Chronic Pain Management
Living with chronic pain is not just challenging — it’s deeply personal and impacts every aspect of your life. With her extensive experience and specialised techniques, Susan Carmichael understands your unique struggle. She will help you reclaim your strength and happiness in a safe, understanding, patient-centred environment.
What is chronic pain?
Chronic pain is defined as pain lasting longer than three months. This is because most injuries, including broken bones, should have healed in that amount of time. It can stem from an injury or have no apparent cause. Chronic pain can manifest anywhere in the body and cause various physical and mental health conditions, including sleep disturbances, decreased appetite, mood changes, and disability.
A lot of the time, social or environmental factors can be the cause of chronic pain or injury.
For example, if you run down the road to tell someone you have won the lottery and slip and sprain your ankle.
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If you run down the road away from someone trying to kill you, you slip and sprain your ankle.
The two injuries could be identical, but because of the environment in which the injury occurred, the injury could manifest entirely differently. The same could be said if you had a family member or friend who had a bad experience with a similar injury or if your medical team did not handle you correctly or misdiagnosed you. Sometimes, you could be emotionally in a bad space, which can be enough!
The pain experienced in chronic pain is real, and it is NOT made up.
However, it is caused by signals from your brain that are faulty or incorrect and not from conscious decisions.
There are no pain receptors in the body. Only pressure, temperature and chemical receptors. Your brain decides at what point your body is under threat and should be removed. Under the circumstances discussed above, you can see that your brain already detects a level of threat.
In addition, in chronic pain, the nervous system actually changes in its physiology. For example, the brain usually decides that 100 hits of substance A should be harmful to the body and usually alerts you with pain at that point. In a chronic pain state, it would only take 20 hits of substance A.
But it also responds to substances B, C and D and not only A as before. It's a bit like having a sunburnt nervous system. It would be sore if someone were to slap your back, but it would be infinitely more painful if you were really badly sunburnt and someone slapped you on the back. It is important to understand that you have not made the pain up, your nervous system is malfunctioning, and it needs to be fixed!
Susan offers a comprehensive service for chronic pain management by incorporating physiotherapy massage, joint, nerve and abdominal organ manipulation treatments, mindfulness meditation, cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and exercise to address the physical and psychological manifestations of chronic pain.
How can physiotherapy play a role in chronic pain management?
Physiotherapy is essential in managing chronic pain because it aids in reducing pain levels and improving mobility and quality of life. The physiotherapy techniques we use include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Manual Therapy: Reducing pain is of utmost importance! Hands-on techniques such as massage and mobilisation can help reduce muscle tension, improve joint and nerve mobility, promote the correct functioning of the individual tissues and physiological systems and therefore promote healing. It also calms down irritated tissues, including the central and sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system.
- Education and Self-Management: Understanding your pain can be a powerful tool for managing it effectively. Susan will help you understand the causes and mechanisms of your pain, dispelling myths and fears, which can lead to improved self-management. Use of stress management techniques and advice on pacing your activities will improve your coping strategies.
- Exercise Therapy: Regular, customised exercise helps maintain flexibility and strength, boosts endorphin levels (the body's natural painkillers), and can disrupt the cycle of pain and immobility.
What is Mindfulness Meditation?
It is a simple form of meditation involving observation without criticism. It is not a religion, but rather a form of training.
Mindfulness is well-researched and has been proven to be powerful in reducing depression, anxiety and irritability. It improves memory, intelligence and mood and has even been found effective in boosting the immune system.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?
CBT is a type of talk therapy, otherwise known as psychotherapeutic treatment. It helps you understand how your thoughts and feelings influence your behaviour and is commonly used to treat many disorders, such as depression and anxiety. CBT is derived from the concept that our thoughts influence our feelings and behaviours, not things that are external, like people, events and situations. The benefit of this is that we can change how we think to feel better, even if the situation does not change.
CBT helps you understand that you can’t control everything in the world around you, but you can control how you interpret and respond to things in your life. The goal is to help you develop coping strategies for dealing with different issues and modifying unhelpful patterns in thoughts, behaviour and emotional regulation.
What role does CBT play in Chronic Pain Management?
Living with chronic pain often causes feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, and frustration, which in turn can exacerbate the pain. CBT is a psychological therapy that aids your understanding of the connection between your feelings, thoughts and behaviours and their impact on your pain experience.
In our service, CBT for chronic pain can help:
- Understanding your pain: Identifying and challenging unhelpful thoughts or behaviours that might be causing or worsening your pain.
- Develop Coping Strategies: Learning practical skills and strategies to manage the psychological impact of chronic pain, like relaxation techniques and stress management.
- Improve the quality of life: Managing the psychological impact of pain will enable you to lead a more active and fulfilling life.
Chronic pain is complex but can be managed effectively with the proper treatment approach. At Susan Carmicheal Physiotherapy, we're committed to providing a comprehensive and personalised treatment plan for chronic pain management. We believe in empowering you with the knowledge and skills to manage your pain is integral to recovery.
Contact us for an appointment to help manage your chronic pain today.