Stress and Pain
Stress is often regarded as an unpleasant state. It can affect people in many ways:
- Appetite
- Sleep
- Health and well being
- Feeling tense and worried
- Increasing irritability
- Concentration difficulties
- Self destructive behaviours (e.g. increased consumption of alcohol, cigarettes or other substances).
But not all stress is bad. Small amounts of stress can actually help with concentration and being alert, increasing mental and physical performance. It is only when stress gets to be ‘too much’ that it starts to have a negative effect.
But how much is ‘too much’ stress?
What is considered ‘too much’ stress is very much dependent upon the individual but generally, people find that stress is ‘too much’ when they feel that they don’t have adequate control over their situation or when they feel that there is too much expected of them. These are common feelings for those with persistent pain when thinking about their situation and therefore it is no surprise that many people find persistent pain stressful.
However, people with persistent pain also find that increased levels of stress in their lives tends to make it more difficult to cope with their pain, and the more difficulty they have coping with their pain, the greater the stress in their lives. This seemingly places them in a no-win situation - as stress goes up, coping with pain goes down. As their ability to cope with pain goes down their stress level goes up.
What can they do about it?
It can be helpful to recognise that when you are feeling over-stressed or overwhelmed this is a sign that you will need to make some changes in your life. Often people who feel over stressed spend their energy trying to escape the unpleasant feelings rather than using it to improve their situation.
1. It is important to identify exactly why you are feeling stressed. This may seem obvious but, unless you can identify why you are feeling overwhelmed or what the situation is that feel you can’t control, it can be very difficulty to address this.
Often people with persistent pain feel that it is the pain its self that is causing them stress but when they really look at the situation they tend to find this is not the case that it is the effects that pain has on their lives that is causing stress (e.g. financial stress may be due to restrictions in your ability to work rather than directly caused by the pain).
2. Identify your thinking about the situation. Often people misunderstand situations or overestimate the seriousness of them. It is important to be clear on what your thoughts and beliefs are about a situation as this will directly affect how you cope with it. You need to identify how helpful or realistic your thoughts are (see the section on Thoughts, Emotions and pain for more information).
3. Plan how you can address the situation. It is important to address the cause of your stress if you are to decrease the feelings of stress but it is necessary to plan how you will do this. As well as leading to a solution, planning how you can address the cause of your stress will often give you a feeling of greater control over the situation, thereby reducing your feeling of stress.
4. Carry out the plan. Once you have put your plan in action, it is important to review and evaluate how successful it was this means that you will be able to amend your plan and increase your chances of succeeding. Even if, despite your planning and review, your plan was not successful you may still learn useful information about how to deal with similar situations in the future. It will also make the planning next time quicker and easier.