Chronic pain: the role of Mindfulness and Biofeedback

Feeling pain is normal and part of our immune system. The body uses pain as an alarm signal, an alert that tells us that something is wrong and that for some reason we are in danger. However, this feeling usually goes away as soon as the threat wears off.

What happens when the pain never goes away and is part of the individual's life? So we are in front of a problem of chronic pain.

What is chronic pain?

If you are completely unaware of what chronic pain is, you can start by checking out this video about its main characteristics:

Who suffers from chronic pain?

According to a study by Oye Gureje and her collaborators, approximately 23% of people suffer from chronic pain. This rate increases with age, affecting up to a third of the elderly population. In addition, the World Health Organization itself recognizes that it is a highly disabling problem in all its forms: low back pain, arthritis, headache, fibromyalgia, among many others.

The pain that accompanies these problems is not always the same: there will be days when the person who suffers them only feel discomfort - this being a good day - and others in which the pain will be so intense that you will not be able to move from the chair.

Pain episodes are impossible to avoid; one must learn to live with them and find a way to handle them as much as possible. The best way to do this is by managing stress.

Regaining control

Thanks to a study by Dr. Kimberly T. Sibille, we know that people with chronic pain show higher levels of stress than other people, both on a biochemical and psychological level. In addition, when we are subjected to stress our perception of pain is increased. Thus, people with pain enter a vicious circle in which when faced with a stressful event they feel more pain, thus generating more stress and escalating their suffering.

The role of the psychologist is to break this circle so that the patient does not experience these episodes in such a painful way and to improve her quality of life. The key to pain management lies in the assessment of control, or the belief that one has the resources to manage pain.

How can we get someone to learn to manage chronic pain? In this sense, both the biofeedback As the Mindfulness.

Techniques to control chronic pain: Biofeedback

Broadly speaking, the basic component of training in biofeedback It is learning to control various biological functions using the information from those functions.

In chronic pain, a electromyography. A very thin needle electrode is inserted through the skin into the muscle. The electrode on the needle detects the electrical activity released by the muscles. This activity appears on a nearby monitor and can be heard through a loudspeaker. Thus, the patient is able to identify pain signals, control muscle tension to achieve relaxation and thus reduce the experience of pain, etc.

The philosophy of Mindfulness

The Mindfulness philosophy it is based mainly on living in the present, on being attentive to what is happening without judging or interpreting. In other words, it is based on accepting reality as it is. In fact, sometimes it is considered as a technique of other therapies such as acceptance and commitment therapy.

We invite you to discover the psychological benefits of Mindfulness by consulting these articles:

“What is Mindfulness?: the 7 answers to your questions“

“Mindfulness: 8 psychological benefits of mindfulness“

Its application in patients with chronic pain is based on the idea that it can help them to accept the pain and therefore reduce avoidance, and to have more control over their attentional processes so linked to the perception of pain. In fact, when Mindfulness is evaluated as a capacity or personality trait it correlates with pain. People who score higher in Mindfulness feel less pain, have a higher quality of life and suffer fewer negative emotions.

There are many other techniques such as relaxation for problems such as headaches or migraines, emotional writing for make sense of the experience, or train the person to focus her attention elsewhere than on her pain during episodes. Each patient will do well with a different type of intervention depending on their characteristics and those of their episodes.

This shows that if you suffer from any form of chronic pain, no matter how disabling, it is possible to learn to manage it and live with it. Citing Gautama Buddha: "Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional"

Bibliographic references:

• Gureje, O., Simon, G. AND. and Von Korff, M. (2001). A cross-national study of the course of persistent pain in primary care. Pain, 92, 195–200. doi: 10.1016 / S0304-3959 (00) 00483-8
• McCracken, L. M. and Velleman, S. C. (2010). Psychological flexibility in adults with chronic pain: a study of acceptance, mindfulness, and values-based action in primary care. Pain, 148,141-147.
• Sibille, K. T., Langaee, T., Burkley, B., Gong, Y., Glover, T. L., King, C.,… Fillingim, R. B. (2012). Chronic pain, perceived stress, and cellular aging: an exploratory study. Mol Pain, 8:12.
• Van Uum, S. H. M., Sauvé, B., Fraser, L. a, Morley-Forster, P., Paul, T. L. and Koren, G. (2008). Elevated content of cortisol in hair of patients with severe chronic pain: a novel biomarker for stress. Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 11, 483–488. doi: 10.1080 / 10253890801887388