When working on the chronic pain management program, one must understand the fact that focus and deep breathing are the primary things to adapt to relax the body. Attaining these qualities take time, mainly when you are in pain. These pain control techniques help to release pressure on the affected areas and distract your attention from pain. Every chronic pain control technique begins with breath control, and it is as follows:
- Sitting relaxed on a reclining surface in the darkroom where you can keep both of your eyes closed or focus on a point.
- Using chest for deep breathing (and not the abdomen). If you lose focus while breathing, you can chant words like ‘relax’ or ‘uo/down’ while breathing to gain focus. You can repeat the words like “up” while breathing in and “down” while breathing down.
- Follow the same process for at least 3 minutes.
You can use the imagery techniques or Psychological and behavioral treatments once you achieve the focus and relaxation. Here is the list of our top imagery pain control techniques that help relieve chronic pain.
Sensory Splitting
This technique includes separating the pain sensations into different parts. The most pain-sensitive areas are applied with the heat to offer relaxation, for example, if you are experiencing severe pain in legs, the head is concentrated upon the affected area and not the hurting.
Altered Focus
Altered focus uses the power of the mind to release pressure on the affected area. This is the classic example of how tremendously the mind can alter the pain sensations in the body. By altering, we mean concentrating on the body parts that do not experience pain like hand or foot. For instance, if you are going through neck or back pain, you can focus on your hand to distract your mind from the actual pain source.
Mental Anesthesia
This imagery method is thinking of the numbing injection applied to the painful area. Novocain is one of the most commonly used numbing anesthetic in such cases. For example, the sufferer is thinking of such numbing injection being injected to the affected area. Similarly, one can also imagine the feeling of an ice pack being applied to the painful area to change the perception of mind towards the pain.
Dissociation
Mentally separating the painful area from the rest of the body is called dissociation. This also includes imagining the mind and body as separate entities where the chronic pain sensations are distant. For example, the patient can imagine that his paining neck is sitting on a different chain far away from him or her. Then, they are telling that neck to be there, far away.
Age Progression And Regression
This technique uses the power of the mind to take one back in time where he or she experiences no or less pain—then guiding self to act as if this state is real.
Counting
Silent counting is one of the best and easiest ways to distract your mind from the source of pain. Such type of counting includes counting the tiles, numbers, holes in the acoustic ceiling, stairs, or simply conjuring up the pictures in mind and measuring them.
Transfer
Transfer means using the mental power to produce altered sensations in the non-paining hand. These altered sensations can be heat, cold, and any other. Once you achieve this feeling, you have to place your hand in a painful area, then this altered sensation is envisioned to be applied to the painful part of the body.
Pain Movement
This includes transferring pain from one part of your body to another where it can be coped up well. For example, if you are suffering from lower back pain, pain movement can be performed to transfer the pain from your back to hand and eventually, in the air.
Mental Analgesia
This is similar to the mental anesthesia technique. In this method, one imagines the string solution of pain-relieving materials like morphine is being injected in the painful area. There’s one alternative to this method in which one has to imagine that his or her brain is releasing massive amounts of endorphin, and it is flowing towards the affected area. Endomorphin is the natural substance released by the mind to relieve the pain.
Symbolic Imagery
In this technique, one has to imagine the symbol that represents chronic pain such as loud noise, irritating, bright light beams. Then, he or she has to slowly lessen the annoying and harsh qualities of that symbol, just like we reduce the noise or dim the light.
Positive Imagination
This is about concentrating your mind on beautiful places like mountains, beaches, parks, etc. you can also imagine the places you visited to take your mind in the safe, relaxed and pain-free state.
Apart from these imagery techniques, you can consider several drug treatments for chronic pain control techniques that includes the following:
- Analgesics (pain relievers)
- Non-narcotic pain relievers: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
- Topical creams and ointments
- Anticonvulsants (anti-epileptics)
- Antidepressants
- Sedatives/anti-anxiety agents
- Muscle relaxants
- Corticosteroids
- Antirheumatics/immunological agents
- Botulinum toxins
- Opioids, opioid-like agents, or combinations of opioids and non-narcotic analgesics
If you want to stop narcotic pain relievers; you can go for the following options:
Exercise
Light to moderate workout is useful to relax your body as it improves the oxygen flow to painful muscles. Our pain experts of Arizona recommend this pain control technique for the People suffering from lower back pain, psychogenic pain and arthritis.
Massage Therapy
Massages are great for muscle and mechanical pain issues. Plus, massage is the proven way to treat other types of chronic pain like lower back pain, neck pain, and more.
Heat And Cold Application
Using a safe mechanism like warm compress or ice packs to apply heat and cold on the affected area is a great way to offer relaxation on the affected area. Pain control techniques encourages muscle release and promotes healing.
Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS)
In this method, electrodes are attached in the epidural area of the patient’s spinal cord. Patients can use the remote control to send electrical pulses to the cord with the generator. This interrupts the pain signals from reaching the brain and ultimately ends up providing relief.
