Chronic pain is rarely a purely physical problem. Thoughts, expectations and feelings strongly influence how we perceive and cope with pain. The following nine psychological strategies can help you strengthen your own self-efficacy and improve your ability to deal with pain.
9 tips from psychologists and pain therapy experts
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Try to become aware of negative thoughts, expectations, feelings about the pain and talk to someone about them or write them down.
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Work with positive sentences like “Going swimming helped me last time.” Try something every now and then.
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Write a diary to explore the connections and variability of the pain.
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Look for positive role models. Who from your environment coped better with the pain and how?
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Train your body awareness, for example through relaxation methods, yoga, meditation, and mindfulness-based stress reduction.
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Stay active as much as possible, distract yourself. But be careful not to overwhelm.
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Take painkillers consciously – not in a rush. This also uses the placebo effect.
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If pain threatens to become chronic: If possible, seek interdisciplinary pain therapy that also uses psychological procedures.
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Self-effective techniques such as consciously directing attention or reassessing situations can be learned in psychological pain therapy, as the German Society for Psychological Pain Therapy and Research shows, for example, on its website.
Would you like to find out more about the topic? Then read also:
Why we are not helpless at the mercy of chronic pain and how we can unintentionally increase it with our thoughts, feelings and our actions, but also consciously mitigate it What we don’t hold can move.
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