Mindfulness & Pain
Observe your thoughts
Hey team,
Just wanted to share an idea that I’ve had recently regarding chronic pain and mindfulness.
Recently, I’ve started trying to practice mindfulness with Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” app.
And a lot of it relates to observing your thoughts/feels as the pass through your mind, with attaching emotion to them. As well as staying in the present, not ruminating about the past or panicking about the future.
So, how does this relate to chronic pain?
Well first, let’s talk about fear avoidence.
Fear avoidence beliefs/behaviours often occur as a result of chronic pain.
Essentially, we become worried that certain movements will aggrevate our pain, so we stop doing that movement.
For acute injuries, this is useful. We are protecting the injured body part and allowing it to heal.
But with chronic pain, the tissue is healed, but we are still experiencing/are sensitised to pain. This can slowly lead us to start moving like a robot, and being very limited in what movements we do, in order to avoid pain.
Still with me? Good.
Mindfulness and movement experiments.
When a person presents with chronic pain and are fearful of certain movements, one of the best forms of treatment is to explore that movement with them.
If they dislike spinal flexion (bending over) we might try and find a position that is comfortable (think like a cat camel exercise for you McGill lovers).
My idea is to blend the movement experiment with mindfulness.
Essentially, ask the person to try a movement that they think might aggrevate them, and to observe the thoughts/emotions that appear in their mind as they do the movement.
E.g. “Ok, Paul, if you are open to trying this, I would like you to bend forwards and try to touch your toes. But while you do this, I would like you to observe any thoughts or emotions that cross your mind. Then tell me about them after you’ve stood back up.”
My thoughts are that people are more worried about the pain that they could experience, and worry about what this means for the future (unable to leave bed, can’t play with grandkids or walk the dog), which primes them to feel more pain. Rather than just moving without attaching emotion to it, and observing what crosses their mind.
I think it may help to improve the quality of someone’s life by allowing them more degrees of freedom to move within. Instead of avoiding movement and looking like a robot.
I’m unsure if it will reduce the pain that they experience, but it may help to prevent those second and third order thoughts that follow the fear of movement/pain.
Let me know what you think.
Jono.