Resistance And Denial in Chronic Pain Management

For over 26 years I’ve worked with patients living with chronic pain who also developed coexisting psychological disorders, including addiction, as a result of living with debilitating chronic pain. One of the tools that I was able to adapt was Terence T. Gorski’s Denial Management Counseling for Addictive Disorders. I modified his denial management system to work with other coexisting disorders including chronic pain.

In my early pain management recovery I often set myself up for setbacks. I have the personality type of “more is better” and always pushed the envelope. It took me a while to see how this was self-defeating behavior. The first thing that often happened after my setback was a feeling of hopelessness and frustration—“I’m always going to be this way.” This second self-defeating mindset is one of the 12 common denial patterns—Strategic Hopelessness; AKA Diagnosing Myself as Beyond Hope.

Unfortunately, unrecognized denial can lead to severe consequences. For example the population I work with is people with chronic pain and many of them have coexisting additive disorders but are in denial about what the addiction is doing to them and those they love.

My first publication in this area is the Denial Management Counseling for Effective Pain Management Workbook. This workbook was designed for people who have experienced significant problems related to living with chronic pain, but who honestly don’t believe—or don’t want to believe—that their self-defeating decisions and behaviors are undermining what could be an effective pain management plan. This process is an important component of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System.

To learn more about chronic pain management and denial please check out my article From Denial to Effective Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain or are living with chronic pain and have any resistance or denial and want to learn how to develop a plan for helping to identify and manage denial please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Denial Management Counseling for Effective Pain Management Workbook. To purchase this book please Click Here.

If you would like to see my upcoming trainings and especially to learn about my 20 hour (three days) Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training on December 7-9, 2009 in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including disorders including addiction please Click Here and scroll down to the December 7-9, 2009 for the description and how to sign up.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.