"Detach yourself and simply use it as information." Chronic pain is an issue for many people, especially as you age or if you’ve sustained an injury. Within 5 minutes of thinking about my body this way, I was able to walk without almost any pain. (I know because I also use them for my chronic flu-like symptoms.). I'm so glad you'll be sharing it with your clients. To help manage your pain, you might consider: Planning your day - Make a plan of things to do and places to be to help you keep on top of your pain. It’s very informative, and you included some great points to the equally great article. She's the author of How to Be Sick, How to Wake Up, and How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness. Druggies, you know. Go back to sleep. Your body has enough to handle. I never took meditation seriously until one day, when I was ready to have my wife take me to the hospital because the pain was so intense. It's fascinating that you could feel that you were doing this with your whole body and then could consciously relax it. My husband therefore i reside in Hawaii. Pacing yourself - Don’t push through the pain, stop before it gets worse then go back to whatever you were doing later. This is an excellent article. Warmest wishes, Toni. I recommend staying within our pain limits. 4. . Be patient with yourself when trying these techniques. Does Vitamin D work for fibromyalgia pain? I was all clenched up. In an earlier post, I noted that bodily discomfort has three aspects: (1) the unpleasant physical sensation itself; (2) our emotional reaction to the discomfort, such as anger or fear; and (3) the thoughts that are triggered by the discomfort, such as, "This pain will never go away" or "I'm a weak person because I hate this pain so much." ( Log Out /  I will surely take note of everything. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Take a mid-afternoon scream. But you're probably pretty spectacular in some way, and definitely good enough in most areas of life. They even say people with Chronic Pain shouldn’t be using any pain medications, and in fact, they shouldn’t even be using meditations to try to stop the pain, or distract themselves from it, but rather to use the meditations to feel the pain even more, focus on it, and embrace it as a friend, and brother etc, as it’s one half of the universe etc. ". Warmest wishes to you, Toni. At 1 point while lying in bed looking out the window this last time around, I focused on my sight sense, which was not feeling the pain, to notice the gorgeous rain on the red-gold-yellow leaves, appearing like little diamonds when the sun came out. This separating out of the sensations is called "sensory splitting." View all posts by Nikki. Wish I did. I'm writing a new book on chronic pain and illness and plan to use this article as a basis for one of the chapters. Warmest wishes, Toni, Thank you for this great post. Everyone has to find what's right for his or her body. Focus on the sensations that make up the pain. Assess pain. This blog is not a substitute for medical advice and serves only to help you to be your own advocate and to make migraine disease more visible and understood. Is there burning? Throughout his hike, Meltzer deliberately and repeatedly thanked his support crew. Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today. The Pain: Long-Run Fatigue Deal With It: Think of the Payoff "Don't get too emotionally involved with the pain or get upset when you feel it," Taylor says. Cold? And there will be substantial fatigue. ( Log Out /  Chronic pain being invisible doesn't allow the other person to see the danger and challenges. Thank you so much for the link to the website. In reaction to this, I started to think of my body being loose as I walked, like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. I will share them with my clients. Pain serves an important purpose by alerting you to injuries such as a sprained ankle or burned hand. 2009 Nov 1;10(8):1353-68. I had a "Beginning Meditation" DVD that I hadn't opened, so I thought, "What the heck...", opened it, and did a "Body Scan". I really love the subject of controlling pain with the mind. Warmest wishes, Toni. The Pain Toolkit is a collection of helpful tips and strategies for persistent pain, put together by someone with long-term pain: The Pain Toolkit; Meditation for pain. So just REST. The book will be out Fall of 2015. The reality of exercising when you have chronic pain means you’re probably going to be aching during a workout. Thank you Toni. 1. I remember a retired DEA agent whose old mother was dying painfully of cancer. It sounds like you may be more of an expert on it than I am! I am tired, and scared, and getting older. Enabling us to pace and moderate and stay within our pain limits. Maybe slightly dull the pain a wee bit for an hour, if you are lucky. I know that feeling of tightening the muscles around a point of pain. Text a friend. Watch a comedian on youtube. I always found myself extremely offended by those spiritual types, and their philosophies, and teachings because they come off insensitive, and even idiotic. Love to you, Toni. Thank you. You’re NOT a wannabe: YOU’RE A “BEING”. Look for other pleasant or interesting sense data in the present moment. My experience has shown me that my thoughts have a great impact on my pain. Make sure you understand what kind of a problem pain really is. Do not repeat going back to sleep. @ Meg, thanks for mentioning using your sight as your pain-free sense. It could be your toes, your face, your chest. And @Toni - great article as usual! Great article, Toni. