I flew to Banff Canada this week to present Relapse Prevention: Taking the Mystery out of the Relapse Process, for The Canadian Association of Drug Treatment Court Professionals Annual Faces of Addiction Conference. See below information from their website www.cadtc.org

Drug Treatment Courts have the responsibility to handle cases involving drug-using offenders through a system involving comprehensive supervision, mandatory drug testing, treatment services (and other therapeutic interventions) and immediate sanctions and incentives.

The objective of Drug Treatment Courts is to reduce substance abuse, crime and recidivism through the rehabilitation of persons who commit crimes to support their substance dependency. Drug Treatment Courts provide the focus and leadership for community-wide, anti-drug systems, bringing together criminal justice, treatment, education and other community-based partners in the reduction of substance dependency, abuse criminality and related harm.

One of the most powerful aspects of this conference was having alumni success clients from the different Canadian Drug Treatment Courts share their stories.  One person brought tears to my eyes—and I noticed to many other participants—when she shared coming from being homeless, selling drugs and selling herself to feed her addiction, to becoming an employee of the Canadian Drug Treatment Court System and helping others succeed on their road to recovery.

Like in the United States, budget constraints are having an impact.  One presenter had statistics from Drug Treatment Courts in the United States demonstrating a several hundred percent return on investment for clients going through the Drug Treatment Court System instead of jail/prison as usual. If only I could get that kind of return on my retirement investments.

I would encourage everyone to support your local Drug Treatment Courts.

Learn more about overcoming a major obstacle to chronic pain management that may sabotage living your life to the fullest by reading my article Managing the Inner Saboteur 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 once again presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on November 11-13, 2010 this time in our new office space in Sacramento CA. 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.

What is Pain?

There are numerous different definitions for pain. The most widely accepted definition of pain is the one used by The International Association for the Study of Pain. It defines pain as “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience arising from actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.”

The Web version of the Encyclopedia Britannica defines pain as – “A complex experience consisting of a physiological (bodily) response to a noxious stimulus followed by an affective (emotional) response to that event. Pain is a warning mechanism that helps to protect an organism by influencing it to withdraw from harmful stimuli. It is primarily associated with injury or the threat of injury, to bodily tissues.”

The American Academy of Pain Medicine defines pain as – “An unpleasant sensation and emotional response to that sensation.”

The definition of pain that some believe is the most appropriate for use in clinical practice was given by Margo McCaffrey in 1968. He defined pain as “whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he says it does.”

Pain Is a Signal That Communicates Information

The easiest way to understand pain is to recognize that every time you feel pain your body is attempting to tell you that something is wrong. Pain sensations are critical to human survival. Without pain you would have no way of knowing that something is wrong with your body. So without pain you would be unable to take action to correct the problem or situation that is causing your pain.

What Is Your Pain Trying To Tell You?

Whenever you are experiencing pain, it’s always helpful to ask: “What is my pain trying to tell me?” I believe that pain is trying to tell you that something is wrong and that you had better find out what exactly is wrong and find a way to fix it.

Knowledge is power. Once you know what is really going on with your body and mind you can start to take action to effectively manage your pain. In fact, you need to stop believing pain is your enemy and begin to embrace it as your friend. I know this is easier said than done. Many of my patients have looked at me like I’m crazy when I tell them they must make peace with their pain and that pain is their friend. They tell me—very strongly in some cases—that they can’t buy it, but nevertheless it is true.

Not only have I been working as a therapist and trainer in the field of chronic pain and coexisting disorders for more almost three decades, I have been living with my own chronic pain condition during that time. I still have periodic episodes of pain flare ups where I need to put into practice all that I’ve learned and like everyone living with a chronic pain condition some days are better than others. But even on the bad days, one thing is certain – pain does not control my life.

This peacemaking was something I had to resolve for myself early on in my own chronic pain management journey. I always ask the patients I work with and the clinicians I train to consider this question – are you willing to make peace with your pain or continue to suffer?

In essence what I’m asking them is: are you willing to do what is necessary to make pain your friend and move on with your life? As you might imagine and perhaps you’re thinking this yourself, they looked at me like I’ve lost my mind and have told me so in no uncertain terms! Nevertheless the question opened the door for a deeper level of healing to begin.

To learn to stop suffering while undergoing chronic pain management please check out my article Pain Versus Suffering in 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 once again presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on November 11-13, 2010 this time in our new office space. To learn more about this 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.

Many people I’ve worked with who are undergoing chronic pain management also become so hopeless and helpless at times and mistakenly start believing that they are always going to suffer—they get stuck in today only and loose hope. When they are not getting the pain relief they want they convince themselves life is horrible, awful and terrible and they deserve to do whatever it takes to feel better. Sometimes that “whatever it takes” leads them to abusing their pain medication or other self-defeating chronic pain management behaviors.

I believe that life is meant to be lived to the fullest.  The phrase “living life to fullest” has changed significantly for me over the past three decades.  Before my injury over 28 years ago my definition of living life to the fullest was to push my body during Karate practice as far as I could.  My dream was to open my own Karate Dojo and teach other people the martial art I had learned to love with a great passion.  I was in my early 30s and in my mind anything was possible.

After my injury I lost all hope of ever teaching martial arts again.  In fact, I almost lost my will to live and seriously considered that my life was not worth living if I couldn’t do what I loved.  Today I’m so grateful I didn’t give up and allow feelings of hopelessness and helplessness to overwhelm me.  Instead I made the decision to live the best life I could with the circumstances I was given.  I embarked on an intense grieving process that took almost three years; today I can honestly say I have the life of my dreams and that I continue to live life to the fullest.

For me “living life to the fullest” means maintaining an attitude of gratitude.  As I age I’m grateful for all the experiences I’ve gathered and all the knowledge I’m capturing.  I’m grateful for all the people who give meaning to life: my wife Ellen, my mother, my friends and colleagues and especially my recovering brothers and sisters.  Instead of feeling depressed about all the things I can’t do, I try to stay grateful for everything that is possible for me today.  I look upon my chronic pain condition as another thing to be grateful for, along with my ability to maintain a successful pain management plan. 

One major goal of any effective chronic pain management plan includes appropriate activity pacing based on a continuum.  On one end is the person who always does too much; while on the other end is the very sedentary person who does almost nothing.  When developing an activity pacing plan we need to pay attention to any limitations that either the aging process or our chronic pain condition places in our way. 

Some of us do not want to accept those limitations, so we do too much.  We hurt ourselves and then can’t do much of anything—believe me I’ve been there and done that.  I needed an activity pacing plan that could slow me down.  On the other hand some people use aging as an excuse not to push at all.  Or because they are living with chronic pain they believe they can’t have a good life because of their condition.  These people need more of a jump start and encouragement to develop an appropriate activity pacing plan that supports them to get up and move.

Learn more about overcoming a major obstacle to chronic pain management that may sabotage living your life to the fullest by reading my article Managing the Inner Saboteur 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 once again presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on November 11-13, 2010 this time in our new office space in Sacramento CA. 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.