PTSD – A Way Out.com A mindful way to heal

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From The Undefeated Mind:

The establishment of pain management as a medical subspecialty began by some estimates in 1965 with the publication of Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall’s now-classic article “Pain Mechanisms: A New Theory,” which for the first time drew the medical community’s attention to pain as an important problem in and of itself.

Before that, pain had generally been seen only as a consequence of disease, one that would generally resolve along with the underlying process that had caused it.

But after the publication of Melzack and Wall’s article and the formation of the International Association for the Study of Pain, the medical community at last began to recognize that pain can sometimes act as a disease itself.

Today we know that up to 25 percent of adults suffer from moderate to severe chronic pain, and as many as 10 percent have so much chronic pain that it affects their ability to work and interact socially.

In such cases, pain is no longer signaling danger but rather indicates a nervous system gone haywire.“

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My two cents: Chronic Pain is different.

How we handle, navigate or behave is different than acute pain. Signals (pain) Ebb and Flow, sometimes constantly.

You have to learn there is no danger with chronic pain unless it reaches a certain threshold.

Give your chronic pain no energy, no thought and no fear.

Have a plan to unplug break thru pain then find activities and exercises to engage life again.

I hike uphill with a purpose, yes, it brings my chronic pain out.

It also brings out achievement, flushes poisons, and secretes endorphins, our natural opioids.

In my pain group, they all feared their pain, as a jock I knew better.

They suffered, I did not.

I tried leading them out of that prison, only one followed and he is doing well.

Dealing with my chronic pain prepared me to battle PTSD

Meditation was as powerful as an opioid.