Life Beyond Chronic Pain…

Having A Goal Is The First Step In Achieving It

I see people in my practice every day who have been dealing with chronic pain, often pain that has lasted a number of years.  After that long of searching unsuccessfully for solutions, pain can often start to consume their lives...

In fact, it can start to BECOME their life and their identity.  They get so caught up in the day to day struggle of just getting by that they forget what life is like WITHOUT daily pain.  In fact, many people can't even picture what their life would look like without pain anymore.

Something I ask every new patient that enters my practice is:

"If you woke up tomorrow and all of your pain was gone, what would life look like?  How would tomorrow be different than today?"

Often people have difficulty answering this question.  They know they want pain relief, and they know it limits them in many aspects of their life, but when trying to picture a concrete vision of what they would like their life to look like once their pain is gone is often something in they haven't though about.  Many times, that's because they'd lost hope that it was in fact possible to have a life where they are not limited by daily pain.

Many of the patients that I've seen that have made the most substantial recoveries often didn't do so until they set a clear concrete vision of what they want their life to look like.  Then, after setting that vision, they laid out the steps that they needed to take, with specific goals and a time frame in which to achieve those goals (i.e. "I want to able to walk down the aisle for my daugther's wedding on (date)" or "I want to be able to attend my grandson's high school graduation on (date)."

Only after having a GOAL to look forward to do they then know the steps they need to take to achieve that goal and the motivation to get going to achieve it.

So, if you've been dealing with pain for a long time, and you've all but given up hope of getting better:

1. Ask yourself:

"If I woke up tomorrow and all of my pain was gone, what would life look like?  How would tomorrow be different than today?"

2.  Set a clear, concrete goal with a date that you want to achieve that goal by.

3. Take the steps you need to get there!