The phrase “maintaining your balance” probably makes you think about keeping your body upright without falling over. Although physical balance can be an issue when dealing with certain medical conditions and taking medications, there is another type of balance that is equally important and often overlooked in the treatment of chronic pain. When dealing with chronic pain “the other balance” is your emotional balance.
Chronic pain is both a physical and emotional stressor. All patients who have a chronic pain condition also naturally experience chronic, pain-related emotional stress. Like physical pain, emotional distress is variable. It usually goes up and down with your pain level and makes you more emotionally sensitive to the influence of day-to-day stressors. Knowing how to effectively respond to and manage this emotional distress is a key part of developing successful pain management coping strategies. These coping strategies assist patients as they search to find ways to live with their chronic pain.
Over time, chronic pain patients learn a lot about the physical aspects of their pain. This knowledge includes medical terms and diagnoses, medication names and types of procedures. Unfortunately there usually isn’t much discussion or information about the emotional challenges chronic pain brings into your life and how to best handle them. Properly managing pain-related stress is very important. The longer pain-related emotional distress stays elevated, the greater the risk for losing emotional balance. When emotional balance is lost, the consequences can be much more than feeling stressed, depressed or frustrated. Loss of emotional balance is associated with higher levels of pain, decreased ability to tolerate pain, poor immune functioning, increased use of pain medication and loss of quality of life. Continue reading »