Thursday, June 21, 2012

Low Back Pain With Emotions

Low Back Pain With Emotions

Chronic pain can limit your everyday activities and make it hard to work. It can also affect how involved you are with friends and family members. Co-workers, family, and friends may have to do more than their usual share when you cannot do the things you normally do.

Unwanted feelings -- such as frustration, resentment, and stress -- are often a result. These feelings and emotions can worsen your back pain.
Mind-body Relationship

The mind and body work together -- they cannot be separated. The way your mind controls thoughts and attitudes affects the way your body controls pain.

Pain itself, and the fear of pain, can cause you to avoid both physical and social activities. Over time this leads to less physical strength and weaker social relationships. It can also cause further lack of functioning and pain.

Low Back Pain With Emotions
Stress

Stress has both physical and emotional effects on our bodies. It can raise our blood pressure, increase our breathing rate and heart rate, and cause muscle tension. These things are hard on the body. They can lead to fatigue, sleeping problems, and changes in appetite.

If you feel tired but have a hard time falling asleep, you may have stress-related fatigue. Or you may notice that you can fall asleep, but you have a hard time staying asleep. These are all reasons to talk with your health care provider about the physical effects stress is having on your body.

Stress can also lead to the emotions of anxiety and depression and a dependence on others. It can also lead to an unhealthy dependence on medications.
Depression

Depression is very common among people who have chronic pain. Pain can cause depression or make existing depression worse. Depression can also make any pain worse.

If you or your family members have or have had depression, there is a greater risk that you could develop depression from your chronic pain. You should seek help at the first sign of depression. Even mild depression can affect how well you can manage your pain and stay active.

Signs of depression include having:

    Frequent feelings of sadness, anger, worthlessness, or hopelessness
    Less energy
    Less interest in doing things or less pleasure from your activities
    Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
    Decreased or increased appetite that causes major weight loss or weight gain
    A hard time concentrating
    Thoughts about death or suicide

What to Do About Your Emotions

A common type of therapy for people with chronic pain is called cognitive behavioral therapy. Seeking help from a therapist can help you:

    Learn how to have positive thoughts instead of negative ones
    Reduce your fear of pain
    Make important relationships stronger
    Develop a sense of freedom from your pain

4 comments:

  1. Such a nice post. Having a lower back pain is very hard to handle because it produces so much pain and sometimes it stops our productivity.

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  2. The great article assisted me a lot! The highest quality fitness and wellness education you provided.

    regards,
    Rachel

    Seattle Chiropractors

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for such a nice article. It really help me a lot to know about the lower back pain.
    back pain relief treatment in Canada

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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