With the easing of lockdown restrictions, some of my patients have reporting feeling more anxious because they are concerned that their symptoms seem like the symptoms of COVID-19. Feeling anxious about the COVID -19 pandemic is to be expected, however don’t let your mind race away and automatically assume you have COVID-19, you may…
Finding Hope In Uncertain Times
With or without chronic / persistent pain, there is a lot of uncertainty in life, whether in our personal affairs, our physical or mental health, or in our changing and unsteady political climate. Often the strategies that most of us rely on to contend with such uncertainty tend to be self-defeating. When we face…
How Laughter Can Improve Your Chronic Pain
To celebrate Chronic Pain Awareness Day (6th May 2020), I thought we could have a look at the benefits of laughter in helping improve our chronic pain. Laughter can be infectious. When you hear the sound of laughter, you can’t help but laugh yourself. When laughter is shared among others, it causes a binding…
Sleep and older people
At the moment I’m getting many enquiries from people who are struggling to sleep. When having a look at the data, I have noticed that many people aged 70years and older have contacted me. Often, they are finding that their sleep isn’t as good as it was prior to COVID -19. For some people…
Anxiety, chronic pain, routine and coping with worries about Coronavirus
One early symptom of coronavirus is muscle pain. Another is fatigue. I am not surprised then that I am seeing a high level of anxiety amongst my clients as these are things which are associated with chronic pain. Some people have been contacting me online https://www.apaininthemind.co.uk/contact/ to ask what to do. Of course, I cannot…
Creating an Emotional First Aid Kit
Living with chronic pain or any other long-term health condition can sometimes affect your mental health and you made become low in mood, anxious or fearful of the future. I encourage my patients to take care of their mental health everyday as mind and body are linked. I often suggest that they practice a variety…
Strengthen your immune system by sleeping
In my clinic over the past few weeks, more people are telling me that they are struggling to get enough sleep because they fear Coronavirus will make them ill or die. What concerns me as a Psychologist is that this will make their situation a whole lot worse given that a lack of sleep can…
Panic and Chronic Pain
Worry about the Corona virus could be increasing your pain I often network with my fellow therapists. Of course, we do not discuss our individual clients, client confidentiality comes first, but we do talk generally about what is going on. Everyone is saying the same thing at the moment. Worries about Corona virus, or…
What do people with chronic pain have in common with elite athletes? They use sports psychology techniques…
Following on from my interview with Pete Moore from The Pain Toolkit, I thought I would write about using sports psychology techniques in chronic/persistent pain management . If you suffer from chronic or persistent pain you may feel this is not for you. You have enough to deal with just getting through day to…
Chronic pain and dementia. Do not despair we can help!
I have some exciting news to share, I have been appointed Senior Consultant to the Nightingale Dementia Consultants Board. This is a new training initiative set up by Dr Daniel Nightingale and leading hypnotherapist Steve Miller. Dr Nightingale has a great track record in using non-drug treatments with people with dementia and is the author…