Complete Your Pain Management - E-book - ePub

Chronic pain is a very common health problem and a number of natural and automatic human reactions and attempts by pain patients to help themselves, unfortunately, prolong and exacerbate their situation as patients get stuck in an endless chain of increasing pain and distress. Sooner or later, attempts to directly eliminate chronic pain sensations create an even bigger problem rather than providing a solution to pain sufferers.
Enabling chronic pain patients to recognize this counterproductive struggle and then to break the unhelpful chain reaction is the purpose of this highly structured course. Gradually, the chronic pain patient is instructed on how to reduce the negative impact of chronic pain by first recognizing and then neutralizing their natural and automatic human "Flight or Fight or Freeze" reactions to pain sensations.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, neuro-science research has found that the cognitive practices, that are suggested in this guide, are stimulating neuro-plasticity effects in human brains. These effects are necessary in order to be able to override the automatic "Flight or Fight or Freeze" chain reaction if and when needed. This guide was written by an experienced Clinical Health Psychologist, who has been specializing in long-term pain and physical health problems for more than 30 years in his career.
It represents the accumulation of many years of clinical work with people whose lives have ben upended and deeply affected by severe injuries, chronic pain and other long-term health problems such as diabetes, chronic fatigue, long Covid, stroke, MS, arthritis, asthma, chronic kidney disease and others. The approach in this guide has proven itself as a deliberately gradual and measured way of learning how to recognize problematic reactions and how to stimulate the necessary neuro-plasticity first before eventually applying the newly built skills to chronic pain in everyday life.
This guide is filled with practical instructions and advice as well as with many metaphors and illustrative examples to create a better understanding of the suggested approach and the motivation to start and then persist with the necessary cognitive practices.