7 Pain Traps - That Your Doctor Didn't Tell You About!
Christine Sutherland
Long-term back pain is possibly the most misunderstood problem that you could have, and that's why your doctor or physio hasn't been able to help you. Except for one lone Australian researcher, whose work you're about to be introduced to, most doctors are chasing "red herrings".
Before I share one of the many techniques developed from this research, it's important that you thoroughly understand the 7 pain traps, because without understanding them and taking action, you'll reduce your chance of success.
We know that every one of these 7 traps can act as a trigger to your nervous system to give you more pain. So please pay close attention, for your own sake.
TRAP 1
Withdrawing from people. I know that when you've got pain the last thing you might feel like doing is mixing with people. In the acute stage of your pain, when the injury was still fresh, that was a good idea, but it's the last thing you should do when your pain is long-term. It's absolutely vital that you mix with people, and that you don't let anything stand in the way of that, including your pain.
TRAP 2
Being more or less inactive. You might be like most people with chronic pain and have a strong desire to refrain from being active. Maybe you've even tried it and it made things worse. Thing is, you can find a base rate of exercise which is manageable (even if it's tiny) and you can regularly and consistently increase it. When you do this, you can be confident the flaring is not related to the activity, and you can be confident you are helping your recovery, not working against it.
Balance is the key.
TRAP 3
Leaning too much on loved ones or friends. To recover from long-term pain you need to be working at ways to increase your independence, physically and emotionally. So the way out of this trap is to refuse to let others do for you what you are capable of doing for yourself. There is also no point saying the same things to people over and over again. They already know you have pain; they already know how you feel about that. If they forget, sure, remind them. But in the meantime change the subject! You must focus your mind elsewhere in order to give your nervous system a chance to recover.
TRAP 4
Dumping interests or hobbies. You absolutely must keep an interest or hobby, whether you get enjoyment out of it or not. Your nervous system needs you to do it!
In the same way, you must stay aware of what's going on in the world. Stay informed, and talk to people about their thoughts and feelings in relation to what you discover. Become involved.
TRAP 5
Tolerating feelings of depression, anger, embarrassment or anxiety. These feelings put a lot of pressure on your nervous system and make it more reactive, leading to more pain. There are some really quite miraculous ways to switch these awful feelings off and give your nervous system a break!
TRAP 6
Poor sleep. There's not enough space here to go into what good sleep actually is, so please do yourself a giant favour and get a book on "sleep hygiene" from your library so you understand all the things that interfere with healthy sleep. Good sleep aids healing, calms the nervous sytem, increases the metabolic rate, and makes you feel great!
TRAP 7
Not managing your nutrition. Good nutrition is even more important than good sleep, and if you're overweight, underweight, or tired all of the time you can bet your nutrition needs to be examined.
You might be thinking that these 7 traps are all common sense, but if they are just common sense, why hasn't your doctor paid close attention to them? Why aren't you already free of them? I really encourage you to look at them closely and make sure none of them ever trap you again.
HERE'S YOUR CHANCE TO TEST A NEW PAIN RELIEVER
The book "The Pain Train - Time to Get Off" tells you all the theory you'd want to know (and more) of the technique I'm going to share with you here. Basically, this technique "mixes up" the pain signals and over time permanently eliminates them so you become pain free.
Don't be fooled by how crazy this technique looks, because doctors around the world are in awe of the results it gets and scrambling to understand the theory behind it. Make sure you're focussing on the pain at the same time you're doing the other things I suggest!
Although you might have several areas of pain, or even just one area that is quite big, I want you to make a choice to focus on an area that is a maximum of one centimetre (or one inch - it doesn't matter), and only that area. Give that pain a rating out of 10 for how strong it is. Now, while you're still focussed on just that spot, start tapping or pinching on your head, face, arms and chest (you can even include your legs and feet if that's convenient), and at the same time imagine that you're eating your favourite food, that you're sucking on a lemon, that you're licking sugar. You are giving yourself physical sensations as well as other sensory input, at the same time as you're focussing on that one spot.
Do that for maybe 5 minutes maximum, and then check whether anything at all has happened. You're not worried about other areas, just that single spot you "treated".
Now check that pain again in that precise spot. Most people will find that it's no longer the same, and that it has decreased, changed, moved, or gone altogether. You will probably get that pain back, but over a few days or weeks, you'll find it comes back less and less, until it doesn't return at all, ever.
Christine Sutherland is an international clinician who teaches health professionals and patients to eliminate http://www.realhelpforchronicpain.com/ back pain. If you have http://www.realhelpforchronicpain.com/ back or neck pain that isn't responding to treatment, her treatment program is worth checking out.
|
