Chronic pain can impact your life, making it difficult to concentrate, hard to work or do the day to day activities that you used to. But living with chronic pain doesn’t have to be something that takes over your life.
By using self care strategies, you can cope with chronic pain and find some relief. Self care will help you be able to make it through the times when you feel like you can’t make it through one more day.
Understand that you’ll have ups and downs. On the bad days, it can affect your mood and when you get down emotionally, that can make it harder to deal with the pain. Find uplifting songs to listen to that calm your mind.
Don’t bottle up what you’re feeling or what you’re going through. It’s important that you express what it is you’re dealing with. Some people choose to do this by writing a blog where they talk about their struggles.
Other people write down what they’re feeling in a diary. This is a good way to cope with the stress that often accompanies living with chronic pain. Trying to tough it out and go through it alone is a mistake.
You might feel like you don’t want to “burden” anyone by what you’re experiencing but it’s important that you reach out to friends and loved ones and let them know. Even though there may not be anything that they can do, they can listen and offer you emotional support.
Make sure you’re keeping up with your healthy habits. Eat a healthy diet and exercise. You may not want to exercise, especially on bad days, but it really can help because it boosts your mood.
Don’t let bad habits make your chronic pain even worse. If you don’t get enough sleep, this can make pain worse. Don’t focus on what you could be doing if only you weren’t dealing with the pain.
Accept your body for the way it is. Don’t allow yourself to be jealous of people who seemingly have good health. It doesn’t change anything and it’ll only drag you down. Hiding your condition isn’t helpful.
It’s okay to let others know that you’re in pain – especially if it’s someone whose life is impacted by your situation. This might be a relative or your boss or your romantic partner.
It’s okay to talk about how you feel, but be careful that you don’t constantly complain. Negativity doesn’t help. When you’re hurting, you might want to withdraw and just stay at home because it’s easier. This can cause you to start limiting your life.
Don’t let the pain keep you stuck at home and don’t let it make you give up doing the activities that you enjoy.
