August 2019

The following equation may sound a little strange, but it makes sense to better understand pain. You can compare pain to a dog living in your brain. (If you don't like dogs, you can take another animal!). Like you have 'an inner dog'.

When you are in pain for a long time, you are often told to accept this. It seems as if by this someone means that you can't do anything about your pain anymore. As if there is nothing left to change, and you will always keep this pain. 

Chronic pain is nowadays seen as a problem in which many factors can play a role. Good practitioners therefore work together in teams where professionals from different backgrounds work together and do not only focus on their own area of expertise. 

"It's easy to get discouraged and pessimistic when you're in pain for a long time, but it doesn't help me. Are the apt words of someone I spoke yesterday and have been struggling with pain for years. 

For many of us, it is unreal because what we think and what we feel in our bodies are strongly related. Yet there is now a lot of evidence that what we think and what we expect, (very) has a lot of influence on our body!

Brandon's coming into my consulting room. He opens his mouth and declares: 'I have bad news for the pharmaceutical industry'. Why is that? I ask him. Well, I've reduced 70% of my morphine in the last three weeks,' he says with pride. 

What do pain and relaxation have to do with each other? At first glance, perhaps not very much, but there is more to it than that. There are two main reasons why tension can exacerbate pain:

What story do you have about yourself? About your life, problems? Is it a story in which you have lost control, or do you have control? Can you hurt yourself, or is it waiting for others?

One of the annoying social side-effects of pain is that everyone has their opinions about it Especially if the pain persists for years, there are countless people who have something to say about it:

How do you build up resistance to pain? Do you make sure that setbacks do not upset your balance? How do you prevent relapse?