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Letting Go, Moving Forward
Loss and hope with chronic pain
Is there an expiry date on hope?" asked a young woman in the chronic pain group. The answer – it depends on the hope. Are you focusing on a miraculous cure that would allow your life to return to what it was before pain? Or is the hope directed towards finding meaning and contentment in life despite the pain?
The choice of whether to look back or forward will greatly affect your mood and the motivation to follow a pain self-management plan. By focusing on the good old days before chronic pain, it is easy to act if life is unchanged. Are you pushing through daily tasks and obligations without considering the effects? Repeatedly attempting to live life as before is an open invitation to disappointment and painful flare-ups. With this focus, the tools of successful pain management – careful planning and pacing of life – seem frustratingly controlled. Hanging on to the past is like driving a car looking only through the rear view mirror. It is impossible to see any way forward, let alone a path that might lead to satisfaction.
What makes it so hard to stop hoping that life will return to the way it was before pain? What stands in the way of adjusting your lifestyle to achieve meaning and contentment? Grief is often the issue.
Grieving involves adjusting to the loss of something that has great personal meaning. Perhaps you have lost the ability to take part in activities like a career or sport. You might grieve the ability to look after yourself or your home. Or you feel you are not fulfilling your role in life – being a good and involved parent, spouse or friend.
The loss of physical functioning that comes with chronic pain can reduce your ability to fulfill meaningful tasks, roles and relationships. Grief arises from a conflict between the way life is now and the way we think it should be – how it was before. You are not who you once were.
With some types of losses, as when a loved one dies, we recognize that there is a struggle to adjust. Grieving in response to death is well publicized in pamphlets, magazines, movies, music, and television. Most people understand this type of grief. Our society recognizes grief through social traditions around funerals, periods of mourning, counselling programs, and bereavement leave.
In contrast, grief connected to losses from chronic pain is not always recognized. There are no ceremonies to formally acknowledge your emotional reaction to having more physical pain, being less carefree, or having a restricted diet and lifestyle. There is no bereavement leave to allow adjustment in being less able to carry out everyday tasks. To top it off, there is still a myth that chronic pain is not even real pain – 'It's all in your head.'
Those living with chronic pain may not recognize that many thoughts, feelings and actions are part of the grieving process. They may not have words to help others understand and respond helpfully. They lack a map of how to let go of unrealistic hope and move forward to a life that can still offer optimism, contentment and meaning.
Without realizing it, they may resist the reality that life will likely never be the way it once was. They may unintentionally work against the treatment plan that should be a source of realistic hope. To complicate matters, there is often a very real dilemma in accepting a changed role in life. Fears accompany such change – of disappointing others, of being vulnerable, or being seen as lazy and needy.
However, accepting this hard reality can help you take control of pain instead of letting pain control you. It is the first step in moving forward with realistic hope for meaning and contentment in life. Certain actions can help you move along this path. The following techniques allow you to let go and move forward with hope.
- Accept reality. Your life has changed and it helps to make the best of it. Help family members do the same.
- Become a scientist. Study your pain instead of just reacting to it emotionally.
- Use a pain diary. Note triggers that make pain flare up. Learn what you can do to lessen pain, other than just using medication.
- Pace your activities. Do a little at a time instead of everything at once as you used to do. Remember, the goal here is pain management, not work efficiency.
- Stay physically active. Learn your tolerance level for physical activity and move as best you can. It is good for body and mind.
- Modify your workplace environment, duties and schedules to help you better manage pain on the job or at home.
- Structure family tasks and events so that you can take part as much as possible.
- Be patient with yourself and others. Ask others to be patient with you.
- Encourage family members to learn about chronic pain along with you.
- Avoid focusing all hope on finding a cure. You will need to deal with how to cope with pain right now.
- Instead, aim your hope towards finding pain management strategies that allow contentment while living with pain. Do this one baby step at a time. Do not push it.
- Read inspiring biographies of others who have walked down your path, and whose hope led them to meaning.
FAMILY HEALTH is written with the assistance of |
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FAMILY HEALTH is written with the assistance of |
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