As the year is ending I am looking back and noticing that this past year I have experienced more pain flare ups than usual.  As I look for patterns I noticed a couple of important clues.  On the physical side I was trying to see why I have been experiencing frequent migraines for the first time in my life.  I’ve had sporadic migraines in the past for sure but this past year I have been experiencing from 5 to 10 migraine episodes per month. 

After meeting with my primary care physician we think it may be due to my blood pressure being higher than it has ever been.  So now I’ve been working on that for the past month; even to the point of needing medication.  As a result my episodes of migraines have decreased.

I’ve also noted that part of the reason for my high blood pressure is a result of higher than usual stress and not exercising as much as usual because of a knee injury.  The injury came from NOT practicing what I teach—appropriate activity pacing.  I sometimes forget that I have a chronic disability and push too hard. 

Now that I’m seeing all this I have re-aligned my healthy living and pain management plans to address the stress, the pain and the high blood pressure.  I believe that effective chronic pain management requires a biopsychosocial plan so I have now initiated my revised plan and am already starting to see the results.

One of the important tools I try to teach my patients is to listen to their pain and learn from what it is trying to tell them.  As a person living with chronic pain I want to move beyond just surviving my pain; I want to thrive and most of the time I do.

It is very unfortunate that many people living with chronic pain begin to suffer and become depressed, hopeless, and helpless.  I would like to invite you to read a story about Jerry who was able to move out of the despair pit.  To read this story please read From Despair to Hope: A Recovery Story 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.

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.
 

Back in the mid 1990s I was fortunate to work with Terence T. Gorski on a project on ways to help people with addictive disorders overcome their treatment resistance and denial. At first we called this project Motivational Recovery Counseling but we soon realized that Denial Management Counseling (DMC) was a more appropriate and descriptive title.

As Mr. Gorski started working on the first edition of the DMC Workbook and Professional Guide we also started developing skill training workshops on this model.  We used the feedback from training participants to improve the publications as well as field testing this model in many different settings.  At the time I was the clinical supervisor for a court-referred drug diversion program in San Jose California and Mr. Gorski allowed me to implement this DMC model in that program with great benefit.

Since then I have modified and used this model with my chronic pain patients and also taught it to thousands of treatment professionals throughout the United States and Canada. I modified DMC to be used with people living with chronic pain and coexisting addictive disorders and along with Terence Gorski and Dr. Jennifer Messier we published the Denial Management Counseling for Effective Pain Management Workbook in 2006.

To learn more about DMC and pain management please check out my article From Denial to Effective Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article 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 who have any resistance and denial and want to learn how to develop a plan for helping them identify and manage their denial please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Denial Management Counseling for Effective Pain Management Workbook. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a 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.
 

Happy Holidays

I want to take this opportunity to wish you and yours all the best as we end a very interesting year.  Every year as we near the Holiday Season I get a bit upset with how commercial it has become.  For me this is a season of hope and renewal and time to connect with the important people in my life and let them know how much I appreciate them. 

The only “gifts” I like to get today are for the children.  For other friends and family I like to offer time and for some donations to their favorite charity.  I also like to practice being nice to people (though I’m not anywhere near perfect at this) and to smile at strangers.  I’ve also noticed many people this year going out of their way to do little things like letting others out of driveways on busy streets or letting people in grocery stores go in front of them in the check out line.  These little acts can be so big if more of us commit to doing them as a habit. 

The other thing I look forward to at the end of each year is to go back through my daily gratitude journal and pick the top 20 things I’m grateful for during the past year.  Each month I do that also but at the end of the year it’s much more rewarding.  It’s very hard to just pick 20.  I always share my “Attitude of Gratitude” with anyone I can so they can also reap the rewards that I have.  I’ve needed this much more the past two years as some major life-changing events have occurred for me and mine. 

Thank you for being in my life and I wish you much to be grateful for in your life.

Steve G.

Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead
Owner Grinstead Consulting, Training and Coaching Services

Senior Consultant/Trainer for the Gorski-CENAPS Corporation
www.addiction-free.com
Phone/Fax: (916) 575-9961