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 be experiencing anxiety or a panic attack. Often we can recognise that we are worrying about COVID-19, however, you might not to be able to identify the physical symptoms that you are struggling with anxiety, which can be similar to COVID-19 in terms of shortness of breath, hot and sweaty, and a cough. This causes a cycle of panic – you worry about having COVID-19 and your body creates what…
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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 an uncertain future, we often resort to feeling anxious, worrying, complaining, or being negative about events that may never occur. But some people rise to meet uncertain times with hope and resilience. We need to develop such attitudes if we want to be successful in the face of life’s ups and downs. What does having hope mean? Think of how you handle difficult situations. Do you offer platitudes like, “I…
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 between people and increases both intimacy and happiness. It is well known that laughter triggers healthy bodily changes and healthy changes in the mind. Laughter can increase your energy level, lessen chronic / persistent pain, strengthen the immune system, and protect you from stress. Laughter is the best medicine because it is free, fun, and easy. Laughter is Strong Medicine Laughter can be a strong antidote to conflict, chronic…
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 it’s the anxiety surrounding the virus, for others it’s related to social isolation and that they are now living with their families to avoid being alone at this present time. Living with family members, when you are used to living alone, can bring its own challenges, so I strongly suggest that good communication is key. For example, it you have been allocated the spare room, but find it so cluttered…
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 tell you if you have the virus or not. But I can help you to live in the best way you can as we work through this pandemic. High anxiety and Corvid-19 People with chronic pain suffer from muscle pain and often get fatigued. And some people with chronic pain will have underlying conditions which can make the virus more dangerous if they do catch it. So, there is a…
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 of good habits, including getting enough sleep, exercising, eating nutritious food, spending time with your family and friends, practicing relaxation techniques and more. All these activities affect the feel- good factor within your brain and will help you to develop a sense of wellbeing and calm. However, sometimes, you may have an emotional emergency and just like responding to a physical emergency, having the right Emotional First Aid Kit can…
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 adversely affect the immune system. Evidence is clear that a lack of sleep means you are less able to fight off bugs’. With the outbreak of the coronavirus, some people are finding it even harder to sleep. Research shows that there is a complex link between sleep-wake cycles and our immune systems. The amount of sleep we get impacts directly on how well our immune systems work, and also on…
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 COVID-19 are affecting nearly all their clients. Whatever people are coming to a therapist with: depression; anxiety; post-traumatic stress; or more general lifestyle issues, the virus is in their thoughts. Of course, none of us should be surprised about this. It is on the news 24 hours a day and in all the newspapers. It is undoubtedly a big issue and we need to make sure that we do the…
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 day. I am going to try to persuade you to look at things from a different point of view. Have you ever thought of treating your chronic pain as a challenge rather than a burden? Here is an idea. Imagine that you were going to run a marathon by the summer. You wouldn’t just turn up on the day and hope you could run more than 26 miles, would you?…
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 of A Clinicians Guide to Non Pharmacological Dementia Therapies. He now wants to get his expertise used more widely and wants to put hypnosis for dementia on the global map and, together with Steve Miller, is launching a hypnotherapy diploma on the subject. Diploma in Applied Hypnosis and Brain Health Coaching for Dementia The diploma will create expert hypnotherapists who can help in this area and will also be a…