Chronic Pain…

“I’ve stopped telling my friends about my pain. Now I feel alone all the time.”
“How can I get on with my life when this pain is with me everyday?”

Pain serves the purpose of keeping us from further injury however sometimes pain loses its purpose. Pain from an old injury that persists beyond the acute illness or when it would normally have healed is called chronic pain. This pain is real and physiologically based. Psychological treatments have proven useful for chronic pain. It has been hypothesized that chronic pain is maintained by the fight/flight mechanism that continually keeps the sympathetic nervous system in heightened arousal. Fibromyalgia and Reflex Sympathetic Dsystrophy are examples of sympathetically maintained chronic pain conditions.

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