New Ways to Manage Chronic Pain

new ways to manage chronic pain

A New Book on Chronic Pain

I was given the opportunity to read and review a book by Sarah Ann Shockley. The name of the book is called The Pain Companion-Everyday Wisdom for Living with and Moving Beyond Chronic Pain. The forward is by Bernie Siegel. I have read some of Bernie’s books, so when I saw that he had written the forward I was intrigued. Sarah Anne Shockley is an award-winning filmmaker who has lived with debilitating pain from thoracic outlet syndrome for more than ten years. She has been unresponsive to existing traditional and alternative therapies. Because of this she came up with new ways to manage chronic pain.

Three Parts to the Book

There are three parts to this book. Part 1 is Pain Moves In. Part 2 is titled The Emotional Life of Chronic Pain. Part 3 is called Meditative Approaches to Physical Pain Lastly Part 4 is When Pain is the Teacher. This book was unlike any I have read on chronic illness or chronic pain. My chronic illness is fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. I do get moderate pain frequently, but my hardest symptom to deal with is exhaustion. This book sounded like it would be a great book to apply to my life.

Part One

The book starts out with her explaining how her pain and condition began, and what it was like to not have any control over it. I could definitely relate to this. You start to think of your body as the enemy. She had excruciating symptoms such as migraines, intense burning hands, neck , and arms. Sarah began to wonder how she was going to take care of herself and her child. Each chapter in Part 1 ends with a letter she’s written to pain. If you wrote a letter to your pain what would it say?

Part Two

Part 2 discusses how physical pain can have a huge impact on our emotional experience, quality of life, and our relationships. It gives suggestions on how to heal those difficult emotions. She reminds us how important it is to acknowledge those feelings so you don’t become stuck. She believes that if these emotions aren’t dealt with they could actually lock in your pain. Something none of us want of course!

There is an exercise that she came up with addressing new ways to manage chronic pain. It is called the Technique for Releasing Difficult Emotions. She asks you what emotion you’re feeling as you’re in pain. There are 6 steps to this technique.

Step 1 Don’t try to stop the feeling or the pain, just be with it for a moment.

Step 2 Allow yourself to feel the emotion as fully as you’re able. Does you’re physical pain change at all? Is it better or worse?

Step 3 Breathe into and through your feelings, while noticing your physical pain.

Step 4 While breathing through your emotional state notice a spaciousness.

Step 5 Ask yourself if you are ready for a change. Breathe in deeply and release it fully. Let the emotion release.

Step 6 See how this exercise changes your emotional and pain levels as you learn to work through this often.

I found this exercise to be very helpful. So many times I’m busy trying to stop the pain. This just tenses me up more. I usually don’t pay attention to the feelings that go along with the pain, so that was useful as well. I became more aware of the whole experience of pain after doing this exercise and was able to release some of it.

She also explains how you shouldn’t feel guilty for being sick. So many times I feel this way, even after all these years of being sick. This is something I have to work on daily. She gives practical suggestions on asking for help, etc. When you don’t feel well on a daily basis it is easy to become angry about the situation.

Sometimes when I wake up after a bad night’s sleep I am so aggravated that I am in pain and fatigued once again. I then won’t be able to do all the things I need to get done. Sometimes you feel like you have no control over your life because it’s so unpredictable. But there are some decisions that you still get to make. Sarah encourages you to think about what those decisions might be.

People living with a chronic illness often experience anxiety and stress as well. This affects all aspects of their life. The book offers some great points on how to handle anxiety and how to re frame your thinking. She offers these tips.

Tips:

1. Notice What’s Really Happening

2. Notice What Has Already Worked Out

3. Notice what You can Take Charge Of

4. Notice What’s Going Well Right Now

5. Time It and Start Again

I encourage you to read the book for more details. The rest of part 2 talks about isolation and loneliness, invisibility, physical and emotional exhaustion, and sadness and loss.

Part Three

Part 3 of the book is about Meditative Approaches to Physical Pain. She addresses listening to your body, communicating with pain, releasing breath, pain as messenger to name a few.

Part Four

Lastly, Part 4 is Pain is the Teacher. Don’t resist the pain.

“This doesn’t feel good at all. In fact I feel pretty terrible, but I accept the situation for what it is, and I’m working with my pain to see what i can do to heal more quickly, to understand why it’s here.” Sarah Anne Shockley

She reminds us to be compassionate with ourselves and thinking of pain as an ally. Maybe it’s trying to tell you something. I never thought of pain this way. It was just seen as a nuisance that I wanted to get rid of as soon as possible. She introduced me to to these new ways of managing chronic pain which I found so helpful.

All in all I appreciated learning new ways to manage chronic pain. I am learning to not fight it, but to welcome what it has to tell me. Surprisingly doing this helped me to relax and ease some of the pain. The past three weeks have been hard for me. I’ve been in increased pain and exhaustion from insomnia and stress. This book was helpful to deal with that.

I recommend if you deal with chronic pain or know someone who does get a copy of this book. It is not written from a Christian perspective, but I didn’t find anything that contradicted my faith. I will say that I added prayer and scripture reading to the parts on anxiety.

You might want to check out some of my other book reviews to help you with your chronic pain or illness.

Do you have a new ways to manage chronic pain? What helps you? I’d love to hear them in the comments.