Healthcare providers often become confused and frustrated when their chronic pain management treatment interventions are ineffective and they frequently blame their patients. These people often receive negative or judgmental messages from their healthcare providers. Many have been told “it’s all in your head,” “you need to try harder,” or maybe “you’re making yourself hurt so you can get drugs.” Another phrase often heard from doctors and nurses, as well as mental health and substance abuse counselors, is “they’re just drug/med seeking.”

Before I worked extensively with this group of people, I used to think my patients were “drug seeking” as well. However, I have learned that what they really are looking for is relief from their pain—both physical and emotional. When you think about it there is really nothing wrong with someone wanting relief from either condition.

Unfortunately, those negative messages, combined with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, can cause someone suffering with chronic pain to become confused, guarded, and defensive. Teaching them how to effectively connect with supportive people is an important part of every recovery program that strengthens the probability of relapse prevention. This positive support often leads to overcoming confusion and defensiveness.

Tragically, mistaken beliefs about chronic pain and chemical dependency in the healthcare system and recovery community often discourage recovering people from connecting with appropriate support. In fact, misguided advice has often led to life threatening situations for the person in pain and sometimes a person following such erroneous advice can die.

I have seen patients undergoing chronic pain management with coexisting addiction problems receive completely inappropriate treatment from their healthcare providers. These situations are very frustrating because they are so unnecessary. I get very concerned because inappropriate treatment can easily lead to relapse, and in some cases death.

If you want more information on identifying and overcoming common chronic pain management problems please go to our website and check out my article Overcoming Obstacles for Effective 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 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 books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book 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.