Do you have Pain Behaviors / Chronic Pain

I’m back from my newsletter and podcast break and resuming my regular schedule – newsletters and podcasts twice a month or so to provide good and helpful content to my readers and listeners.

A lot happened in August. My oldest returned from working in Italy and turned 24! My youngest started a class at the University of North Florida and started the Mayo Clinic’s three week intensive Chronic Pain Rehabilitation program in Jacksonville, Florida. This includes daily PT, OT, CBT – all the acronyms – as well as nutrition, biofeedback, sleep counseling, and self-hypnosis.

I’ve worked with chronic pain professionally as a hypnotherapist (IBS, Migraines, Fibromyalgia) and with my own health issues as well. But I’m still learning new things that I will share with you along the way.

Let’s start with “Pain Behaviors.”

These are ways that we communicate to others and to our own bodies that we’re in pain – scanning our bodies, rubbing an area, guarding an area, saying out loud that we’re in pain or that we need ice or heat.

When the nurse reviewed these I said, “You’ve just described my evening!”

The Mayo pain psychologists say we’re not supposed to engage in them.

What???

When we engage in them, we actually increase the signals for pain in our own bodies and can create more pain.

Yeahhhh, not any of our intentions. Most of us want to be out of pain.

What to do instead

Well, we’re supposed to go about living our lives without talking about the pain we’re in. If you need to break out the ice or heating pad, go ahead. But don’t moan or groan, say that you’re doing it, or make a big deal out of it. Focus more on positive activities and behaviors that you can do like gentle stretches, scaling back on your exercise that day, or listening to a meditation / hypnosis.

My take

This is hard to do! I do sometimes have to tell loved ones or friends that I can’t do something due to some physical limitations from osteoarthritis these days. For some, it’s the price we pay for being super active most of our lives. It’s been a really difficult part of aging for me. Having taught yoga for 20 years in a previous career, I always saw myself as physically flexible and capable.

Personally, I’m always looking for ways to gain strength and flexibility, decrease any daily pain, and decrease flares. I look for various ways to calm down the system, both physically and emotionally, including with meditation and hypnosis. And calming down the system is the clinic’s goal.

So hey – I’ve already been doing a lot of things right. That’s a relief! And I love learning new ways to help myself and help my clients.

If you’re getting professional hypnotherapy for the pain, you obviously have to talk about it some. But we are collaboratively coming up with how you DO want to feel – more comfortable, more capable, and things specific to you. For instance, we may put in a suggestion like “It feels good to get up in the morning and do some brief stretches before starting my day.”

A note about cancer

This email does NOT apply to cancer.  I occasionally work with people who have cancer which is sometimes a chronic condition. Psychotherapy is often the only place people feel free to talk about what’s happening to them emotionally and physically. And we also talk about what you would like to create in your body and mind in terms of decreasing pain and anxiety about treatment and surgeries with hypnosis.

September will have less openings in my practice due to attending family education days on Fridays at the Mayo Clinic. But you can always check the online schedule to see if spots are open for a free consultation.

When there are, it means I have some spots open in my practice. If there aren’t any, check back the following week since I do a lot of short-term treatment (3-6 weeks) and spots open up all the time. It’s updated every Friday.

Peace and health (not pain behaviors!),
Dr. Liz