All posts tagged: psychology

Reworking Your Home Life to Minimize Chronic Pain

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We have a lovely guest post from a new contributor, Jackie Waters, of Hyper-Tidy.com!  Living in constant pain can cause worry, stress, anxiety, and depression. You wonder if you’ll ever feel better or if you’ll keep feeling worse. It is possible to get your life back and get a handle on chronic pain. People who suffer from it can incorporate everyday, holistic changes to improve their quality of life and manage their pain. Lifestyle and Diet Mindfulness meditation is a way to effectively train your brain to turn down the volume on pain. According to The Huffington Post, “A typical meditation involves focusing on different parts of the body and simply observing with the mind’s eye what you find.” Doing this makes you aware of the connection between your mind and body; you observe painful sensations as they happen, and then let go of struggling with them. You may doubt the impact mindfulness meditation can have on chronic pain, but it has been shown to reduce it by 57 percent, and skillful meditators can reduce it by …

How to Get Work Done When You Have a Chronic Condition

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Working while dealing with chronic pain is another task on the To-Do List (or so I keep trying to tell myself). I used to crank out work at such a high level, and now I feel so much slower, like I’m trudging uphill through molasses in January. What used to be a machine is now rusted, rickety, with nuts and bolts rattling and clinking down upon the floor. But things still need to get done. Jobs and projects require my attention, divided though my attention may be. How do I focus and get through my docket when my pain tries to pull me in so many directions? Here’s what’s on my docket these days (WARNING: COLLUSION!): day job with Enjuris, editing/writing side gigs, legal side gigs (gotta love this “Gig Economy“), writing a book with my father about his work, volunteering for the MetroWest Opera as a board member (and I need to do the annual taxes), volunteering for the Pain News Network as a columnist and a board member (gotta do some writing), and on top of all that, I …

Pain News Network: the Emotional Insight App

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Here’s my latest column for the Pain News Network! Biofeedback is probably the closest thing to having actual superpowers. To quote the Mayo Clinic, it’s “a technique you can use to learn to control your body’s functions, such as your heart rate” by using electrical sensors to “receive information (feedback) about your body (bio).” In theory, this can help you learn to control things like muscle relaxation, which often helps to lessen pain. What if you want to go deeper than that, though? In my own experience as a chronic pain patient, I’ve come to realize that much of pain — or rather, the compounding of pain — is emotionally derived. It can be stress from work, an argument with a spouse, dreading a rent payment, or anything else that thrills against your nerves. How does one separate the emotional aspect of pain from the physical? How do you know when you’re being your own worst enemy? You look inward. Somehow my father stumbled across the Emotional Insight app and sent it my way. I was …