Psychological problems can develop as a direct result of living with chronic pain and/or long-term pain medication treatment.  These problems are serious and often sabotage peoples’ ability to receive adequate pain management treatment. 

There are four major areas that tend to impact chronic pain patients the most:

Depression

Irrational thinking patterns and the resultant uncomfortable emotions

Anxiety and Trauma Disorders

Sleep Disorders 

Of these four the one that causes the biggest problems for the most people—and sometimes gets under-diagnosed and/or under-treated—is Clinical Depression.  Therefore is important to focus on understanding and managing depression to obtain effective chronic pain management.

Hitting the Wall Called Depression

There are several types of clinical depression that involve disturbances in mood, concentration, self-confidence, sleep, appetite, activity and behavior as well as disruptions in friendships, family, work and/or school.  A clinical depression is different than the experiences of sadness, disappointment and grief familiar to everyone, which makes it difficult to determine when professional help is necessary. 
To learn more about the role of depression in chronic pain management please check out my article The Role of Clinical Depression in Chronic Pain that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are in recovery and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

We have a busy fall schedule for upcoming trainings that you can check out on our Calendar page.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the September Issues 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 have worked with over the years have consistently rated their pain at levels 9 or 10 on the 0 to 10 pain scale.  Part of this high rating may have been a misunderstanding of the pain scale.  Another reason some of my patients would finally confide to me that they rated it so high in order for other people to take them seriously and/or give them something to help them better mange their pain. 

Below is a chart that might help you better understand the 0 to 10 pain scale in order to better evaluate and share with others the exact level that your pain is at.  It will help you to more accurately rate your pain levels in the next exercise. 

Remember though your pain levels tend to fluctuate—pain can ebb and flow like the ocean tides.  Different physical and psychological situations can either amplify or sometimes even lower your pain levels.  I would also encourage you to develop your own descriptive phrase to describe each of the ten levels of pain on the scale.

As you review this ten point scale please think how you would describe each of the ten levels in your own words.  The important thing is for you to learn how to communicate your levels of pain accurately to your healthcare provider.  

1-10 Pain Scale 

Level 1   =  My Pain Is Barely Noticeable

Level 2   =  My Pain Is Noticeable With No Distress

Level 3   =  My Pain Is Becoming Disturbing But No Distress

Level 4   =  My Pain Has Some Distress But No Coping Problems

Level 5   =  My Pain Has Distress with Some Coping Problems

Level 6   =  My Pain Has Distress with Significant Coping Problems

Level 7   =  My Pain Is Starting To Interfere With My Ability to Function

Level 8   =  My Pain Is Causing Moderate Interference with My
                   Ability to Function

Level 9   =  My Pain Is Causing Severe Interference with My Ability to
                   Function

Level 10 =  I’m Unable to Function At All Because Of My Pain

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

We have a busy fall schedule for upcoming trainings that you can check out on our Calendar page.

To read the September Issues 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.

Today pain management professionals systematically approache the treatment of pain at all three levels (bio-psycho-social) simultaneously.  This means using physical treatments to reduce the intensity of your physical pain.  It also means using psychological treatments to identify and change your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are making your pain more intense and replacing them with positive thinking, as well as feeling and behavior management skills that can reduce the intensity of your pain. 

Finally, effective pain management must involve not only you, but also the significant people in your life who can help you to develop a social and cultural context in which to experience your pain in a way that will reduce suffering.

Biological pain is a signal that something is going wrong with your body.  The biological, or physical, pain sensations are critical to human survival. Without pain we would have no way of knowing that something was wrong with our body. So without pain we would be unable to take action to correct the problem or deal with the situation that is causing our pain.

Psychological Pain results from the meaning that you assign to the pain signal.  The psychological symptoms include both cognitive (thinking changes) and emotional (uncomfortable feelings) that lead to suffering. Most people are not able to differentiate between the physical and psychological. All they know is “I hurt.” For effective pain management you need to learn all you can about your pain.

Social and Cultural Pain, results from the social and cultural meaning assigned by other people to the pain you are experiencing, and whether or not the pain is recognized as being severe enough to warrant a socially approved sick role.  These three components determine whether the signal from your body to your brain is interpreted as pain or suffering. 

Imagin the following vignet:  Bob is his college’s star football player.  In last week’s homecoming game Bob scored the winning touchdown but broke his arm in the process.  This week Bob is sitting on the bench with a cast on his arm that everyone has signed.  This cast and how he earned it are seen as an honorable reason for him to be sitting on the bench.  In that same game Karl, a big hulking lineman, “tweaked” his back and was also sitting on the bench this week.  Unlike Bob, Karl doesn’t have an observable injury and people were asking him why he wan’t out on the field helping his team.  Karl is much more apt than Bob to experience shame/guilt, which will probably amplify his pain symptoms.

To learn more about the three levels of chronic pain management check out my article The Biopsychosocial Components of Chronic Pain that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are in recovery and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

We have a busy fall schedule for upcoming trainings that you can check out on our Calendar page.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the September Issues 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.