Many people living with chronic pain frequently become depressed due to living with under treated or mistreated pain symptoms. When a person’s thinking and emotions become problematic they become irrational or dysfunctional and mismanage their feelings. As a result, they have urges to indulge in self-defeating, impulsive or compulsive behaviors to cope with their depression, which affects all their relationships.

Things People with Chronic Pain Should Do When They’re Depressed

• Eliminate the use of alcohol and other drugs (other than appropriate prescriptions)
• Exercise or engage in some form of physical activity every day, such as walking, or whatever is possible given your physical limitations
• Eat a proper, well-balanced diet—also, use a good multivitamin daily
• Obtain an adequate amount of sleep—if sleep is a problem discuss this with your doctor/therapist
• Reach out for emotional support from friends and family
• Focus on the positive aspects of your life
• Pace yourself, modify your schedule and set realistic goals
• Eliminate or reduce unnecessary tasks so that your schedule is more manageable
• Reduce or eliminate the use of nicotine, caffeine, and sugar
• Consult with a physician if you are experiencing any medical problems 
• Seek early intervention which may modify the severity of your depression

Things People with Chronic Pain Should Avoid When They’re Depressed

• Isolating behavior
• Making long-term commitments or important decisions, unless absolutely necessary
• Over-committing to activities which are stressful or overwhelming
• Assuming that things are hopeless—they’re not!
• Engaging in “emotional reasoning” (e.g., “because I feel awful, my life is terrible”)
• Assuming responsibility for events which are outside of your control
• Avoiding treatment as a way of coping so you don’t have to change

To learn more about the role of depression in chronic pain management please check out my article Depression Management with the Chronic Pain Patient that you can download for free on our Article page.

If you’d like to receive training for helping people with relapse prevention, I’m very excited to announce that the Gorski-CENAPS Corporation is presenting The Relapse Prevention Therapy44 Hour Certification Training in Ft. Lauderdale October 18-22, 2010. To learn more about this 5 day 44 hour training 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.