Looking for the Quick Fix

When you live with chronic pain it can become very frustrating when you aren’t getting the pain relief you want. I know that when I experience a pain flare up my first reaction is I want it to stop—now! Many of the pain medications were developed for acute pain conditions. It can soon become very problematic when you use an acute pain plan on a chronic pain condition. Some people have a need for instant gratification (I want it and I want it now). Unfortunately, some of the acute pain medication leads people into this instant gratification trap—looking for the quick fix.

Telling the difference between appropriate and effective use of pain medication and the beginning of medication abuse can sometimes be difficult for you or your healthcare providers to determine. There are progressive stages of problematic use including medication dependency, medication abuse, pseudo-addiction, and finally addiction. The confusion and uncertainty of this progression is a challenge for both you and your treatment provider.

Some people living with chronic pain are afraid to take their narcotic (opiates, benzodiazepines, etc.) medication because they have heard horror stories of people getting hooked on pain pills. This leads to a decision to under-medicate and to suffering as a result. If you happen to be in recovery for alcoholism or any other drug addiction the problem is even worse. If you under-medicate it could trigger a relapse. Of course the other side of the coin is overmedication; which could lead to rapid tolerance building and finally reactivation of your addiction.

It is crucial to take an honest look at your relationship with pain medication.  Differentiating between appropriate use of pain medication and the beginning of abuse can sometimes be difficult for you or your healthcare providers to determine.  There are progressive stages of problematic use including medication dependency, medication abuse, pseudo-addiction, and finally addiction.  The confusion and uncertainty of this progression is a challenge for both you and your treatment provider.

To learn more about the quick fix mentality in chronic pain management, please check out my article Chronic Pain Management Needs More Than a Quick Fix that you can download for free on our Article page.

If you’d like to receive training for helping people with chronic pain and coexisting disorders, including addiction, I’m very excited to announce we are presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on August 5-7, 2010. To learn more about this and my other upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

You can learn about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. 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.
 

Sometimes people get complacent when their chronic pain management is going well and they develop unrealistic expectations that they will always be this way.  Unfortunately, when you live with an ongoing chronic pain condition you will probably experience times when your pain levels flare up. Sometimes you can determine why and other times it comes as a complete surprise and you don’t really know why. No matter why your pain flares up, you need to find safe effective ways to cope with the amplified symptoms and that requires having a good plan in place.

Below are several non-pharmacological (non-medication) ways that other people have learned to implement in order to manage their pain flare ups. This is followed by a list of alternative interventions for you to choose from. Some of the interventions below may seem to be similar to the craving management plan—but the focus is different and this plan can actually enhance your craving management plan.

You may already be implementing some of the examples listed below. The important thing to remember is you can always improve your ability to intervene in a way that helps you regain effective pain management. Sometimes the intervention does need to be pain medication or medical procedures, but changing your medication protocols should only be done with your healthcare provider’s knowledge and permission. 

• Relaxation: When you are in a pain flare up your body’s automatic response often includes a reflexive tensing response. This problem leads to your being unable to relax the locus of the pain problems, which leads to increased muscle tension in these areas. You need to practice to consciously relax the affected muscles, enabling them to modulate your pain levels and bring the pain under your control without needing to increase your medication.
• Increasing Activity/Fitness: Many people experiencing pain flare ups become very sedentary, with strong avoidance tendencies for many types of activities. The two primary reasons for this are the pain itself, and your own predictions regarding the negative impact of activity. Therefore, it is crucial to return to more normal levels of activities and slowly increase your stamina for physical activities. The goal is to extinguish conditioned avoidance patterns.
• Diffusing/Reducing Emotional Over-reactivity: When you are experiencing intense uncomfortable emotions—especially about being in pain—your pain levels actually intensify. Your emotions become like an amplifier circuit that increases the “volume” of your pain. You need to practice specific methods of reducing this automatic process that occurs in the face of stressful triggers. You need to realize that you may not be able to eliminate these problematic emotional triggers but what you can learn are different methods of reacting and managing your feelings.
• External Focusing/Distraction: The more you focus on your pain the more you actually intensify your experience of the pain. You need to learn to shift and manipulate your focus of attention in a positive way, which will minimize your experience of the pain. This can be accomplished by changing how you think and feel about your pain. You can then find pleasant activities or tasks to take your focus off of your pain.
• Using Anything That Works: There are numerous interventions that you can attempt when your pain flares up. In addition to those listed above you can use breathing, muscle relaxation, visual imagery, music, cold/heat, stretching, massage therapy, stress management, acupuncture, acupressure, TENS Unit, journaling, hydrotherapy, etc.

Pain flare ups are only one roadblock to effective chronic pain management.  To learn more about how to avoid sabotaging an effective chronic pain management plan, please check out my article Overcoming Obstacles for Effective Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

If you’d like to receive training for helping people with chronic pain and coexisting disorders, including addiction, I’m very excited to announce we are presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on August 5-7, 2010. To learn more about this 3 day 20 hour training and my other upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar 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.
 

An important part of developing an effective pain management plan is obtaining an accurate understanding of what effective pain management really means. I believe that effective pain management requires a three part approach: (1) A medication management plan—developing an effective medication management agreement; (2) A cognitive-behavioral treatment plan—addressing pain versus suffering by better managing your thinking and feelings as well as changing any self-defeating behaviors and problematic social/family reactions; and (3) A nonpharmacological (non-medication) pain management plan—developing safer ways to manage pain.

Refining your Personal Pain Management Plan

An effective pain management plan starts with an accurate assessment of your presenting problems, your strengths, weaknesses, support system, as well as any obstacles that could sabotage your pain management. This usually requires a multi-disciplinary approach that includes an in-depth medical history and physical by your doctor followed by appropriate medical diagnostic testing.

One of the first treatment decisions needs to be whether or not modification to your medication plan is necessary. If it is necessary then you need to determine whether inpatient medical assist is necessary or you can do it on an outpatient basis with your doctor’s guidance. This is where you develop your personalized appropriate medication management plan—you’ll see Mary and Mark’s revised medication management plans in the next chapter.

Do You Need Medication Modification?

If modifications to your medications are made you may need some craving management tools to help you adhere to your new plan and ways, in addition to your medication, to handle pain flare ups.  You also need to develop and implement non-pharmacological pain management interventions.

As you continue with your pain management planning it is important to continue learning even more non-pharmacological, holistic pain management tools. Then you need to develop an initial relapse prevention plan that will help you identify your high-risk situations for ineffective pain management or self-sabotage. It is crucial to have a relapse prevention plan in place that addresses both your high risk pain situations as well as any core psychological or other coexisting issues such as depression.

To learn more about relapse prevention for better chronic pain management check out my article Relapse Prevention and Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

If you’d like to receive training for helping people with chronic pain and coexisting disorders, including addiction, I’m very excited to announce we are presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on August 5-7, 2010. To learn more about this and my other upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

To learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System, please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Treatment that you can download for free on our Ariticles page. This article also gives an overview of my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Workbook.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.