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Either a) pain management needs to change or b) work needs to be seriously assessed. I picture the waves crashing onshore and I recall the warmth of the sand. These techniques do help sometimes. Push Through Pain – Everyday. Learn more in my books, How to Be Sick: Your Pocket Companion (2020); How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers (2nd edition, 2018): How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide (2015); and How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow (2013). Find as many as you can—the sight and feel of the sun shining through the window, the sound of cars passing by, a fleeting thought about what you'll eat for dinner, the hum of the refrigerator motor, the physical sensation of a wisp of hair on your cheek, an odor coming from the kitchen. If you are on disability this doesn’t apply. Prior to my injury and subsequent diagnosis with RSD/CRPS, I had always been a "push through the pain" kind of individual. ... Savor the pain. Having had pain since childhood, I am amazed at the things I learned to do as a child that had the wisdom of what you present here. Velda could be the name mother and father gave her but WAKE UP. With your permission (and giving you credit), I'd like to share these techniques with my family, who also share this inherited disease, but also my clients. The pain seeps through my body like a basement flood, creeping along carpets and baseboards until the whole mess is cold and ruined. They don’t know what it’s like to do the things you have to do, to get up and grind each day the way you do. www.tonibernhard.com. So I don't share much about it in those "rooms". Great article Tony. If you do, Façade time! YOU’RE ACTIVELY DOING IT. You've given me some good ideas! I hope you understand. ( Log Out /  Those and cannabis were pretty much the extent of our agriculture. Is the intolerable pain or tolerable pain? Our bodies really do know how to heal, if we take the time to listen. “Pain is weakness leaving the body,” the saying goes. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. You continue to inspire me and certainly countless others. Working with a physical therapist is key, since you might not know how to exercise—or even what type... Start small. Comedy is best because laughter increases endorphins. Take medication. Wrong. Remember to not feel guilty for not being ‘productive’ enough or not working. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. 2. Survival mode with chronic pain and the lack of options we have in society. I mean… get home and rest. Sometimes the pain just is too much to allow easy sleep. Warmest wishes to you, Toni. But there are ways to push through the invisible wall and squeeze every last drop out of a workout. But you will crawl through the day because you need something called money to do something called eat. Depression. Regards I'm so glad you found the article to be helpful! I was determined to take my usual walk down a lovely country road where I live. I had previously read about relaxing into pain and my immediate response was skepticism. Heat? Curse in creative new ways. Why Pay $200,000 to “Own” a LeBron James Video Clip? I do not recommend pushing through chronic pain. Lots of good tricks here. When you said that " I think it's misguided that so many people regard the taking of pain medication as a sign of weakness. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Chronic Pain: Fake it till you make it – Brainless Blogger, Fibromyalgia and sensitivity to non-painful stimuli, Follow Brainless Blogger on WordPress.com, March spring and incorporating new coping strategies. Then the FDA decided they were dangerous. I recommend experimenting with each to see which work for you. I'm also going to start a post on meditation. How to move through it: It is important to push through and continue to work with your doctors to optimize your treatment plan, including finding ways to treating your emotional health, so that you are can maintain a normal daily life. There are other things that increase endorphins, some are activities and others are natural things; activities include exercise and sex. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. But when it isn’t managed… well, it is torture, plain and simple. Chronic pain is pain that lasts a long time. And an impossible time falling asleep due to the pain. It always helps to begin with conscious breathing in which you pay attention to the physical sensation of the breath as it goes in and out of your body. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely still a work in progress - I just had a spinal cord stimulator placed, in fact - but I'm learning. There are lots of techniques. I look forward to implementing your suggestions and include them in advice to others. Mindfulness and Self-Compassion One Year into COVID-19, Unlock Altruism to Conquer Fear-Based Responses to Covid-19. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Nothing I say is medical advice or treatment or is a substitute for medical advice or treatment. I would like to offer a vote of support to the post about Meditation as another "tool in our bag" to help deal with pain. You can take this technique a step further and engage a pain-free area in some movement. Sex can also be too painful. Try imagery. Yay! If you have manageable pain within the spectrum of ‘Baseline’ to ‘Barely-functional but still upright’ then likely you will go to work. So true peace, and happiness is to drop the labels, and embrace, and accept, and welcome with open arms every single experience that life gives you, and to treat it all as equal, and lots of weird ramblings about us being infinite beings, and everything being divine,and perfect as it is. Do you agree with that article I linked, because it personally angers me, and offends me greatly, which is actually why I’m typing this long ass message in the first place to get a second opinion. Living life with a chronic illness is definitely not easy. I just stumbled upon this article. Kudos. