Pain and How To Reprogram Your Body Mental Pain, Emotional Pain and Physical Pain
What is pain?
In lay terms, it is a way for the body to tell us that something is wrong and needs attention, which is actually positive, however, not so for chronic pain patients where no medication eradicates pain completely so we talk about pain management. For example in lupus, fibromyalgia, MS, to name a few, pain is felt all over the body on various levels all the time.
Anxiety and depression can cause tightness and pain in the chest and disrupt digestion and multiple other functions. Or, an injury has healed but the pain stays.
Here is what anesthesiologist and pain medicine doctor Anita Hickey, MD has to say in her book, Pain Is Not What It Seems, “We take the opioids, which act on the opioid receptors, which are on the descending part of the pain pathway.
Meanwhile, the areas of our brain that register pain coming up the ascending pain pathway say, ‘You are not fooling me with that fake opioid stuff. I still have pain signals coming up here so I’m going to turn down my opioid receptors.’ The patient then takes more opioids and the cycle continues.”
Mental and emotional pain is even more diffuse and harder to treat. For example, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in the United States, affecting 40 million adults in the U.S. age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
America and the healthcare system have started to turn to different approaches. Mindfulness, wellness and holistic healthcare are now household names and are used in conjunction with traditional medicine. Treating the cause not the effect. How to help myself, how to learn to turn off the panic button and calm down the pain receptors. Jin Shin Jyutsu® and other modalities are now used in hospitals around the country.
Lets Do Self Care
Sit back in your chair and give yourself a hug. Place your hands under your armpits. Let your breath settle, let your mind drift and bring it back to feeling the breath weaving through your body. Breathe out and in 36 times, or as long as you desire.
