Our lives can become negatively centered around chronic pain

"In a word, describe how you feel right now."

I recently saw this question asked in a 99,000-member fibromyalgia support group.
 
Almost all the 377 answers just two days after the post had negative connotations. Words like exhausted, defeated, overwhelmed, afraid, lousy, anxious, depressed, painful, lifeless, restricted, broken, irritable, lost, done, and disconnected were shared.
 
The few positive answers included words like confident, grateful, proud, and hopeful.
 
The overwhelming percentage of negative words saddens me about the level of pain care and what people living with pain are experiencing.

My answer was confident. However, there was a time in my journey with chronic pain when my answer wouldn't have been as positive.
 
That was before I attended a pain rehabilitation program, accepted the pain, and learned to live well despite it using active self-management strategies.
 
We need to stop treating chronic pain as prolonged acute pain because it's not prolonged acute pain. It is its own condition. Clinicians need to empower people living with pain – shifting from a "find-it, fix-it" mentality to a "self-management" mentality.

Learn more

• Thoughts are powerful: we aren't our pain 
• How to Move Patients from Passive Management to Active Self-Management
• Tame the Beast – It's time to rethink persistent pain - Lorimer Mosely (5:00)
• How to Move Patients from Passive Management to Active Self-Management
• Central Sensitization Syndrome (CSS) - Dr. Christopher Sletten (22:19) 
• Strategies for Coping with Chronic Pain - Dr. Matthew Schumann (1:02:17)
• The Truth About Managing Chronic Pain (w/Dr. Rachel Zoffness) - ZDoggMD (1:39:10) 
• Five things I wish I knew earlier in my journey with chronic pain 
• Are You Missing Two-Thirds of Your Potential Pain Treatment Plan?