With Chronic Pain and Illness Chronic illnesses include things like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic pain such as arthritis. They can affect every aspect of your life and can increase your stress levels. Unfortunately, when your stress levels…
Building resilience to help you manage your chronic pain
If a scroll through your social media feed or a quick look at your favourite news outlet each morning triggers sweaty palms, a racing heart, and other feelings of panic, you are not alone. The stress in our country is…
Chronic Pain, Fatigue, Sleep and Coronavirus- What we know and what we can do about it.
We still do not have enough tests for Coronavirus, although this is improving. Many of us may even have had it and not know it. Others will be worried about catching it and scan themselves regularly and worry about…
Struggling to breathe? Feeling hot and sweaty? Coughing? Is it Anxiety or COVID-19?
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…