Are you feeling pain?

Physical pain is an experience provoked by an injury or insult to the body.

It is easy to document and describe the injury to your body. But your inner experience of pain is private and subjective.

Your degree of injury is not the only thing that creates your experience of pain. There are many other things that affect how severe and disabling your pain will be.

Some of these other elements include what you believe about pain, what your fears are, what kind of support you have from other people, how well you are able to direct your attention, your overall physical state of health and psychological state of mind, and many other factors.

In other articles I will discuss these factors in more detail.

Medication is often the first response to pain -- aspirin, ibuprofen, or other anti-inflammatory medications -- or opiates like Vicodin, Percocet, and stronger drugs.

Some people are against medication on principle. Some people do not like the side effects. Some people find the medication only partially relieves their pain. Some people are afraid of developing dependency.

Regardless of whether you take medication or not, you can also benefit from additional therapies and ways of taking care of yourself.

Massage is an excellent way of relaxing the body, increasing blood flow, generating endorphins and other beneficial brain chemicals, and releasing muscle spasms and chronic muscular tension.

Mindfulness, meditation, and some types of yoga are ways of training your attention so that you can alter your experience of chronic pain and make it more manageable and easier to live with.

Counseling or psychotherapy, using CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), or Mindfulness-Based CBT are all excellent ways of modifying beliefs, expectations and fears about pain.

All three of these treatments can work together in a way that boosts the effectiveness of each.

The way that treatments work together to multiply each other's power is called synergy.

The synergy of massage, meditation, and psychotherapy is a powerful combination, regardless of whether you are using pain medication or not.

Other things that can help are nutrition, the proper exercise, affectionate and supportive relationships with other people and with animal companions, time spent in nature, and a sense of value, purpose and meaning in life.

I will be discussing all of these in future articles.

For more information go to my website www.leominster-wellness.com

Paul Bail, Ph.D., Leominster, Massachusetts