CoME Don’t stop doing what you LOVE

Achronic pain sufferer may have to relearn how to feel pleasure. Emotions affect pain, and pain affects emotions, too.

in normal circumstances, stubbing a toe on the edge of a dresser is likely to make us curse and shout (incidentally, it has been proved that profanity helps us withstand pain better). however, when you’re in a truly good mood, you might not even notice the pain.

Thoughts and feelings are nerve impulses in the brain. Meanwhile, the experience of pain is a series of nerve impulses processed by our thoughts and feelings — that is, by other nerve impulses.

The good news is this means happiness can actually relieve pain. Try to do something that brings you joy every day. Even if you can’t get out of bed, you can still listen to good music, watch amusing videos, or phone a friend.

Sew, tinker, decorate, arrange photos, tend the garden — do whatever inspires you. Do too little rather than too much. Stop before you get sore, or, if you are in constant pain, before it gets worse.

Take going to a flea market. You know roughly how long you can manage to walk before pain arrives or gets worse. it could, for instance, be half an hour. When you get to the flea market, wander for 20 minutes and then sit down to rest.

in other words, sit down before you feel pain. After a rest, continue for another ten to 15 minutes and then sit down again. Leave when you’ve made your way through half of the market.

back again the next week. Then extend the time you’re walking by a few minutes. remember to stop and rest before your pain gets worse.

This is how you boost your resilience and unlearn negative thinking patterns — ‘i’ll do this until it hurts and then i’ll stop’ — that reinforce pain through expectation.

The goal is to teach your brain that doing what you enjoy is neither painful nor harmful.

Go at your own pace and don’t worry what others think. While in the past you may have been able to weed your garden in a couple of hours, let your new goal be staying out in the garden long enough to get just a few weeds pulled up.

A brief time outside being active is much better than doing nothing due to fear of pain.

on days when you’re unable to do anything much more than lie about, playing games is a brilliant, research-backed way of distracting yourself from pain.

if i could get an image of your cerebral cortex (the part of your brain that processes pain signals) while you play cards or attempt a Sudoku puzzle, i would be able to show you how beautifully the electric scramble in areas that sense pain calms down. Your attention is focused away from pain, and so pain is relieved.

Music is also a brilliant pain management tool. Listening to your favourite music on a daily basis has been shown to reduce chronic pain by as much as 20 to 25 per cent, a good result in view of the fact that painkilling drugs, on average, reduce pain by around 30 per cent.

Music seems to intensify the functioning of descending nerve pathways that block pain signals. our body constantly sends messages about sensations to the central nervous system. But not all messages reach the brain: more than 70 per cent of them stop at the spinal cord.

The brain, after all, has much more to do than observe messages of discomfort. These signals are deflected by descending nerve pathways in the spinal cord, and by chemical messengers that weaken the progression of pain signals.

natural ‘painkillers’ produced by the brain, such as endorphins, also prevent the signal from reaching consciousness. Listening to music activates the brain’s reward system, too, and so the production of these good hormones is accelerated.