An important part of developing an effective pain management plan is obtaining an accurate understanding of what effective pain management really means. I believe that effective pain management requires a three part approach: (1) A medication management plan—developing an effective medication management agreement; (2) A cognitive-behavioral treatment plan—addressing pain versus suffering by better managing your thinking and feelings as well as changing any self-defeating behaviors and problematic social/family reactions; and (3) A nonpharmacological (non-medication) pain management plan—developing safer ways to manage pain.

Refining your Personal Pain Management Plan

An effective pain management plan starts with an accurate assessment of your presenting problems, your strengths, weaknesses, support system, as well as any obstacles that could sabotage your pain management. This usually requires a multi-disciplinary approach that includes an in-depth medical history and physical by your doctor followed by appropriate medical diagnostic testing.

One of the first treatment decisions needs to be whether or not modification to your medication plan is necessary. If it is necessary then you need to determine whether inpatient medical assist is necessary or you can do it on an outpatient basis with your doctor’s guidance. This is where you develop your personalized appropriate medication management plan—you’ll see Mary and Mark’s revised medication management plans in the next chapter.

Do You Need Medication Modification?

If modifications to your medications are made you may need some craving management tools to help you adhere to your new plan and ways, in addition to your medication, to handle pain flare ups.  You also need to develop and implement non-pharmacological pain management interventions.

As you continue with your pain management planning it is important to continue learning even more non-pharmacological, holistic pain management tools. Then you need to develop an initial relapse prevention plan that will help you identify your high-risk situations for ineffective pain management or self-sabotage. It is crucial to have a relapse prevention plan in place that addresses both your high risk pain situations as well as any core psychological or other coexisting issues such as depression.

To learn more about relapse prevention for better chronic pain management check out my article Relapse Prevention and 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 presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on August 5-7, 2010. To learn more about this and my other upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

To learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System, please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Treatment that you can download for free on our Ariticles page. This article also gives an overview of my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Workbook.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.
 

Ascending and Descending Pain Signals

Ascending pain signals, coming from the point of injury to the brain, and descending nerve pathways, signals from the brain to the point of injury, will influence or modify the effects of pain on your body.

Some of these ascending signals simply report the presence of pain (I hurt or I don’t hurt). Other signals report the intensity of the pain (It hurts a little or it hurts a lot). Still other pain signals report the location of the pain (My stomach hurts) or whether the pain is associated with an internal or external injury (My stomach hurts deep in my gut, or the skin on my stomach hurts). Other pain signals report the type of pain (It burns or it throbs).

All of these different pain signals are transmitted into the spinal cord through nerve pathways to the pain center of the brain. There the brain transmits the pain signal information to other specialized pain neurons, which in turn sends the information (descending signals) to different areas in the brain.

One area the signal goes to is your frontal lobes—this is the cognition/thinking center of the brain. It leads to thoughts or judgments about your pain, including anticipatory pain.  This triggers a signal to another area that gets the message; your limbic system—this is the emotional center of the brain. It leads to a feeling or emotional response.

Once the physical pain system is activated, the anticipatory pain reaction can actually make your pain symptoms worse. Whenever you feel the pain, you interpret it in a way that makes it worse. You start thinking about the pain in a way that makes it worse. You tell yourself that the pain is “awful and terrible,” and think, “I can’t handle the pain.” You convince yourself, “It’s hopeless, I’ll always hurt, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

It’s very important to remember that when you have pain, there are three components to that pain: (1) biological; (2) psychological/emotional; and (3) social/cultural. All three components need to be treated, but the treatment plan for each differs. An effective medication management plan coupled with nonpharmacological interventions is the best approach for the biological pain symptoms.

However, using medication for the psychological/emotional symptoms is like having an infected cut on your hand and the only thing you do for it is find a color-coordinated bandage and slap it on. Using medication for the psychological/emotional symptoms puts you at risk for experiencing negative side effects from your medication, including potential addiction problems. The good news is there are ways you can learn to identify and cope with your psychological/emotional symptoms. It is also important to identify any social and/or cultural beliefs/biases that could potentially sabotage an effective pain management plan.

To learn why a multi-faceted approach to chronic pain management is necessary instead of just taking pain medication; please check out my article Chronic Pain Management Needs More Than a Quick Fix 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 presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on August 5-7, 2010. To learn more about this 3 day 20 hour training 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.  

You can Change Your Perception of Pain!

The psychological meaning that you assign to a physical pain signal will determine whether you simply feel pain (“Ouch, this hurts!”) or experience suffering (“Because I hurt, something awful or terrible is happening!”). Although pain and suffering are often used interchangeably, there is an important distinction that needs to be made. Pain is an unpleasant signal telling you that something is wrong with your body. Suffering results from the meaning or interpretation your brain assigns to the pain signal—your perception of pain.

The Three Parts of Pain

• Biological:
  A signal that something is going wrong with your body
• Psychological:
  The meaning that your brain assigns to the pain signal
• Social/Cultural:
  The approved “sick” role assigned by society concerning your pain

Many people irrationally believe that: “I shouldn’t have pain!” or “Because I have pain and I’m having trouble managing my pain, there must be something wrong with me.” A big step toward effective pain management occurs when you can reduce your level of suffering by identifying and changing your irrational thinking and beliefs about the pain, which in turn decreases your stress and overall suffering.

Using a Two-Part Approach: Physiological and Psychological

Because of the two parts—pain and suffering—pain management must also have two components: physical and psychological. The way you sense or experience pain—its intensity and duration—will affect how well you are able to manage it. Anticipatory Pain (what you fear or expect your pain will be) is also a major psychological factor that must be addressed. The research on recovery from chronic pain is very clear. The people that are most likely to successfully manage their pain do so by becoming proactively involved in their own treatment process. The chances of success go up as you learn as much as possible about your pain and effective pain management.

To learn more about pain and effectivce chronic pain management check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary 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 presenting my Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training in Sacramento on August 5-7, 2010. 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.