It’s probably safe to say that most people have experienced pain at some point in their lives, be it acute or chronic. . .
. . . and many of us have heard the phrase “mind over matter,” but when it comes to pain, does it actually work?
It turns out that there is a certain area of the brain that plays a big role in pain response.
And according to Kelly McGonigal, there’s one simple way you can help client’s train their brain to deal with pain more effectively.
I hope you’ll check it out. It’s only 4 minutes.
Because our brain and body are intricately connected, knowing how to change the brain can be instrumental for healing, both emotional and physical.
If you’d like to hear more about training your brain just click here.
How have you used mindfulness to help a client? Please let us know in the comment section below.
If people have REAL nervous system damage; like, eg degenerative disc disease that is advanced does this ” mindfulness” help the pain caused by the structural damage?
Have a look at Psychophysiologic Disorders Association website – in particular, go to Patients > Start Here. Research shows that just because one has degenerative disc disease, doesn’t mean they have to have chronic pain. Not to say that the pain isn’t real – all pain is very real, but there are ways to recover. This type of mindfulness can definitely help.
*rewired* not required
I found mindfulness just filled my head with pain. If you have a chronic central pain state, which is the case
for the majority in long term pain where the pain has spread to different areas, the patient’s whole Central Nervous System will be sensitised ie. Central Sensitisation. This is effectively an ABI or squired brain injury. Neurotransmitters have required to send and receive pain signals from the body when there is no need for them.
This explains why the background noise in the head found in mindfulness is pain. There is no cure, only management. I agree with the poster below that not fighting the pain but accepting it plus having a good pain Consultant who will use the full range of meds ie. opiates, epilepsy meds used off label for pain and going on a pain management course to learn pacing, posture and other lifestyle management techniques plus appropriate
exercise will all help. A multi factorial approach is necessary. Visualisation is usually taught on pain management courses as is locus of control management ie. not multi tasking and pacing activity & rest, organising priorities.
Mindfulness made me feel intense pain in my head (I am a chronic pain patient ). However above she is basically describing not mindfulness, the fashion du jour, but the standard management practices one is taught in pain rehab, which do work.
One slight addition to the techniques Dr. McGonigal described as used in the study that I have found most effective is the concept of “embracing” the pain. My natural reaction to pain had been to fight it, to make it go away. It made me angry, frustrated, full of self-pity. I learned, in mindfulness meditation, to accept the pain it as a natural reaction in my body, to mentally connect with it and embrace it. Shed of my emotional reaction to it, the pain’s impact on my life was marginalized.
I remember first discovering, in a period of violent allergic reaction to a medication, that if I directed my attention into the center of the physical pain, rather than allowing the reflexive and somewhat frantic aversion of attention, the real power of the pain, which was emotional/mental/perceptual, was decreased.
Should it be ANTERIOR cingulate cortex rather than “interior”?
That’s a clever answer to a tricky quetison
Found that tapping works. For what ever reasons. No pain killers used, nothing not even a aspirin for over 3 years.
I’ve used this in the past, too not just for pain and found that it does work! Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work on my migraines.
Tapping will work for migraines, but these are a bit more complex than physical pain. To deal effectively with migraines you have to focus on the stress or overwhelm that brings them on.
the problem is that it is not necessarily stress or overwhelm that bring migraine on – so when you do not know what brings them on it makes it difficult to work with prevention!