Unresolved Trauma Can Impact Chronic Pain Management
Written By: Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II Date: April 21st, 2010. Topic: Member Blogs.Coping with chronic pain is a difficult struggle that requires a lifestyle management approach focused on caring for body, mind and spirit. This struggle can be even more difficult when the cause of the pain involves a trauma, such as a motor vehicle accident, work-related injury, combat-related injury, assault or even complications from a surgical procedure. In some cases, a person who is exposed to a traumatic event can develop an intense fear response to the trauma — a psychological syndrome called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Given the high rates of co-morbidity between chronic pain and PTSD, and evidence suggesting that these two disorders interact in some way, efforts to develop more effective treatments for this population are greatly needed.
It is important to recognize that certain types of chronic pain are more common in individuals who have experienced specific traumas. For example, adult survivors of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse tend to be more at risk for developing certain types of chronic pain later in their lives. The most common forms of chronic pain for survivors of these kinds of trauma involve: pain in the pelvis, lower back, face, and bladder; fibromyalgia; interstitial cystitis; and non-remitting whiplash syndromes.
PTSD – What to Look For
With PTSD, a person is exposed to a traumatic event that involves experiencing or witnessing an actual or threat of death or serious injury.
Secondly, the person may begin to re-experience the event with reoccurring dreams and/or intrusive thoughts or “flashbacks” that can be very stressful.
Thirdly, the person with PTSD may avoid thoughts, feelings, activities, people and places that remind him or her of the trauma. She or he may even avoid talking about the trauma or steer clear of the site of the accident or incident because it is too upsetting.
Fourthly, the person may have symptoms of arousal such as having difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability and anger, difficulty concentrating, an exaggerated response to sudden loud noises or movements, and extreme watchfulness.
Finally, individuals may begin to experience these symptoms immediately after a trauma or even months afterward (called delayed onset). Additionally, while some people who develop these symptoms recover within a few weeks or months, a number of people may continue to experience these symptoms for longer than three months and even years later (chronic PTSD).
To learn more about chronic pain management with PTSD check out our latest News & Research posting How PTSD Impacts Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our News & Research 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 undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. 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.
To see an online overview of Cognit delivering Addiction-Free Pain Management® please go to this Link for a free demo.
To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.
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Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II |
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April 26th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Using prescription pain medications do more than mange pain for many of the people who use them. They also numb the pain of dealing with all of the negative circumstances of their lives. That is why addiction to pain killers is so difficult to treat. Not only do users of pain killers have to deal with managing pain, they also have to come to terms with emotions that are overwhelming to them. When they seek treatment for their addiction they have to learn new skills to help them cope with traumas of the past. Learning to live drug free is not easy, but trying to block out the realities of life is usually even more destructive. Thank you for the information.
May 10th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Hi Bobby,
Thank you for your comments they are right on and the type of information people need to be successful.
Steve G.
June 22nd, 2011 at 10:46 am
I was diagnosed with chronic unresolved PTSD due to severe childhood abuse. I was just wondering if you would have any advice to help me deal with it? i used to use street drugs to deal with it but haven’t in over a year. I’ve been finding it really hard to deal but i don’t want to use drugs and was hoping there might be other options for me