Self-responsibility
Client-centred Treatment
Want to take control of your pain?
"I want to know what I can do for my pain"
This phone inquiry has stayed with me for many years, I think the lady was cross
She had just been to her doctor and wanted information and help to "help herself"
Unfortunately, many treatment options to help your chronic pain revolve around you being passive.
A therapist treating you with pills, hands-on physical body treatments, having blood tests, MRI’s or X rays.
You may have been prescribed exercise by a physiotherapist that you find challenging.
A client-centred approach to pain treatment is focussed:
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On self-responsibility,
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You learn how help yourself,
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You learn self-help ideas to relieve pain.
Pain clinics focus on the principle of pain management
Your pain may be persistent and constant for months or years or it may be the intermittent variety that can appear and disappear.
Many pain treatments and pain clinics are based on the principle of pain management.
I’m not sure that many of my clients want to settle for management of their chronic pain preferring to take action to lessen or make their pain as unobtrusive as possible.
Why chronic pain clients need ongoing support
Exhaustion and Fatigue due to Pain makes Self-help Difficult
Pain, especially ongoing pain can be exhausting.
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After struggling through a day at work or looking after your family not only is your pain likely to be worse but simply moving can take so much effort, let alone doing anything meaningful.
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For some of you this exhaustion is endless, not just being exhausted at the end of the day but waking up in extreme pain and still exhausted even if you have a good night sleep.
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Who wants to feel exhausted at the start of the day?
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This ‘pain fatigue’ is common amongst chronic pain sufferers.
Cognitive Function and Brain Fog
Often our brain function and the relationship with cognition, memory and attention can be overlooked by many chronic pain doctors and their pain treatment protocols.
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However, those people in chronic pain are very aware of the connection.
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Rarely can you get your mind to function 100% on your daily tasks at work.
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Concentration and focus is exhausting
One way to explain how chronic pain feels to friends and work colleagues:
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imagine one of those really bad hangovers,
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perhaps we had when we were younger.
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Those hangovers that made it challenging to lift or move your head!
One of the difficulties, rarely discussed is how memory and general everyday thinking can be affected by living with chronic pain.
You might also be afraid to mention your pain to employers, or even colleagues. They cannot under the way you have to push through each day and even smile while you're doing this.
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With this bad head you have a critical meeting coming up,
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need to respond to an urgent email that has to be carefully worded,
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there's an accident to respond to or
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even just being in a busy noisy bright office?
Wow! That's hard.
Perhaps it's time to check in with friends, or workmates as chronic pain cannot be seen, and disabilities also need to be hidden or excused as just a muscle pain, it's nothing.
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Yet there are many people, quietly enduring chronic pain, in silence, at work perhaps sitting beside you today.
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It's understandable that focus, concentration and accurate and effective problem-solving is difficult.
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Though perhaps the worst is to know you could do much better in the career or work that you love if your pain would just go away or at least turn down the volume of your pain signals
Relevant article: Memory Challenges: How chronic pain shrinks the brain
Quiet resolution to “battle on” or “push through the pain”
The above sections may be prompting readers to say-well "take a break",
have a holiday or get more rest and you'll feel better.
Unfortunately, chronic pain is just that "chronic", it's continuous and goes on for many months perhaps years with little resolution or relief. If you pause then the task as of pushing through the pain becomes even harder.
We all have dreams, future directions we want to travel. Most importantly chronic pain sufferers are often in those crucial years between 30 and 60 when we are at the height of earning capacity, when we create wealth, buy houses and with this financial security set ourselves up for the rest of what is these days, a long and happy life.
What choice?
Whether to "battle on"
or when pushing through the pain is not an option.
Relevant article: Client story of - Work stress overwhelm causes nearly fatal incident
