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Andrea has lived with chronic pain for 28 years and continues to refine
her pain management strategy to this day. Her Masters thesis centered on the psychological aspects of chronic pain. She was a biofeedback therapist
and counselor for 8 years and worked with others suffering with chronic
pain. Currently she lives happily in Maine, works full-time teaching children,
and writes on issues facing people living with chronic pain. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T CURE MY PAIN? My dismal success rate in managing my pain indicated that something was missing. My concept had always been that pain was bad, something to be shunned and feared. I had linked this with the expectation that all pain could be taken away or controlled by surgery or medication. My pain certainly wouldn't last longer than was useful as a warning signal that something serious was wrong! I had tried living with it, ignoring it, or just putting it aside and getting on with life. This strategy for pain control was unsuccessful over and over again. The fight against the pain was exhausting me and it seemed as though my options had run out. I was going to be in pain for the rest of my life. To say that accepting this fact was difficult would be an understatement. To view a lifetime with pain was overwhelming. However, I was able to accept the fact that, for today, I have pain and, in order to live my life, I had to find the courage to change the way I was looking at my pain. Acceptance of the pain as a fact of life, for today, helped bring me into the here and now. It brought the pain into the present and helped me get on with assessing my priorities. We must remain creative in the way we look at our lives with pain. For me, pain management is a reality, filled with ups and downs, a flow of life events and pain events. Pain "control" implies enclosure and requires ultimately being devoured by the pain. Changing the way I attend to my pain or respond to it is key. This change, however, has many dimensions and has led me on a journey I never before imagined, one which led to a healthy relationship with pain. |
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"Acceptance was not a passive event, but one which instilled a sense of getting on with my life, and understanding the consequences of choices I made around the pain. Acceptance meant adjusting my life and finding a different way of dealing with the pain." - Andrea Bowen
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Pooka Publishing, 21 Maxwell Road, Weld, ME 04285 Tel/Fax: (207) 585-2222, e-mail: care@pookapub.com |
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