Living with Chronic Pain is something to endure. It is something to suffer from that painfully prevents you from feeling useful, actionable, and completely yourself. Aside from being professionally treated it needs to be managed, coped with, and adjusted to so that you can go on with your lifestyle. No one experiencing chronic pain should expect to simply tolerate the pain by only taking medications. There’s more. That is why Michigan Pain Consultants offers several Behavioral medicines to compliment a comprehensive pain management program.
What Is Behavioral Medicine?
Behavioral medicine focuses on how thoughts and behavior impact health and disease. It is designed to help a patient talk through their pain experience, identifying negative thoughts that behaviors might be contributing to their condition, and develop skills or coping mechanisms to help provide real pain relief. Various tests and therapies have been designed for assisting and the assessment in managing respite from chronic pain. These include:
Psychological Testing – assessing the strengths and problem areas that can impact pain, such as depression and anxiety.
Neuropsychological Testing – a specialized assessment of brain function and dysfunction. These tests assess how well the brain is working and guide treatment for personal, education or vocational needs.
Individual Therapy – addresses issues such as depression or anxiety and addresses skills for coping with pain and the emotional and social consequences of pain.
Group Therapy – is available and allows individuals to share and discuss coping strategies with others who are dealing with similar problems.
Biofeedback – a process of gaining greater awareness of many physiological functions primarily using instruments that provide information on the activity of those same systems, with a goal of being able to manipulate them at will. Some of the processes that can be controlled include brainwaves, muscle tone, skin conductance, heart rate and pain perception.
Family therapy – available to help spouses and others understand and cope with chronic pain issues. Michigan Pain Consultants’ therapists are also trained in substance abuse, vocational, disability counseling, and issues that commonly co-exist with chronic medical conditions.
Cope with the Factors
Behavioral Medicine helps you to cope with life’s factors and can teach you how to recognize the areas in your life that can increase pain experiences. It absolutely helps to understand how thoughts and behaviors affect pain symptoms. The principal goal is to exchange your sick time for wellness time. You can spend that exchanged time enjoying yourself, staying healthy, managing triggers and stress – thereby reducing pain.
Contact Michigan Pain Consultants Today
Exciting medical breakthroughs occur each day and continue to keep Michigan Pain Consultants at the forefront of providing effective pain management programs in the West Michigan area.
Make an appointment for a new patient consultation with one of their board-certified pain physicians. All of Michigan Pain Consultant’s physicians are Board Certified in Anesthesiology or Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and have advanced training and experience in Pain Medicine. You can begin first by visiting online at MyLifeBeyondPain.com, MichiganPain.com, or by calling them at (800)281-3237.
With six locations throughout West Michigan, Michigan Pain Consultants comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to pain care offers patients and providers renewed hope for relief from chronic pain. Chronic pain should be treated like other chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, asthma, or congestive heart failure. Chronic pain requires chronic treatment. The goal of the treatment is to optimize the management of the pain, as opposed to curing the pain.