In most cases, anxiety about living with pain is more likely in the acute pain stage while depression prevails in the chronic pain stage. A sub-acute stage occurs after the acute stage but before the chronic stage. It usually occurs at about the three- to six-month range. At the acute stage the person in pain generally feels a reasonable sense of hope that the pain will resolve within the near future. In the sub-acute stage and at the beginning of the chronic stage, people’s thoughts and emotions about the pain begin to change.

It is not uncommon for the person to begin to wonder if the pain will ever go away or if they’ll ever get better. These types of thoughts lead to anxiety. Although most people believe that their anxiety will subside when the pain goes away, the anxiety frequently leads to a significant increase in pain perception. This results in a vicious cycle of pain, anxiety, more pain, and more anxiety.  When the pain continues for longer than six months and people haven’t yet learned to manage their anxiety the symptoms will only get worse.

Anxiety can occur at different intensities, all the way from mild nervousness to full blown panic attacks.  Anxiety can be characterized by the following:

1. Muscle tension, including shakiness, jitteriness, trembling, muscle aches, fatigue, restlessness, and inability to relax.
2. Nervous system hyperactivity, including sweaty palms, heart racing, dry mouth, upset stomach, diarrhea, lump in throat, shortness of breath, etc.
3. Apprehensive expectations, including anxiety, worry, fear, anticipation of misfortune.
4. Trouble concentrating, including distractibility, insomnia, feelings of edginess or irritability, and impatience.

Excess anxiety and tension can cause people to experience heightened emotional upset (anxiety, depression, anger), increased pain, slower healing times, and increased side-effects to medications, among other things. An ongoing stress response causes numerous negative problems such as increasing muscle tension and pain while also decreasing the activity of their immune system and blood flow to their extremities.  This in turn worsens a person’s perception of their pain and the pain condition continues to worsen and needs specialized treatment.
 
Psychological treatment for chronic pain focuses on the emotional toll people experience living with pain on a daily basis. The treatment for chronic pain does not include magical interventions; rather, it is a combination of proven psychological treatment approaches in addition to medication management and other non-chemical interventions that addresses all the issues people in chronic pain experience.

To learn more about chronic pain management please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com and go to our Publications page and check out my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. If you want to learn more about the emotional components of chronic pain you can find my article The Psychological Components of Pain that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

To check out our July Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.