Ascending and Descending Pain Signals

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 of pain on your body.

Some of these ascending signals simply report the presence of pain (I hurt or I don’t hurt). Other signals report the intensity of the pain (It hurts a little or it hurts a lot). Still other pain signals report the location of the pain (My stomach hurts) or whether the pain is associated with an internal or external injury (My stomach hurts deep in my gut, or the skin on my stomach hurts). Other pain signals report the type of pain (It burns or it throbs).

All of these different pain signals are transmitted into the spinal cord through nerve pathways to the pain center of the brain. There the brain transmits the pain signal information to other specialized pain neurons, which in turn sends the information (descending signals) to different areas in the brain.

One area the signal goes to is your frontal lobes—this is the cognition/thinking center of the brain. It leads to thoughts or judgments about your pain, including anticipatory pain.  This triggers a signal to another area that gets the message; your limbic system—this is the emotional center of the brain. It leads to a feeling or emotional response.

Once the physical pain system is activated, the anticipatory pain reaction can actually make your pain symptoms worse. Whenever you feel the pain, you interpret it in a way that makes it worse. You start thinking about the pain in a way that makes it worse. You tell yourself that the pain is “awful and terrible,” and think, “I can’t handle the pain.” You convince yourself, “It’s hopeless, I’ll always hurt, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

It’s very important to remember that when you have pain, there are three components to that pain: (1) biological; (2) psychological/emotional; and (3) social/cultural. All three components need to be treated, but the treatment plan for each differs. An effective medication management plan coupled with nonpharmacological interventions is the best approach for the biological pain symptoms.

However, using medication for the psychological/emotional symptoms is like having an infected cut on your hand and the only thing you do for it is find a color-coordinated bandage and slap it on. Using medication for the psychological/emotional symptoms puts you at risk for experiencing negative side effects from your medication, including potential addiction problems. The good news is there are ways you can learn to identify and cope with your psychological/emotional symptoms. It is also important to identify any social and/or cultural beliefs/biases that could potentially sabotage an effective pain management plan.

To learn why a multi-faceted approach to chronic pain management is necessary instead of just taking pain medication; 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 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.  

You can Change Your Perception of Pain!

The psychological meaning that you assign to a physical pain signal will determine whether you simply feel pain (“Ouch, this hurts!”) or experience suffering (“Because I hurt, something awful or terrible is happening!”). Although pain and suffering are often used interchangeably, there is an important distinction that needs to be made. Pain is an unpleasant signal telling you that something is wrong with your body. Suffering results from the meaning or interpretation your brain assigns to the pain signal—your perception of pain.

The Three Parts of Pain

• Biological:
  A signal that something is going wrong with your body
• Psychological:
  The meaning that your brain assigns to the pain signal
• Social/Cultural:
  The approved “sick” role assigned by society concerning your pain

Many people irrationally believe that: “I shouldn’t have pain!” or “Because I have pain and I’m having trouble managing my pain, there must be something wrong with me.” A big step toward effective pain management occurs when you can reduce your level of suffering by identifying and changing your irrational thinking and beliefs about the pain, which in turn decreases your stress and overall suffering.

Using a Two-Part Approach: Physiological and Psychological

Because of the two parts—pain and suffering—pain management must also have two components: physical and psychological. The way you sense or experience pain—its intensity and duration—will affect how well you are able to manage it. Anticipatory Pain (what you fear or expect your pain will be) is also a major psychological factor that must be addressed. The research on recovery from chronic pain is very clear. The people that are most likely to successfully manage their pain do so by becoming proactively involved in their own treatment process. The chances of success go up as you learn as much as possible about your pain and effective pain management.

To learn more about pain and effectivce chronic pain management check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary 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.

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.

When I was growing up I can remember my grandparents who were in their sixties and I thought I hope I never get that old.  As most children do, they look at older adults and think they’re ancient.  In fact in my family and social circle—which was primarily blue-collar hard labor working class—most people did age fast and hard.  This was especially true since most of them also drank heavy and smoked like chimneys. 

Today at age 60 I don’t look or feel “ancient” or “old.”  I’ve been blessed to be in recovery for almost half of my life now and not working at “hard labor” anymore.  In fact I changed careers in my early thirties after injuring myself in a construction accident.  At the time I thought my life was over and not worth living.  I see it so much different today.  Today I am able to take in the wisdom of my Sensei Richard Kim who often said no matter what comes your way find something in the experience to be grateful for.  He also said when life gets tough say “Thank you adversity for yet another test.” 

Today I live with an “attitude of gratitude.”  Each day I write 10 things I’m grateful for.  At the end of the month I review my entire gratitude list for the month and pick my top 30 items.  At the end of the year I review all the month’s top 30 items and pick the top 30 for the entire year.  I have found it is impossible to be devastated by any uncomfortable emotion or experience if I can shift to gratitude.

In my thirties I went back to school and trained to be a counselor and started working with people who also were living with chronic pain and they were also living with an active addictive disorder to their pain medication.  Also, in my late thirties the first health and the very best possible relationship came my way—my partner in life and business; Ellen.  Ellen and I celebrated 22 years married earlier this year and it just keeps getting better.  I would not have even met Ellen if not for my recovery journey.

In my forties I again went back to school and this time got a Masters Degree in Psychology and trained to become a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.  In my late forties and early fifties I again went back to school and got my Doctorate in Addictive disorders.

In my forties I also started learning how to write for professionals and pain patients and co-authored my first books.  In my early fifties I soloed and authored and co-authored other books.  I was very fortunate to have a great mentor—Terence T. Gorski—who is now not only my mentor but a close personal friend.  He not only taught me how to write in “Earth Language” he also taught me how to teach and skill train healthcare professionals.

In my fifties I fine-tuned my teaching and training skills and since 1996 I have trained well over 15,000 healthcare providers.  Each time I conduct a training I’m also learning more from my students.  I hope to continue refining and improving my presentation skill all through my sixties and beyond. 

The past thirty years I have been very blessed to be able to strive to fulfill my mission statement to—teach people how to help people.  I’ve also been blessed to live the principles of recovery and healthy living and not harming others.  After getting out of the US Marine Corps in my twenties I was not such a gentle person.  In fact, I physically and psychologically harmed many people.  Part of my recovery is to make amends for the wreckage and harm I caused to others.  One way I do that is to not be violent—in the broad sense of not imposing my will on others or causing harm—and to teach other men not to be violent.

A major payoff for taking good care of myself is that I don’t “look my age.”  People often think I’m kidding them when I tell them how old I am.  In fact I’m the oldest in my family and physically look younger than them all. 

I’ve also lived with chronic pain for most of the past thirty years and for all but the first two years I have not suffered with my pain.  My pain condition is not an adversary but rather my best friend.  I don’t fight my pain so therefore it doesn’t wear me down or age me.  It’s not always easy however, but as long as I don’t get into suffering I know all will be well.

A couple of weeks ago I became a “Great Grandfather” and that really blows my mind because my great grandfathers were dead way before I was even born.  I was a grandfather at age forty and a father at age nineteen.  Two and a half years ago my father died at age seventy seven.  I know that unless something totally unexpected happens my life-expectancy can be well over that.  However, I don’t want to go for quantity of life-span but rather live a quality life; one day at a time.