Chronic Pain/Illness
Pain is a normal sensation that acts an alert to the brain that you may be experiencing a possible injury and need to take care of yourself. Chronic pain is different! Chronic pain persists long past the initial injury has recovered, like a car alarm that continues to go off for months or even years after being triggered. This may manifest as an unpleasant feeling, a prick, tingle, sting, burn, or ache. It could be sharp or dull, located in one specific place or all over your body.
While there are no “quick fixes” to chronic pain, there are a number of coping behaviors and therapeutic modalities that have been empirically indicated for reducing pain and/or changing the nature of your relationship with pain.
.jpg)
Pain, Attachment, & Trauma:
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
The Body Keeps the Score utilizes cutting edge science to illustrate how trauma impacts and fractures both the body and brain, compromising our capacity for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.
Nashville Resource:
The Osher Center for Integrative Medicine Vanderbilt University
The Osher Center for Integrative Medicine provides integrative and inter-disciplinary healthcare. This includes, but is not limited to, med-managment, counseling, movement classes, and massage. Click to learn more!
Mindfulness & Chronic Pain:
Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Book by Jon Kabat-Zinn about utilizing mindfulness meditations to reduce stress, pain, and illness.
Trauma & Pain:
It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn
It Didn't Start with You lays out a compelling case that many of our difficulties, such as depression, anxiety, and chronic pain, have their origins in the lives of our family tree. Traumatic experience can be passed down through generations.
Mindfulness & Pain:
You Are Not Your Pain by Vidyamala Burch & Danny Penman
Based on a simple eight-week program of mindfulness-based practices aimed to change participants relationship with pain. These mindfulness-based practices aim to soothe the brain's conditioned response to pain, anxiety, stress, exhaustion, irritability, and depression that often accompanies chronic pain and illness.