Chronic Pain Management and the Inner Saboteur

Written By: Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II Date: July 2nd, 2009. Topic: Member Blogs.

This article is written for people who have experienced problems related to living with chronic pain, but who honestly have trouble believing—or don’t want to believe—that they are sabotaging a potentially effective pain management plan.

If you are reading this, you may have been thinking you might have a problem or have been asked to seek help by people who care about your quality of life. Maybe your looking for help to avoid negative consequences such as your doctor saying you have a problem, significant others who are concerned and/or frustrated seeing you not getting the pain management help you need, or possibly problems functioning in your job. You may have even started having problems with your prescription pain medication and weren’t able to see it for yourself. Some of you may have been arrested for illegal prescription drug use such as altering or forging prescriptions. Some of you may have sought help because you wanted to stop the problems that go along with living with debilitating chronic pain.

No matter what led you to read this, you are probably concerned and may be frustrated. You may even have a battle going on inside yourself between what we call the inner saboteur versus the responsible self.

The inner saboteur is the part of you that doesn’t want to think or talk about your ineffective pain management. Your inner saboteur is a part of your psychological defense network that may be hurting you rather than effectively defending you—I also call this defense, denial, or denial patterns.

Your inner saboteur may resent the fact that you are reading this article. The inner saboteur may believe that you don’t have problems, or that your problems are just not as bad as people say they are. Your inner saboteur may think that you have good reasons for coping the way you are, that it is not your fault that you were referred into this process, and that someone else is to blame for your problems. This inner saboteur may doubt that you will learn anything by reading this because you don’t have a real problem.

The responsible self (sometimes known as the wise self) is that part of you that thinks you might have a problem with your pain management program and wants to do something about it. The responsible self is also a part of your psychological defense network but can often be overpowered by your inner saboteur if you do not learn how to choose which self is in charge. The responsible self is the truth seeking part of you that wants to know what is really going on so you can decide the best way to handle it. Sometimes this responsible self is very small and very quiet and not nearly as forceful as the inner saboteur.

Most people reading this article may be well acquainted with the inner saboteur. Unfortunately they have little or no knowledge of the responsible self because they have spent a great deal of time and energy pushing the responsible self out of they way so they could go on coping with life the way they have been without having to deal with their painful reality.

To learn more about chronic pain management and denial please check out my article From Denial to Effective Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page. You can also check out my article Managing Pain Medication in Recovery.

To check out my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain or are living with chronic pain and have any resistance or denial and want to learn how to develop a plan for helping to identify and manage denial please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Denial Management Counseling for Effective Pain Management Workbook. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

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