Conquer Chronic Pain
Hazelden Publishing
Center City, Minnesota 55012
hazelden.org/bookstore
2015 by Peter Przekop
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
No part of this publication, either print or electronic, may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the publisher. Failure to comply with these terms may expose you to legal action and damages for copyright infringement.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Przekop, Peter, 1954
Conquer chronic pain : an innovative mind-body approach / Peter Przekop.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-61649-622-7 (epub)
1. Chronic painAlternative treatment. 2. Mind and body therapies. 3. Medicine, Psychosomatic. I. Title.
RB127.P79 2015
616.0472dc23
2015023099
Editors note
The names, details, and circumstances may have been changed to protect the privacy of those mentioned in this publication.
This publication is not intended as a substitute for the advice of health care professionals.
19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 6
Cover design: Theresa Jaeger Gedig
Interior design and typesetting: Terri Kinne, Trina Christensen
Interior illustrations: John P. Hearst
Developmental editor: Sid Farrar
Production editor: Heather Silsbee
To Allison, who is beautiful and remains one of a kind, and to our son, Kojo.
Contents
Guide
There are many people I would like to thank who have contributed to the ideas that went into this book. First and foremost, all of the patients with whom I have interacted who have endured and contributed to my development. To my parents and familyMarylou, Bun, Jayne, Kal, and Trixie. To Chet, Oscar, Tom, Otis, Phoebe, Sasha, Ted, Trina, Ziggy, and Joe. Also Jay, Doug, Tom, Jim, Joe, Anis, Said, Billy, Mark, Gisela, Bill, Jim, John, and Bob. And to all of those people I have not mentioned who have been instrumental in my development or lack of it.
Many thanks also to Vince Hyman, Sid Farrar, and Heather Silsbee for editing and support throughout the process. And to J. P. Hearst for his artwork and Liz Kipp and Allison for editorial support.
I believe that no one is born to suffer. I also believe that your brain, mind (which I define as our ability to represent what is directly before us, recall what we have experienced, and imagine what may occur in the future), and body all have the ability to heal. If you are suffering from chronic pain, this book is my best attempt to help you do this because youand everyone elsedeserve it. I want to do my part to end that suffering.
Many of the ideas in this book will at first seem counterintuitive. We learn about pain early in life. Touch a hot stovepain. Bump yourselfpain. So we are accustomed to the idea that pain is associated with a specific injury.
This is true for short-term (acute) pain. But when pain persists for months, something different is going on. That is where the counterintuitive aspect occurs.
I have devoted my career as a physician to treating chronic pain. The patients with whom I work have grown used to the daily experience of pain. Yet the source of their pain remains a mystery. Unlike the child who bumps her head, my patients (and often other people who have treated them) truly do not understand why they continue to have pain despite receiving treatment. They usually have been told that it has to do with an injury in some part of their bodysome damage, some inflammation, some woundthat is as yet unresolved.
But there is a curious thing about chronic pain. Many doctors, myself included, have observed that some people with a similar pathology (the same condition) do not continue to have physical pain after receiving the appropriate treatment for that condition. For example, one person may experience chronic pain as a result of a neck injury, while the pain subsides after a reasonable amount of time for another person with the same injury. Why would these two people have such different experiences? Why does one feel miserable, while the other feels great?
The full answer to this question is still being explored by chronic pain clinicians and researchers, but I, along with many other medical professionals, have come to believe that part of the answer is that the pain is, in a very real sense, in your brain. There is strong evidence that the experience of chronic pain happens in your brain, and the way you interpret signals from your body to your brain is shaped by your very unique mind. This makes the experience of pain different for every person.
That is what I mean when I say that the ideas in this book may seem counterintuitive. This book is not about helping you fix the place you think your pain originates fromyour neck or your back or your joints or your hip. This book is about you, the whole brain-mind-body you. That is why my goal in writing this book is to help you understand the vicious cycle of chronic pain so you can retrain your brain, mind, and body to break that cycle.
I have included exercises that will help you develop your own insight into how and why your brain-mind-body feels chronic pain. I will start in the first chapter with my own journey, from a student curious about the mind to my work as a physician helping people in chronic pain. My journey has been about being inquisitive, listening to and learning from people like you, doing research, and trying new things with my patients based on what I have found to help them heal.
PLEASE TAKE NOTE
If you are suffering from chronic pain and what you have been doing to treat it has not been working, this book offers you an approach that has produced positive results for hundreds of people. The ideas and exercises in this book are not meant to replace your doctors treatment plan if that has been helpful. Rather, this book is designed to give you additional tools to supplement what you are already doing, assuming the two approaches are compatible, or to offer an alternative approach to explore if what you have been doing has not provided relief over time.
However, this, or any other approach, will not be effective if you do not follow the recommended procedures consistently and thoroughly, as long as you are not experiencing any negative reactions. You should discontinue any treatment approach, including practicing the exercises in this book, if you find that your condition is worsening. In that case, you should stop what you are doing and seek professional help.
In this book, you will learn what I and other researchers have been discovering over the last ten years: that the conditions that prepare us to experience chronic physical pain may begin long before we actually feel physical pain and may involve emotional or social pain. As you read on, you will understand what I mean by this and why this is the case.
Take S., for example. When I met S. she had debilitating pain that restricted her to a wheelchair. For the first two weeks I worked with her, she did not understand that the pain she was experiencing in her body actually began many years before, probably when she was a child, as an entirely different, non-physical type of pain. Her pain occurred because she had been the victim of severe adversity, having been both emotionally and sexually abused. She had no idea that these adverse events had set the tone for a future life of debilitating pain. Once she uncovered the links between her past, how she truly felt, and how she held those feelings and memories inside of her body, brain, and mind, she was able to practice some activities that helped her change her life, step out of her wheelchair, and free herself from pain physically, mentally, and spiritually. Until she experienced it, she thought life without pain was impossible.