Coping With Pain: What To Do When You’re Struggling
If there’s one thing that no one wants to have, it’s pain. There’s nothing more uncomfortable than living with constant or chronic pain. Chronic pain can have a significant impact on your day-to-day life and your general wellbeing, not to mention your mental health. It can be extremely debilitating and can make day to day life rather difficult to manage, which can make coping with the pain that you’re feeling a struggle.
Living with constant pain isn’t easy, in fact it can be downright difficult to cope with. If you’re living with constant or recurring pain, then you might find that you struggle to know how to approach managing things. It’s perfectly fine to feel overwhelmed and upset that you’re struggling to cope with how you are feeling – it’s completely normal to feel this way.
The good news is that while you might not be able to alleviate pain completely from your life, there are steps that you can take to make coping a little easier for yourself. It’s just a case of finding the strategy that works for you and your pain. Bearing that in mind, below are a few tips and suggestions for ways in which you can make coping a little easier.
Learn to meditate and deep breathe
Deep breathing and meditation can be used to help your body to relax; when your body relaxes you may find that feelings of pain are eased as a result. When you are holding tension in your body, it impacts your muscles which can, in turn, cause your pain to be magnified. But by taking the time to follow some simple breathing exercises and practicing some meditation-based activities, like yoga, you can help to reduce that tension.
There are lots of different ways that you can meditate; how you choose to go about it is up to you. A lot of people find that using meditation apps like Calm, for instance, can be a great way to make learning to meditate and deep breathe, a little easier. These apps offer various meditation-based activities to follow and have different sections based on what you need, such as sleep relief and anxiety relief, for example.
Reduce stress in your life
Did you know that stress- among other feelings like anger – can increase how significantly your body feels pain? By learning how to better control feelings of stress, you can make managing your pain a little easier and more achievable. If you can take control of some of the stress that your body is exposed to, then you might be able to cope more easily with the pain that you are feeling.
When it comes to reducing feelings of stress, there are various techniques that you can take advantage of. For instance, some people find that listening to calming music helps to soothe them and reduce feelings of stress, while other people find that taking up a relaxing hobby, such as crochet or adult colouring, helps them to feel less stressed and more relaxed. So, if you want to find a way to reduce your feelings of stress, it might be worth taking the time to think about taking up a new, more relaxing hobby.
Do gentle exercise
When you’re in pain, the last thing that you want to do is be active. However, studies have shown that you can boost chronic pain relief through natural endorphins released during exercise, so if you’re able to it’s worth trying to do some regular exercise. Exercise can help to reduce feelings of pain, as well as helping to strengthen muscles and potentially prevent further issues from occurring.
Another benefit of exercising is the fact that regular exercise will help you to keep your weight down. It’s easy to gain weight when living with chronic or ongoing pain because you don’t feel like doing very much, however by exercising you can help to reduce weight gain. When you gain weight you put your body under further pressure, which can actually make feelings of pain worse. That’s why it’s worth taking the time to find out what kinds of exercise you might be able to do, and how exercising might help to support your pain management.
Get professional support
If you find that you’re really struggling to cope with the pain that you’re experiencing on a daily basis, it’s important that you take the time to speak to a professional. Even if you’ve already spoken with your doctor about the condition causing your pain, if you’re struggling to manage the pain that you’ve found yourself in, it’s worth reaching out for further support.
While you could speak to your doctor, you could also opt to look into other routes for pain management treatment, such as seeking out a clinic like Sydney Spine & Pain, for instance. The key is that you learn how to effectively manage your pain, and by working with specialists in pain, you may be able to do this. Don’t be afraid to seek medical support – if you’re in pain then you need to source the support that you need.
Join a support group
It’s not easy living with pain, especially when you feel that you have no one to turn to who understands what you’re going through. That’s why looking into joining a support group for people who are living with chronic pain could be a step in the right direction. It’s not easy living with ongoing pain, which is why it’s so important that you find the support that you need, and a support group could offer that support.
Being able to share your experiences of pain and its impact on your life with other people could help you to feel better about the situation that you have found yourself in. Having people around you who understand what you’re going through can help to make coping a little easier; it won’t take the pain away but it might make managing it seem more doable.
There you have it, a few simple tips and suggestions for how you can make managing pain a little easier. Life is never easy when you suffer from chronic pain but that doesn’t mean it has to be a complete nightmare either.
