Frida or – About Pain – Perfect Yourself

Pain relief in 5 steps

There is probably no man in this world without feeling some pain. Women are most familiar with menstrual cramps, labor pains, migraines, back pain, but also a pain in other parts of the body. An inevitable part of life is mental pain, which can be associated with trauma, loss, disappointment, etc.

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or possible tissue damage or descriptions in terms of such damage. Pain is always subjective.

Experience the pain

The assessment of pain intensity is individual and is determined formally since the expression of pain varies from person to person (subjective experience) as well as from culture to culture. The basic measurement of pain intensity is important to assess the therapeutic effect.

The term “pain tolerance” refers to the strongest pain an individual can suffer. People differ from each other so much in their characteristics – from visual strength, muscle strength, hearing to music, so there is no reason not to look at pain tolerance in the same way. Each of us can endure a certain amount of pain – someone can endure more pain, someone can’t. Therefore, we cannot talk about the same experience of pain (e.g., labor pains) at all.

The experience of pain itself is influenced by several factors. As Prof. Ivanec states, “The fact is that attention can be distracted from the sensation of pain, and even severe pain. True, such mental adjustment will not lead to a completely painless state, but the pain will be weaker if we manage to focus on something else. is also stressful analgesia, where in situations of severe stress and severe injury in humans it can be completely unnoticed. So, certain conditions like expectations, learning, strong emotions can be a factor in experiencing pain. “

The strongest pain is traditionally considered to be labor pain. However, the experience of health professionals and scientific research shows that the most rated pain is nerve injuries, extreme headaches, kidney stones, trigenic neuralgia, spinal cord injuries, burns, bile attacks, and, of course, childbirth. Childbirth pain is the only one that is not related to illness or injury but is a natural process. Two people who experienced labor pain and pain due to a bile attack may assess completely differently in which case the pain was stronger. That is why we say that pain is always a subjective experience.

PAIN RELIEF

There are many techniques we can use to ease our pain. In addition to frequently used pain medications, exercise (whatever, movement is important!), Yoga, acupuncture, acupressure, reflexology, massage, relaxation techniques (hypnosis, breathing, autogenic training, muscle relaxation, cognitive-behavioral therapy, etc.) contribute to pain reduction. )

Below you will learn one of the five-step pain relief techniques.

The first step – Be aware

Try to stop at the moment by becoming aware of your thoughts (what you are saying to yourself at that moment), feelings (what you are feeling – pleasure, tension, excitement, sadness, anger, etc.), and physical sensations. Also be aware of where you are, what you see around you, what you feel, what smells you smell, what sounds you hear, the warmth of the space. Be aware of your breathing – you don’t necessarily have to change it, just focus on the rhythm of your breathing.

The second step – Move towards discomfort

Our usual reactions to pain are trying to remove the discomfort or at least trying to divert attention from the discomfort, and a kind of drowning in discomfort – giving in to that feeling and the fears associated with it (will it continue, how long, when will it stop, what if it doesn’t stop, etc.) But there is a third option. Instead of indulging in uncomfortable feelings and fears, divert attention from the story and scary interpretations and instead carefully observe the sensations associated with the discomfort. Think about what these sensations are (do you feel pain like frying, cutting, stabbing, stretching, stabbing, tickling, pressing, etc.), where exactly are they, what is the shape of that discomfort, where are its limits – where exactly does the discomfort end, how thick, thin, deep, shallow is it …? Try to study the sensation of pain completely.

The third step – Look for comfort

There are a thousand things and places we can focus on at any given time. Pain is an alarm to pay attention to a particular set of physical sensations or thoughts that tell us how uncomfortable that pain is. The third step is to explore the inner and outer world, looking for something pleasant in your own experience. The search for pleasure can be like the search for hidden treasure. These treasures can quite simply be the hands and the warmth in them or the comfortable feeling in the stomach, the feeling of the warmth of the sun on the face, or anything else.

Step four – Expand awareness

Expanding awareness involves combining the pleasant and unpleasant aspects of the experience, including the whole body and everything around you so that you become much greater than the specific negative feeling of pain in a particular part of the body.

Step five – Respond instead of reacting

Allow yourself to shift all your attention to the world around you. Allow yourself to respond to the discomfort instead of reacting as usual to the situation you are in. Respond with curiosity and an open mind, with more options and choices than you had before this kind of exploration of your pain.

If you suffer from chronic pain, you have the opportunity to practice this technique frequently. More exercise leads to the easier application of the technique, and you will notice that your pain decreases over time, ie that you have more and more control over it. It may seem impossible at the moment of suffering to apply such a “complicated” technique, but this is exactly what reduces pain – a conscious effort to focus, and leads to distraction from pain, and distraction to a decrease in the estimated intensity of pain. It may seem far easier to take the medicine and relieve the pain effortlessly, but if you suffer from chronic pain and drink large amounts of medication – then it is no longer a good option either. Try a few techniques until you find the one that helps you the most. Be persistent, you can’t solve anything in one attempt. By practicing this or some other pain relief technique regularly, you will discover a whole world of possibilities. Just don’t give up. The line of least resistance is sometimes perhaps the shortest, but not the best path to a solution.