Choosing New Language is the Beginning of Healing "Chronic Pain"

"Chronic pain" has become a term that is used and supported throughout our society, including most physician's offices. The definition of chronic is "long-lasting and difficult to eradicate" (Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2016). In the vast majority of people's minds this is translated as "I will never get better." Through our study of neuroscience and mindfulness, we have discovered how our stories, narratives, and beliefs become our neural networks and therefore our lived experience. Or as we once termed it...a self fulfilling prophecy.

Pain is a real felt experience in the body and mind. I neither want to minimize or deny this. I sit with people everyday who have been through horrific scenarios from multiple major complicated surgeries to car accidents to autoimmune disorders that have left their bodies feeling pretty awful on any given day. But I also want to be more than an empathic ear who just listens as suffering continues without an end.

Jerome Lerner, MD, the Director of The Complex Pain Program at Sierra Tucson has coined a new term to replace the old "chronic". He suggests that the term "complex" is a more fitting term for the pain. Lerner states "When a painful condition gets better as expected, it is referred to as "simple pain." As he discusses in his blog (http://www.sierratucson.com/about/blog/articles/end-of-chronic-pain), 90% of all pain tends to dissipate. When this natural process does not occur, the suggestion is that there is a complicating factor or factors impeding the natural healing process. This is identified as "complex pain."

Lerner describes 4 factors that lead to complex pain: Biomedical stressors, hypersensitization, metabolic inflammation, and inertia. And the very good news is that as these are addressed and worked with, the complex pain has the chance at healing! For more on each of these factors please visit his blog referenced above.

Inertia is the factor that is often addressed in psychotherapy. Inertia refers to the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that keep people stuck. Using mindfulness is a wonderful way to begin to address this complicating factor. As we begin to look closely at our minds, we see what thoughts are operating (we are mostly unaware of what thoughts are constantly running in the background, much like the annoying ticker tape at the bottom of CNN or the stock market). As we learn to notice our thoughts, we also start to distance from them. When we discover how to bring non-judgment to this new awareness, we can begin to let go of these old thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that have been hampering our recovery. In fact, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the 8-week program was originally designed to do just that (www.atlantamindfulness.com). So whether you begin to address this inertia in psychotherapy or in a class like MBSR, it will be a tremendous gift to yourself and possibly the beginning of a new road to healing and freedom.