Managing Your Mental Health When Dealing With Chronic Pain
For many people, the impacts of chronic pain spread far beyond physical limitations and discomfort. Chronic pain can make it difficult or even impossible to complete everyday tasks, feel productive at work, enjoy quality time with your family, or participate in the hobbies and activities you once loved. On top of the physical pain, grieving these negative lifestyle changes and struggling to find solutions can seriously affect mental health. Take care of your mind by incorporating these practices to help boost your mental health.
Practice Positive Self-Talk
When it feels like your body is betraying you, it’s easy to feel down on yourself and have negative thoughts. However, our perceptions and our thoughts have powerful impacts on our reality. Talking to yourself constructively and being gentle with yourself can help you find acceptance of your condition and lessen the mental turmoil and stress of living with chronic pain. Decreased stress often means decreased pain, so try to replace resentful or angry thoughts by being kind and patient with yourself.
Talk About Your Experience
Experiencing chronic pain can feel extremely lonely. Looking around at the others in your life continuing on as usual while the effects of chronic pain wear you down can make you feel like an outsider. Reach out to support groups, a therapist, or a close friend or family member to talk about your experience. This can help you process what you are going through and give you additional support.
Practice Gratitude
When you are experiencing chronic pain, finding aspects of your life to feel grateful for can be difficult. However, practicing gratitude can work wonders in boosting your mood and helping you find joy in each day. It’s okay if this does not come easily right away. It’s called practice for a reason! Many people use a gratitude journal to jot down small things they’re grateful for. Eating a delicious meal or laughing at your favorite show — nothing is too small. Reflecting on the gratitude you feel for these positive experiences can help alleviate the weight of living with the negative experience of chronic pain.
Find Activities You Love
Living with chronic pain can make participating in your usual hobbies or activities difficult or painful. Exploring new activities can help keep you in good spirits, even on the most painful days. Maybe you’ll discover a new genre of books you love or a new way of moving your body that feels supportive. Yoga, stretching, or aquatic exercises are helpful for many people who experience chronic pain. Trying new things can boost your mental health and give you new ways to alleviate some symptoms of chronic pain.
Care for Your Body
It is normal to feel angry at your body when experiencing chronic pain. However, practicing self-care and positive self-talk can help improve your mental health and alleviate some degree of physical pain. Care for your body daily by eating well, exercising regularly, and setting a routine sleep schedule. Getting great rest, nutrition, and movement can improve mental and physical health.
Consider All Treatment Options
Finding the right treatment plan is one of the most frustrating aspects of living with chronic pain. Unfortunately, the norm for treating chronic pain is prescribing painkillers, recommending over-the-counter medications, or planning invasive surgeries. The stress of trying to understand these options and the frustration of living with long-term side effects or risky surgeries only add to mental health struggles for many people.
It’s important to understand that there are other options for treatment. Chronic Care of Richmond provides non-invasive, long-term treatments for chronic pain. Using the body’s natural healing power, Chronic Care of Richmond can help provide long-lasting relief from chronic pain. Request a consultation today!
