Coping with Despair and Hopelessness for Effective Chronic Pain Management
I’ve been living with my own chronic pain for over 26 years and there were times in the first few years where I fell into a deep dark place of despair and hopelessness. Over the past two decades I’ve been working with other people living with chronic pain who were in similar emotional pits. For me the journey out of despair and into hope came as a result of going through a painful grieving process.
Today I can honestly say that my injury that led to my chronic pain condition was one of the best things that happened to me. I have been blessed to help thousands of patient cope with their chronic pain condition and have now taught well over ten thousand healthcare professionals how to do Addiction-Free Pain Management® treatment.
Many people living with chronic pain are also depressed, which further exacerbates the despair and hopelessness. For some people the best treatment is a combination of appropriate antidepressant medication in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy. In order to manage chronic pain effectively, I believe there needs to be four primary treatment approaches. The first and most important is a thorough multidisciplinary assessment. One of the major causes of mismanaged chronic pain is due to missed coexisting disorders or a misdiagnosis or treatment.
The next step is to develop an appropriate, and safe, medication management plan. Then people need tools to deal with the psychological/emotional components of their pain and finally they need to learn as many nonpharmacological (non-medication based) treatment interventions as possible. I covered this type of nonpharmacological planning in my past Blogs on July 23, and September 8, 2008.
If you would like to read how one of my patients—Jerry—moved from despair to hope please read my article From Despair to Hope that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.
If you want to learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com. To learn more about how to develop an effective chronic pain management plan please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To look for my upcoming trainings please go to our Calendar page.
To read our latest Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. To sign up for Chronic Pain Solutions, 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.
