Managing Pain without Drugs Part 2: Mental Aspects of Pain

Pain has a significant mental component to it. Our mental state can increase and decrease our perception of pain and the amount of stress we are in. There have been experiments where people were instructed to push a button to deliver a treatment that would reduce the pain. MRIs showed that indeed there was less pain stimulation but the buttons weren’t hooked up to anything. They had thought their pain away. Pain is often described as 20% physical and 80% emotional. The emotions most often associated with pain include: fear, anxiety, anger, guilt, grief and helplessness.

A psychologist who specializes in pain can help with many of the mental techniques. The psychologist’s focus is to reduce the stress response that contribute to overall tension and affects several types of pain. Cognitive behavioral and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR )programs will change the way you think about pain. Pain tends to be increased when we have negative thoughts associated with it and decrease if we can have a more positive thought pattern. A good pain specialist with teach you a number of techniques to help with pain and overall health support. Self-hypnosis, deep relaxation, and other stress reduction methods are among the most popular.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and EMDR help you identify the negative thoughts about your pain and then change them to more functional, positive thoughts. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to stimulate processing and connect positive thoughts to negative memories and reduce the magnitude of negative emotions. These and other cognitive therapies use the power of the mind to change the way we feel by reducing negative thoughts and worries about the past and future.

Using mindfulness, self-hypnosis and deep muscle relaxation to help you stay in the here and now and create a feeling of well being will reduced the emotional aspects associated with chronic pain.  They reduce your overall stress levels and encourage your body to heal.