page provides information to help you work on your emotional balance?
Below is a list of signs put together by experienced?Arizona pain specialists?that indicate your emotional balance is at risk. As you read through the list of risk factors, rate yourself on each item. Ask yourself, ?In general, does this describe me?somewhat?or?very much?? Your answers will give you an assessment of your emotional balance. If most of your answers are ?somewhat?, you probably are doing an adequate job of maintaining your emotional balance. If most of your answers are ?very much?, you are probably in a state of emotional imbalance.
Signs of Emotional Imbalance
*I am irritable
* I isolate myself from others
*I feel like a burden
* I feel like I am losing the real me
*I hold my feelings in
* I feel guilty about what I can?t do
*Helplessness
*Lack of motivation/can?t get things done
*Worrying about the future
*Overdoing it and paying for it
*Not feeling believed
*Feeling judged by others
If you are feeling a bit concerned about the results of your ratings don?t be discouraged. The good news is that there are ways you can get actively involved in working toward regaining your emotional balance. Use the tips below to develop your own strategies.
Tips for Getting Your Emotional Balance Back
*Acknowledge that chronic pain affects you physically and emotionally
*Accept that success requires several coping strategies, not one
*Don?t assume that a coping strategy will be successful every time you use it
*Start by identifying the coping strategies you use to deal with your chronic pain
*When your coping strategies are successful, figure out why they worked
*When they fail, figure out why they didn?t work (be sure to consider how high your pain level is, how long it has been that high and what other stressors you are dealing with)
Tips to Maximize Success
*Make sure you do your ?figuring out? thinking when your pain levels are their lowest
Why? Because high pain levels affect your memory, concentration and thinking. The higher your pain level, the more likely you are to have a negative outlook. Working on your coping strategies with a negative outlook will result in failure.
*Focus on balance. Emotional imbalance is usually the result of doing too much or too little (e.g., taking medication too soon or waiting too long can result in unnecessary suffering)
*Be willing to accept assistance. If you find that you only have a few coping strategies that are successful or you feel you are making very little progress despite your best efforts, it may be helpful to schedule an appointment with Dr. Peper to assist you.
The information contained in this article is provided for patient education and as a general guideline for managing the emotional impact of your chronic pain. If you are interested in treatment to assist you in developing additional pain management coping strategies speak with your pain management doctor or visit?http://www.ThePainCenter.com.
Source: http://medicaltips.biz/2011/09/06/maintaining-your-balance-with-chronic-pain/
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