Chronic Pain & Your Emotional Health
Chronic pain can cause many stressors, not only to our physical health but to our emotional heath, as well.
Medication can provide relief from the physical pain. However, it can cause mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, or chronic elevated stress levels.
Additionally, chronic pain can trigger many negative emotions, such as worry, guilt, anxiety, and depression. Taking an integrative approach to chronic pain can help to reduce these heightened emotions.
Taking good care of yourself is easy when you know what you need. However, figuring out what you need is not quite as easy.
These tips should help you to look after your emotional health when living with chronic pain.
Seek A Professional
Normalize and understand your feelings through working with a coach, counselor or psychologist. When you find a practitioner with whom you feel safe you can more easily talk through your feelings and emotions. In the confronting of your feelings you may also find that you can move forward more easily. It is not healthy to hide your feelings. When we do so we can wreak havoc on our health and happiness.
Cognitive Behavioral Coaching or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) may you to understand your unique thought patterns as well as how to change them.
You can better cope with chronic pain when you identify and modify patterns of fear, anxiety, low motivation, and negative thinking. #chronicpain #emotionalhealth Click To Tweet
You can reduce your anxiety and stress by talking about your feelings without hiding them.
Exercise
Finding new exercise, or opportunities of movement, is important to replace the exercise that may be more difficult now. Try walking, yoga, or low-intensity exercises that suit you. This is a great opportunity to try something new.
Physical activity also enhances energy, self-esteem, fosters feelings of accomplishment, and helps to reduce stress levels. Start slowly, assess your feelings and decide how far you want to push yourself.
Mindfulness
Yoga is especially beneficial to those who suffer from chronic pain. According to several studies, the yoga brain can reduce the perception of pain.
Practicing mindfulness in the day to day goings on of your life allows you to be more present. In tun you’d an also release yourself from self-judging behaviors. Accepting and self-managing issues motivates one to take action.
You can also use mindfulness to help you breathe through your pain during difficult times.
Avoid Overextending Yourself
Set your own boundaries rather than simply doing what others expect you to do.
For example, if you are meeting a friend but only have a certain amount of time be honest and clear about your limitations. Adapt your lifestyle so that it can remain exciting and interactive, while also fitting your unique needs.
When you can’t or don’t want to do something, be strong and say no. Do not feel guilty for attending to your own needs.
Conclusion
These tips should help you to look after your emotional health when living with chronic pain.
From seeking the help of family or friends, seeing a therapist, working with a life coach or considering alternative treatments such as CBD there are many options. Of course if you are considering CBD do be sure to research any dispenser you are considering such as High Society, or any other.
Do you have any other tips that could help? Please share them below.
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14 thoughts on “Chronic Pain & Your Emotional Health”
Thanks for all the tips shared for emotional health. Very important one.
Our emotional health is important to protect. Take care of yourself.
Having someone to talk to would be a great help and of course exercise and good sleeping patterns. When you feel that the burden is too much, seek a professional help.
Having somebody that you can speak to without worry about it being shared for you being judged is really a huge help to alleviating a burden.
Thanks for this. I’m always in a lot of pain but no real answers yet as to why.
I hope that you will find that source very soon.
Mindfulness is a good path to take, when dealing with chronic pain. I have made use of it before, when it came to dealing with pain in my knee!
Mindfulness has helped you to be able to better control your pain. Thank you for sharing your story.
Exercise is all we need. I cannot stress enough the benefits of it to our body.
Exercise makes a difference in all areas of ourselves.
Seeking professionals are obviously important for caring about our emotional health. But some people are being there who even don’t understand this. Thanks for sharing
Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees. That is why it is good to help people to be able to see more clearly.
My mum lives with chronic pain so I know only too well that the two are very much linked. Useful tips for helping to improve your quality life when living with chronic pain.
Hopefully, these tips can help your mother. As well you may receive much benefit from following some of these yourself.