If you’re undergoing long-term chronic pain management and are also experience coexisting disorders you need to learn as much as you can about your pain to help you manage it more effectively.  In this blog I want to give you an overview about the four types and three components of chronic pain so you can begin the process of more effective chronic pain management.  I believe that knowledge is power so the more you know about your pain, the better off you are.  In other presentations and publications I cover coexisting conditions, including addiction, that are often experienced by people undergoing chronic pain management. 

The first type of pain is acute.  The second is chronic pain.  The third is recurrent acute pain.  And the fourth is anticipatory pain.  Acute Pain is a symptom of an underlying problem or damage to your body.  The source is often easily identifiable with a time limited healing process.  Treatment may include analgesics or opiates, but if you have a history or active addictive disorder, it’s important to consult with a physician who specializes in addictive disorders.  The second type of pain is Chronic Pain, which is often much more challenging to treat than acute pain.

An acute pain condition turns chronic if it continues anywhere from three to six months.  In many cases the source or generator of the pain is ambiguous, such as some types of migraines or Fibromyalgia.  In other instances the pain signals get switched on and can’t be turned off long after the initial injury or tissue damage.  For example, pain continues after a “successful” surgery.  We know that pain is supposed to tell us that something is wrong—but in some chronic pain conditions those signals no longer serve a useful purpose.  A good example of this is phantom limb pain.  A major problem with chronic pain is determining an effective treatment plan.  This can often be confusing and frustrating for both the patients and their healthcare providers.

Recurrent Acute Pain is sometimes called pain flare ups or breakthrough pain.  What this means is that you have a base line of pain where you experience it at a level of 4-5 on a 1-10 pain scale pretty much every day.  The recurrent episodes are acute pain flare ups that might go as high as a level 7-8 on the pain scale.  These acute episodes are usually brief—anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so in most cases.  In between acute episodes your base line pain is fairly stable.  The flare ups can often be associated with some identifiable triggers or precursors; but sometimes it may be because you are near the end of a medication dose.  Other times it may be difficult to determine exactly why.  The most important point is that these episodes need a separate treatment plan—and often a nonpharmacological approach can be very effective and sufficient to stabilize the pain flare up.

The fourth type of pain is Anticipatory Pain, which is a conditioned response or a felt-sense experience of pain.  It can be activated by environmental triggers like overdoing exercise or by internal psychological or emotional issues, especially stress build up.  It is most often associated with an uncomfortable pain episode from the past.  It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy where you convince yourself that the pain is going to be awful, horrible, dreadful . . . and it often turns out to be just that bad. 

I also believe it’s important to educate yourself regarding the three components of pain.  The first component is biological—the signal that something is wrong.  The pain message is transmitted from the pain receptor sites and up to the brain.  The second component is the way you interpret the pain signal or the meaning that you assigned to the signal—this is the psychological component.  Your brain sends a signal to your limbic system and you have an emotional response and then to the front of the brain and you have a cognitive or thinking response.

The third component is the Social or Cultural.  This is the societal role that’s assigned to you.  It’s also about your family of origin and/or cultural beliefs about pain.  The last thing I want to talk about is the difference between pain and suffering.  Pain is that physical or biological sensation from the receptor sites that tells you something is wrong with your system.

Suffering is the psychological interpretation that leads you to thinking that the pain is awful, terrible or unbearable.  I tell my patients that unfortunately there are times that pain is inevitable, but suffering is always optional. 

To learn about ways to improve your chronic pain management in the area of anticipatory pain 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 or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please 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 learn about chronic pain management training coming up in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people undergoing chronic pain management who also experience coexisting disorders including addiction please Click Here.

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.

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.