Is the Pain in Your Head? Or is it Real?
First it’s important to establish why you are seeing a counselor in the first place. Your pain IS real. We have no doubt that there are real things going on in your body that are causing you pain. If you had pain and nothing was wrong with your body, you would be suffering a delusion, just like the mental patient who believes they are Jesus Christ or Santa Clause. Since we know you are not crazy, we also know that the pain is NOT “all in your head”.
So why do you have to see a psychologist or a counselor then? STRESS. If you are anything like all of the other patients out there in chronic pain, you are under a tremendous amount of stress. The pain interferes with sleep. Lack of sleep makes you cranky. When you are cranky others might not want to be around you. You may not want to be around them either! You start isolating yourself. You don’t go out to church, to your friends, to the movies, or maybe even to the mailbox. Depression sets in. You spend most of your time in bed or on the couch, and your mind begins to spin out of control, worrying about how you will pay your bills, if your pain will ever go away, if it will get worse, if your family would be better off without you….
This is what happens to people in chronic pain. It’s not personal. It happens to EVERYONE who is in pain for six months or more. This type of chronic pain is simply more than humans were designed for. Millions of years ago if a cave man herniated his disk, he keeled over and laid there in pain until he starved to death. Our brains now don’t look much different than they did back then. Our brains have not evolved to manage stress that does not go away. If we keep being stressed by the pain and all of the problems it brings, all day, every day, after about six months we are broken down by all of the stress and we stop functioning. We become hermits. Our lives shrink down to a tiny speck of what they were before. We feel helpless, or hopeless, angry, sad, or just empty.
This is why we have counselors in the program. Because pain does not just affect your body, it affects your LIFE—all parts of your life. And we want to help put those pieces back together—your self-esteem, your relationships, your interests and hobbies, your finances, your future. And we want to help reduce the stress in your life and teach you how to deal with the stress so that it does not get the better of you.
In order to do this we will be using different types of counseling over the course of each week. This includes:
First it’s important to establish why you are seeing a counselor in the first place. Your pain IS real. We have no doubt that there are real things going on in your body that are causing you pain. If you had pain and nothing was wrong with your body, you would be suffering a delusion, just like the mental patient who believes they are Jesus Christ or Santa Clause. Since we know you are not crazy, we also know that the pain is NOT “all in your head”.
So why do you have to see a psychologist or a counselor then? STRESS. If you are anything like all of the other patients out there in chronic pain, you are under a tremendous amount of stress. The pain interferes with sleep. Lack of sleep makes you cranky. When you are cranky others might not want to be around you. You may not want to be around them either! You start isolating yourself. You don’t go out to church, to your friends, to the movies, or maybe even to the mailbox. Depression sets in. You spend most of your time in bed or on the couch, and your mind begins to spin out of control, worrying about how you will pay your bills, if your pain will ever go away, if it will get worse, if your family would be better off without you….
This is what happens to people in chronic pain. It’s not personal. It happens to EVERYONE who is in pain for six months or more. This type of chronic pain is simply more than humans were designed for. Millions of years ago if a cave man herniated his disk, he keeled over and laid there in pain until he starved to death. Our brains now don’t look much different than they did back then. Our brains have not evolved to manage stress that does not go away. If we keep being stressed by the pain and all of the problems it brings, all day, every day, after about six months we are broken down by all of the stress and we stop functioning. We become hermits. Our lives shrink down to a tiny speck of what they were before. We feel helpless, or hopeless, angry, sad, or just empty.
This is why we have counselors in the program. Because pain does not just affect your body, it affects your LIFE—all parts of your life. And we want to help put those pieces back together—your self-esteem, your relationships, your interests and hobbies, your finances, your future. And we want to help reduce the stress in your life and teach you how to deal with the stress so that it does not get the better of you.
In order to do this we will be using different types of counseling over the course of each week. This includes:
We will be teaching you a lot of different things to try when you are struggling with pain, stress, depression, anxiety, anger, frustration and other things associated with your pain. Each day will cover a different topic and you will receive specific materials to help reinforce what you have learned each day about handling your pain, stress and negative emotions better. The antidote to stress is RELAXATION. You cannot be stressed out if you are relaxed. Try it if you don’t believe me. We will teach you how to force your body to relax. Your body has a natural “relaxation response” built in, just like the “Stress Response” you may have heard about. We can teach you (it’s easier than you think) how to force your body to relax so that it does not have those feelings associated with stress. You will be amazed at how effective this is and how it is free, has no side effects and can be done anywhere!: you will meet with a group therapist and several other patients who also have chronic pain. You will come to realize how much you have in common with others who are struggling with pain, and be able to talk to others who have actually walked a mile in your shoes. It can be comforting to spend time with others who are struggling with the same stressor and pain that you are. You can hear about what works for them in trying to manage all of this and share your own stories about what has worked, or not worked, for you. You will meet one-on-one with a counselor assigned to your case for private sessions where you can talk about whatever is troubling you. This counselor will listen without judging or trying to tell you what to do. The provider will help you sort things out, make sense of them and figure out what you want to do differently in your life to be less stressed and more happy.
You can expect that about half of your day will be spent with the counseling staff. We do customize each patient’s treatment program, however, so some patients may have more or less than this. Many patients comment, especially in the first week, that one of the best things about the program is being able to talk with and spend time with other patients who are struggling with the same problems. It takes you out of your tendency to be a hermit and withdraw from others and makes you feel like a somewhat normal person again. We look forward to helping you on that journey.