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Create an upbeat playlist for your iPod. After a few minutes, try these five techniques to see if they help relieve your physical pain. Perhaps a more important question is should you push through the pain? I just don't get it's course. It... Distract Yourself. Chronic pain, however, is often more complex. I use that phrase all the time when I talk about different practices to help with chronic pain and illness! Yes, I'm going to post on the body scan. Hi Toni, I love how focused you always are.Your tips are so practical and helpful. I focused on the pain and realized how tightly I was holding my entire body because of the pain. she never really liked that name. Someone emailed me a link to it just yesterday. xoxoxooxox, I'm sorry to hear of your difficulty getting proper pain medication. Be well; Namaste. It touches every single part of my life, from hygiene, to cooking, to relationships, to sleeping. You are innately important as a person and as a person you have your own value in many ways that are not what you ‘do’ for a living. This can reduce your overall pain load. Knowing when you should stop pushing through the pain when it comes to exercise can be complicated and confusing. ht tps: // hbmag DOT com / avoid - pain - suffering /. But keep in mind when I use the phrase I mean being in High Pain and trying to Function… and doing that over and over again. I'm so glad you liked the article. You are burned out from just dealing with the pain all the time and exceeding your limits. Learn how your comment data is processed. Oh, we do it, but in the long run, it doesn’t work out well. This is a fabulous article! 3. I read it not only from the viewpoint of someone who experiences daily pain from a chronic progressive disease, but also as a Health Coach who occasionally guides clients through the rough spots in dealing with their pain. There’s something about a mantra that somehow tricks your brain into believing something is true. 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I think it's misguided that so many people regard the taking of pain medication as a sign of weakness. Try These 7 Simple Tips to Ease Chronic Pain. Keep up the good work and thanks again. The article has had such a positive response that I'm preparing one now on the body scan which is another technique that can help with pain and flu-like symptoms. I hope the methods I've written about provide some help for you. Remember to pace. For example, physiotherapy exercises that are safe to do and one need to push through the pain to get benefits. Thank you so much for sharing these. 4. It makes it very hard because I feel I have no control over the illness. Any thoughts on using thc vapes or cbd vapes to cope with pain and reduce inflammation? Thanks again for reading and commenting. That coupled with that flu like feeling you probably know all too well. No way to live for sure. I think some of the people who will find your article helpful might also benefit from this insightful article by Thanissaro Bhikkhu titled "Using Meditation to Deal with Pain, Illness & Death": http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/painhelp.html, I had the great pleasure of attending several of his daylongs in Redwood City before I got sick. That's just plain ignorance in my opinion! So you're not a "10" in every which way. How to Push Through the Pain of a Tough Workout Pick a Mantra. I like to call it Mindfulness-Based Pain Reduction. You have so many beautiful suggestions. For pain or to help you sleep. They're about endurance building through endeavor. People can become or remain lonely through sheer atrophy, according to Winch. So much so I have written a book sharing lots more examples and research which backs up why the techniques work. Drugs are very good at getting rid of pain, but they often have unpleasant, and even serious, side effects when used for a long time. Depression is a very common comorbid symptom of chronic pain, and with good reason. I suspect that people who offer this type of advice have never suffered from chronic pain . Meditate to relax. We're told "no pain, no gain" or "push through the pain." Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. I'm confident you'd find more good ideas there. According to the team of experts at New England Baptist Hospital (NEBH) in Boston, taking it easy is an outdated and ineffective approach. Warmly, Toni. I do have to get your book! Medical marijuana for the treatment of chronic pain and other medical and psychiatric problems: a clinical review. Plaster on that Façade of Wellbeing and Fake Wellness like the actor or actress you are! Warmest wishes to you, Toni. I'm glad someone mailed you the link. Finally, bring an attitude of kindness toward the sensations, even though they may be unpleasant. I think I'm going to follow-up on this article with one on the body scan since so many people have responded to this one. Push Through the Pain to Build Muscle A little bit of agony means you're doing things right. We're told "no pain...no gain" or "push through the pain." Actually I ordered that book onto my kindle yesterday and I'm finding myself nodding a lot! " 1. Great article. Curse the pain. And that always makes it worse. We're told "no pain...no gain" or "push through the pain." Warmest wishes, Toni. Some of the techniques are adapted from MBSR: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. In medicine, the distinction between acute and chronic pain is sometimes determined by the amount of time since onset. I decided to ‘take it' and to endure all pain as it had been coming and to go on with it as much as it is possible. If chronic pain can be manageable with treatment then it is better but still difficult. Remember your concentration, focus, short-term memory, long-term memory, memory memory, and memory memory memory will be affected by the pain. And Dee Dee’s own tendency to try to push through pain made it difficult for her to acknowledge how much pain was impacting her life. I'd love for you to share the piece. You are addressing an important topic and, as usual, in a clear, practical and helpful way. Change ). Have your migraine attacks become more frequent during the pandemic? We have no alternative. I'm a recovering alcoholic, and must be very careful about what I take, how often, etc. But we did carry around poppy seeds. I suspect that people who offer this type of advice have never suffered from chronic pain.