People living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders, including addiction, have many obstacles that often make helping them very challenging.  Many of these people have tremendous amounts of grief and loss as well as other problems that lower their quality of life.  Some of the other major roadblocks are the patients’ high levels of denial and resistance to treatment.  Other major obstacles include shame based attitudes and approaches used by their treatment providers.

To help overcome these obstacles and for healing to occur they must feel listened to, understood, taken seriously and affirmed as human beings.  This is the starting point for them to overcome their treatment resistance and denial.  To do this requires a respect-centered approach utilizing a denial management interactional approach.

This is why I make an effort in my trainings to teach clinicians what I call the Formula for Success which is a process that helps overcome a client’s resistance and denial.  But before I explain the Formula for Success I want to first tell you about the Formula for Disaster.

The formula for disaster starts when a healthcare provider is unaware of a bias or prejudgment they have about their patient.  In their mind they know what the patient needs even before they tell their story.  Often they use what I call a cookie-cutter approach or a one size fits all treatment strategy.  If there is a coexisting addictive disorder, a negative bias or stigma is often involved; after all they’re just an addict. 

This prejudgment is often followed by insensitivity; especially if the clinician is overwhelmed or overworked.  Many times they talk at and work on their patients instead of talking with them and working with them, instead of on them.  Added to this pre-judgment and insensitivity, many clinicians resort to confrontation in order to get their patients to do what they want; this is the “my way or the highway phenomenon.”  This combination almost always leads to a power struggle. 

When I ask people in my trainings who they think usually wins this power struggle, many of them believe it’s the patient, others say the provider. The patient may feel they win because they’re not going to let you put one over on them.  And the provider may feel like they win because they knock the patient into compliance—but it’s usually a malicious compliance.  Some training participants get it right away, nobody really wins.

I believe it’s vitally important to change this dynamic by implementing the formula for success which starts with the provider recognizing, then replacing pre-judgments with understanding.  The best way I know to gain this understanding is to really listen to what the patient is actually saying.  To do this a clinician must use empathic and active listening to make sure they are receiving what the patient is sending. 

The next step is to replace insensitivity with compassion and empathy—not sympathy.  Instead of confrontation it is important to use positive strength based challenge.  Sometimes this challenge is a tough love approach; but always with respect and in the best interest of the patient. 

When we pull all of these pieces together we get collaboration instead of power struggles.  This collaboration is the crucial first step for effective healing to occur. That is why the Formula for Success is an integral component of the Addiction-Free Pain Management™ System.  My goal is to always work with people; not on them!

To learn more about respectful treatment for chronic pain management and coexisting disorders including addiction please check out my article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are in recovery and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

We have a busy fall schedule and some new postings for 2009 for upcoming trainings that you can check out on our Calendar page.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.
 

I’m on my way today to present at the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapist (CAMFT) at their annual Mental Health Thought Leaders Conference that opens tomorrow.  My topic is the role of the psychotherapist in providing effective chronic pain management.

The role of a psychotherapist is crucial in treating the synergistic problems facing couples and families being severely impacted by chronic pain, addiction, or other psychological disorders.  When these conditions coexist; there is a major challenge that must be addressed utilizing a multidisciplinary treatment approach and the inclusion of a psychotherapist is vital.  When these coexisting conditions occur the family problems increase synergistically but how to treat them becomes very challenging and confusing for healthcare providers including therapists as well also for patients and their families. 

I believe that effective treatment includes a strategic three-part approach for improving treatment outcomes and giving these patients and their families new hope. The reason for this multi-pronged approach is due to what I call the Addiction Pain Syndrome.™  When someone living with chronic pain also experiences coexisting psychological problems including addiction a synergistic set of symptoms occur.  This phenomenon requires a synergistic treatment system that addresses it effectively.  The three core components of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) System accomplishes this treatment goal. 

To learn more about multidisciplinary treatment for chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the November issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

When you live with chronic pain as I have for over 26 years it’s important to learn as much about effective pain management as possible.  I did a blog with a similar theme last month and this one will take a different focus and recommend a different article that you can have for free.

The most important thing I’ve taught my patients over the past 25 years is how to learn as much as they can from their pain and to make pain their friend—instead of their hated enemy. I saw a recent TV show (House) where the patient they were trying to help was born without a working pain system and she never felt any pain.  This constantly put her well being and even life at risk.  We need our pain.  Pain tells us something is wrong and needs attention.

It’s also important to recognize that there are different faces, or aspects, of pain.  One is the physical signal that gets registered on our pain receptors and sends a signal to our brain.  The second one is the psychological component (thinking and emotions) where the brain interprets that signal and sends a message to our frontal lobes and we have a cognitive, or thinking, response.  Another signal goes to the limbic system that controls emotions and we have a feeling response.  I call this the pain amplifier circuit. When we have troubling thoughts that lead to uncomfortable emotions we get suffering—not just pain.

I believe it is crucial to learn how to change our thinking and manage our uncomfortable emotions in order to improve our pain management by reducing our perception of the original pain signal.  If we don’t we go from ouch this hurts, to this is unbearable, terrible, awful; and that leads to our suffering.

To learn more about thinking and emotional management for chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction please check out my article The Psychological Components of Chronic Pain that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are in recovery and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

We have a busy fall schedule and some new postings for 2009 for upcoming trainings that you can check out on our Calendar page.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.