The June 2024 issue of AARP Bulletin featured an interesting article about pain management. What made it interesting for us isn’t so much about pain or medical treatment. It’s about learning how to use mindfulness techniques and positive affirmations to help us respond to our challenging situations in a more productive way.
AARP.com
Your Best Bet for Managing Chronic Pain May Be a Well-Coordinated Strategy (excerpt)
Instead of a single cure, researchers are now looking for a multipronged approach to managing everyday aches
June 11, 2024
by Jessica Migala
Note from The Meditation Center: We aren’t sharing the entire article, because pain management isn’t exactly why we are sharing it. We always talk about awareness, and the power of our words we use. Our subconscious believes what we say, even if we don’t consciously believe it. This is a perfect example. This article provided these techniques to help manage chronic pain, but you can also use them for anything else that challenges you. Take time to focus your thoughts and words in ways that lift you up, instead of pulling yourself down. Change your mind, change your life!
Master mindfulness
The emotional anguish caused by pain presents a big hurdle in recovery, says Eric Garland, distinguished professor in the College of Social Work at the University of Utah. It’s natural to experience invasive thoughts such as:
- This isn’t fair.
- What if this pain never goes away?
- What if my pain means that something bad is happening in my body?
“These emotional reactions turn the volume of pain up and make it more intense,” Garland says. “Mindfulness is a way of observing this process of reacting negatively to pain and removing the negative emotions we place onto pain. When we learn how to use mindfulness to see our pain as pure sensation rather than emotional anguish, it can be easier to cope with and manage the sensation,” explains Garland, who developed a mindfulness program supported by the National Institutes of Health. The Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) program serves as a treatment for chronic pain and opioid misuse. The relief isn’t forever. Garland compares it to taking an ibuprofen. “When it wears off after a few hours, you take another dose. The same principle holds for mindfulness. You have to practice it again to refresh the pain relief.”
(image by Manuel Bortoletti)
If you are an AARP member, you can log in to their website to view the full article here: https://www.aarp.org/benefits-discounts/members-only-access/info-2024/managing-chronic-pain.html