Ways I’ve found to help my pain

September is Pain Awareness Month.

Pain is something I’m all too familiar with. Having Ehlers-Danlos, M.E. and chronic migraines I live in a constant level of pain. My pain levels vary unpredictably throughout the day; there are times when I can tolerate my pain and other times my pain leaves me crying in despair when I’ve tried every option I have to ease my pain.

Because all of my illnesses cause me pain I experience every type of pain there is. I take lots of different medications to help relieve the different symptoms that cause the types of pain I experience, however I’m not a person who just relies upon medication alone. I’ll often try other options first as well as supplement my medication with other things to help manage my pain.

Here are some of the things I have found help to relieve my pain:

Massage

The biggest thing that I’ve found to help relieve my pain is massage therapy. I see a massage therapist called Hollie who specialises in treating people with medical conditions. I see Hollie regularly and very often no two massages are the same as Hollie treats how my symptoms including my pain has been around that time. I also find the time to relax whilst I’m having a massage good for my emotional wellbeing and that has a positive impact on my physical wellbeing including my pain levels too.

Massage therapy also doesn’t have to be painful. Such as for me Hollie works at a pressure I can tolerate and she’s careful around my joints to avoid subluxations or dislocations. As well when my back is being massaged instead of uncomfortably being laid on my stomach I lay on my side hugging a pillow. Hollie’s massage bed is also similar to a profiling bed so she can adjust the bed in a way in which I’m feeling comfortable. She’ll also play the music on a really low volume for my noise hypersensitivity.

Mindfulness & Body scanning

I find mindfulness helps me with my pain. There are lots of different types of mindfulness exercises and different people get on with different ones and I too find some work for me while others don’t.

I especially like visualisation and breathing exercise mindfulness meditations. I also got introduced to body scanning by my Pain Psychologist. Body scanning is a type of mindfulness as it’s being mindfully aware of your body. I find doing a quick body scan allows me to be self-aware of how my whole body feels without fixating on a particularly painful part of my body.

Rest

I find rest really important to manage my pain as well as my other symptoms. I usually rest listening to soundscapes (a type of mindfulness). Resting just allows my body to just STOP doing anything that is physical or cognitive etc and to just switch off for a while, usually 30-60 minutes though sometimes longer. This allows me to then carry on with my day once I’m rested.

Heat and hot baths

I’m a big user of heat to help with my pain. Whatever the weather I’ll use hot water bottles, electric heat pads/blankets, microwave Warmies etc. I have a standard hot water bottle but I also have a YuYu hot water bottle which is a long hot water bottle that I can wrap around my back or stomach or over my hips or shoulders or along my leg etc.

I also find my daily hot bath helps to relieve my pain too. Sometimes I add lavender Epsom salts into my bath to help relieve my muscle pain and spasms and lavender has natural healing properties.

Distraction 

I feel like I’m often trying to distract myself from my pain. I find doing something to take my mind off my pain and other symptoms helps. Depending on my energy levels and ability I’ll do an activity that I can do in that moment from writing to a friend to doing some sort of craft activity to just distracting myself by listening to a book.

Here are a variety of distraction activities you can do in bed - these activities vary in energy usage varying from low to higher level activities 

Pacing and activity management 

Pacing is really key to learn how not to overdo it which can intensify or increase or bring on pain. There are a lot of activity management tools and this previous blog post

Some tools include:

• The traffic light system
• Green: low energy activities 
• Orange: medium level energy activities 
• Red: high energy activities 
• 20:10
• 20 minutes of activity then 10 minutes of rest 
• Creating a daily schedule 
• Creating a good day and a bad day schedule and what each day will involve you doing in terms of types of green, orange and red activities, meals, to-do jobs, meals and snacks, resting etc.