The anticipation of an expected pain level can influence the degree to which you experience your pain. In some cases, when your anticipatory level of pain expectation is lowered, your brain responds by influencing special neurons. This renders your brain less responsive to an incoming pain signal and your sensation of pain decreases. This is the rationale for utilizing biofeedback and meditation as pain control methods. In any event, both ascending (pain signals coming from the point of injury to the brain) and descending nerve pathways (signals from the brain to the point of injury) will influence or modify the effects on your body.

Unfortunately this phenomenon can also worsen your perception of pain.  When you live with chronic pain you hurt. Doing certain things can make you hurt worse. So you come to believe that these things will always cause you to hurt.  In other words, you associate those things with pain. You believe that every time you do those things, you will have pain. Because you believe that you are going to hurt, you activate the physiological pain system just by thinking about doing something that you believe will cause you to hurt. This is called anticipatory pain. You expect that something will make you hurt. That in turn activates the physiological pain system. This makes you start hurting even before you begin doing whatever it is that you believe will cause you to hurt. All you have to do is to start thinking about doing that thing.

To learn how to address anticipatory pain in a positive fashion please check out my article Coping with Anticipatory 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.

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.

When someone finally starts to realize they have a problem with their pain medication their initial decision to seek help is the most crucial point in the recovery process. Finding treatment providers who are willing to work with them, not on them, can make the difference between successful or non-successful treatment. It is crucial to find doctors, therapists, or counselors who are willing to view someone with chronic pain as a whole person, and not just their pain condition. The Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) System is designed to do just that; APM™ is a collaborative treatment process using a multidisciplinary team approach with the patient being the Captain of the team.

If you think you (or someone you love) may be having a problem with pain medication, you can start by asking yourself (or have the person you love ask themselves) the five questions below and answer them as completely and truthfully as possible.  This will help you to make a decision about what you really need for your recovery process. Share your answers with someone you trust, as well as someone who will be honest with you, so you can get an accurate reality check.

1. What is the best that will happen if I continue using my pain medication and/or managing my pain the way I have been doing?
2. What is the worst that will happen if I continue using my pain medication and/or managing my pain the way I have been doing?
3. What is the worst that will happen if I decide to start on this APM recovery journey?
4. What is the best that will happen if I decide to start on this APM recovery journey?
5. Am I willing to make a commitment to complete this APM process and develop a plan to overcome any resistance or obstacles?  Please explain why or why not!

Once you fully answer these five questions you will have the information you need to make an empowered decision and the beginning of an action plan to move you forward. I suggest that you not do this work alone for many reasons. The most important is that people in chronic pain, or who suffer from substance abuse/dependency/addiction, often isolate themselves and find it difficult to reach out. You deserve to have support when dealing with this problem. The recovery process requires a tremendous amount of hard work and self-honesty, as well as allowing other people on your team who are willing and able to support you in a healthy way.

In APM™ Module Four: A Guide for Managing Pain Medication in Recovery you will have an opportunity to explore how you can use pain medication using a recovery oriented approach. First you will look at some misunderstood terms, then you will be asked to list the benefits and disadvantages of using pain medication. Next you’ll write your pain history story and then be shown how to develop your own effective pain medication management plan. The final step is to review a Recovery/Relapse Indicator Checklist and complete a final call to action.

For a brief overview of some of the information in this module please check out my article Managing Pain Medication in Recovery that you can download for free on our Ariticles page. To purchase APM™ Module Four please Click Here.

For an additional resource regarding medication management please go to our Publications page and check out my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Module Two: Examining Your Potential Medication Management Problems. To purchase this module please Click Here.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com.  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.

Understanding that irrational thinking and the self-defeating behaviors that result can sabotage effective chronic pain management is crucial to improve the way people manage their pain. The following information was adapted from the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide© by Stephen F. Grinstead—the TFUAR (thinking, feelings, urges, actions, and reactions of and to others) concept listed below is part of the Gorski-CENAPS® Model.  Below are some basic principles that can help you to better understand how the TFUAR process works.  The main premise is:

Thoughts cause Feelings.  Whenever we think about something we automatically react by having a feeling or an emotion. 

Thoughts and Feelings work together to cause Urges.  Your way of thinking causes you to feel certain feelings.  These feelings, in turn, reinforce the way that you are thinking.  These thoughts and feelings work together to create an urge, or impulse, to do something.  An urge is a desire that may be rational or irrational.  Sometimes the irrational urge is to isolate and give into your depression.  At other times you might be tempted to use inappropriate pain medication, including alcohol or other drugs, even though you know that it will hurt you, which is also called craving.  Other times you want to use self-defeating behaviors that at some level you know will not be good for you and could worsen your depression. 

Urges plus decisions cause Actions.  A decision is a choice.  A choice is specific way of thinking that causes you to commit to one way of doing things while refusing to do anything else.  The space between the urge and the action is always filled with a decision.  This decision may be an automatic and unconscious choice that you have learned to make without having to think about it, or this decision can be based upon a conscious choice that result from carefully reflecting upon the situation and the options available for dealing with it.

Actions cause reactions from other people.  Your actions affect other people and cause them to react to you.  It is helpful to think about your behavior like invitations that you give to other people to treat you in certain ways.  Some behaviors invite people to be nice to you and to treat you with respect.  Other behaviors invite people to argue and fight with you or to put you down.  In every social situation you share a part of the responsibility for what happens because you are constantly inviting people to respond to you by the actions you take and how you react to what other people do.  Sometimes these reactions help you manage your pain more effectively, but at other times it leads to increased stress levels that cause you to making poor decisions.

The Four Steps of the Impulse Control Process 

Pause and notice the urge without doing anything about it;

Relax by taking a deep breath, slowly exhaling, and consciously imagining the stress draining from your body; 

Reflect upon what you are experiencing by asking yourself: “What do I have an urge to do?  What has happened when I have done similar things in the past?  What is likely to happen if I do that now?”; and then

Decide what you are going to do about the urge.  Make a conscious choice instead of acting out in an automatic an unconscious way.  When making the choice about what you are going to do remind yourself that you will be responsible for both the action that you choose to take and its consequences).

Remember:  Impulse control lives in the space between the urge and the action. 

Once people know more about this information it can help them be better able to manage their chronic pain condition. To learn about effectively managing the psychological components of chronic pain please read my article The Psychological Components of Pain 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 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.