Mental and Emotional Therapy

A psychologist or psychiatrist may be part of your treatment team for chronic pain, but that doesn’t mean that your doctor thinks the pain is all in your head.  Instead, a psychologist or psychiatrist will help you deal with the mental and emotional challenges that often accompany living with pain long-term.  Through mental and emotional therapy, you can learn how to cope with some of the effects of the pain.

Depression and Anxiety Caused by Chronic Pain
Many people with chronic pain develop depression or anxiety, and that’s completely natural.  After all, the pain changes your life dramatically—it might affect your job, your relationships, and your general outlook on life.  You can start to think that the pain defines you and that you have nothing to offer others (both of which are patently untrue).

Depression and anxiety can actually make pain feel worse because they can change the way your brain interprets pain; they can heighten the pain sensation, unfortunately.

This may seem like a vicious cycle, but there are treatments available to help you deal with depression and anxiety related to chronic pain.

If you have been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, you can take anti-depressant medications to help counteract the negative effects of the psychological condition.  As you’re being treated for the depression and/or anxiety, you may find that your perception of your pain and its effect on your life changes, especially if you try other mental and emotional therapies in conjunction with medications.

How Mental and Emotional Therapy Can Help
Of course, you don’t have to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety to be affected by the emotional side of pain.  There are many psychological therapies that can benefit pain patients—teaching you how to reduce your perception of pain and giving you strong mental strategies for changing how you think about your pain.

Some common psychological therapies are:

• biofeedback:  Our bodies react to stress in a certain way, and you probably know what that feels like—racing heartbeat, sweating, quicker breathing, perhaps.  That stress reaction can actually increase your perception of pain, so it’s not always a helpful reaction for people living with chronic pain.  In fact, simply living with chronic pain can turn on the stress reaction, putting your body almost constantly in that stress state.
  
  Through biofeedback, you can learn to better control this stress reaction.  A special machine measures your heart rate and other vital signs, and working with someone trained in biofeedback, you can learn how to reduce your body’s reaction to stress.

• cognitive behavior therapy:  In cognitive behavior therapy, a mental health professional can help you learn how to change your thoughts towards your pain.  You probably know this from firsthand experience, but what you think about your pain can change how you feel it.
  
  For example, some pain patients think, ‘I’m worthless because my pain doesn’t allow me to do what I once enjoyed.’  This negative self-esteem can intensify your pain because you feel so controlled by it.  Through cognitive behavior therapy, you can learn to attack that untrue statement and focus on the positive aspects of your life.

• relaxation therapy:  This type of psychological therapy can be used to reduce your perception of pain and your body’s response to pain.  It’s more than just deep breathing and meditating, although those two techniques can be part of relaxation therapy.  Relaxation therapy helps your body and mind better handle the natural stress reaction—in that way, it’s like biofeedback, only there isn’t a machine involved.
  
  There are several techniques you can use to help your body relax.  You can meditate, use calming music, or use imagery (going in your mind to a place that makes you feel relaxed).  A psychologist can help you learn these techniques and figure out what works best for you.

Visiting a psychologist or psychiatrist with experience in treating pain patients can be very beneficial for you, especially if you think you have depression or anxiety brought about by living with chronic pain.