We all feel physical pain at one time or another in our lifetimes. Our pain receptors tell our brain that we are in pain to protect us from harm and injury. Sometimes these receptors also misfire, when we have an illness like dementia or schizophrenia. Then our receptors send wrong signals to the brain, and our brain immediately acts upon these signals unwittingly. Psychologists and other mental health professionals call this phenomenon “phantom pain.” Even when some of us lose our limbs, we can still experience phantom pain in them. Such is the power of the human brain.
And this very same brain can be used to control our pain sensations as well. We can train our brains to experience the pain, but not react to it. This is what I try to teach my pain patients in my numerous sessions with them. Mindfulness training can be used very positively to counteract pain in our body, and these techniques are empirically validated as well.
My mother has vascular dementia. After my grandmother’s death in 2002, she became very distressed and traumatized. Partly due to this, she started eating erratically, and had a significant decrease in sodium in her blood. This hyponatremia caused her to have several massive CVAs (cerebrovascular accidents or strokes) that resulted in total loss of consciousness in coma, and subsequently, when she came out of the coma, vascular dementia. She lost her speech, motor functioning, executive reasoning ability — in short, everything “human” in her. Then she developed phantom pain.
She regained about 80-90% of her abilities after several years of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and constant care provided to her by my dad and other nurses. However, she still struggles with phantom pain in her back and limbs today. It’s hard to tell someone that they are not in pain in actuality, when their pain receptors are misfiring, and their brain is picking up the wrong message. I never try that with my patients. Instead, I acknowledge their pain and try to use mindfulness techniques to help them alleviate some of the pain they are feeling.
I won’t go into details about these techniques here, but they mainly involve a combination of sustained attention to the pain, deep breathing, and a release of tension in different areas of your body through some muscle contraction and relaxation. It has been very effective with my patients, and I intend to teach my mother these same techniques on my next visit to India. Remember – if you are in pain, before popping that narcotic or NSAID pain reliever, consult a psychologist who can teach you mindfulness techniques in pain management. It might just give you a lifetime free from pain and the side effects of those pesky pain relievers!!!!