Chronic pain can limit your everyday activities and make it hard to work. It can also affect how involved you are with friends and family members. Co-workers, family, and friends may have to do more than their usual share when you cannot do the things you normally do. Unwanted feelings - such as frustration, resentment, and stress - are often a result. These feelings and emotions can worsen your pain. Pain itself, and the fear of pain, can cause you to avoid both physical and social activities. Over time this leads to less physical strength and weaker social relationships. It can also cause further lack of functioning and pain.
Negative stress can act as an amplifier of pain. It can cause our experience of pain to be greater and, in the process, increase our stress, thus creating an escalating cycle.
In this podcast, Dr. Gaston Cornu-Labat discusses the interplay of pain and stress. He illustrates how negative emotions, often hidden from our conscious mind, can influence the way we experience and heal from pain. He has recently written a book, called PNT: An Unprecedented Revolution in Pain Management. It is available for purchase at Key Compounding Pharmacy.
