Understanding The Pain!!

Over the last couple of days I've been trying to do what I can, to distract myself from all the pain from my most recent flare up. Trying to do that however isn't always as easy as it seems. I love to read and there is no better way to distract myself from the pain than picking up a good book. However lately with the inability to concentrate and fogginess in the head this hasn't been so easy to do. It becomes hard to find any comfort from the pain. It's like when you get one of those splinters in your finger that you just can't see. You feel it and know it's there but you just can't see it. It irritates you over and over however there's very little you can do about it.

Where I'm going with this is that there are going to be days where you just can't do anything to help the pain. On these days you just need to back off and listen to your body. I've become a lot more aware of what my body is trying to tell me. There are some days where I'm in too much pain to be able to do my relaxation because it only aggravates the condition. Sometimes with my inability to concentrate it makes trying to focus on the relaxation techniques really hard and causes extra stress which in turn causes me to flare up.

Then one day it was like someone had turned a switch on and I decided that I wasn't going to worry about it. If I was having a good day and could concentrate then I'd keep going, and if I was having a bad day then I would just stop and tell myself that maybe another day would be better. I know it sounds like I did this quite easily however let me assure you that the changes didn't happen overnight. It has taken quite some time to tell myself to relax and not force things.

It has taken a long time to learn all the different triggers to my pain and what causes a really bad flare up and what doesn't. At the same time it has been just as hard to learn all the different ways in which to manage all those different triggers. Does it mean that we are successful in being able to control them all the time? No it doesn't. There are going to be days where no matter how hard we try, we just can't control what's going on with our body. This is when you have to understand that trying to do to much can in turn cause the opposite results of what you want.

Telling yourself to relax is very important. What's the worst thing that you can do for this condition? Get stressed right!! It's a delicate balance that doesn't always work, however we need to keep trying. I really want to encourage people to understand pain and how it works. The more we understand as someone with CRPS the better you will be able to control your pain.

There are two choices that we can make as we fight the CRPS that effects our bodies. One of those is to say " nothing is working " and complain all the time, or we can choose to try everything that may help us in our efforts to get better. If you take the time to understand the pain and how it works then you will understand the therapy and why its important to do it. Remember that you're going to have lots of highs and lows and that you just need to keep pushing through everything no matter how hard it may seem.