Thursday, January 28, 2010

Check out a Free Demo of Addiction-Free Pain Management®

We now have an overview of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System Powered by Cognit. To see an online overview of Cognit delivering APM please go to this Link for a free demo.

Cognit is a powerful web-based recovery tool using Terence T. Gorski’s 40 years of expertise in addiction recovery and relapse prevention as well as my 27 years of work with people living with chronic pain management conditions including coexisting psychological problems including addiction.

Cognit provides individuals, treatment centers and other organizations who offer addiction and/or mental health treatment with web-based educational and self-awareness tools. Cognit supports and enhances all stages, as well as modalities, of treatment and recovery for people who suffer from addiction and related mental health issues. The Cognit process combines educational content, self application E-Workbook exercises, session quizzes as well as self-awareness inventories that were developed by Cognit co-founder Wayne Blampied.

The Cognit system acts as a support umbrella from pre-treatment, to the earliest stages of treatment and all the way through late recovery. No matter what course recovery takes, Cognit supports the entire process. The true value of Cognit is in its ability to assist in the treatment process by offering effective, consistent, science-based, easy to use educational content and its ability to assess and quantify a patient’s progress.


You can learn about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website http://www.addiction-free.com/ If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

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.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Personal Impowerment for Effective Chronic Pain Management

I believe an important part of effective chronic pain management is understanding everything you can about your pain and then learning some effective tools that will allow you to respond in an appropriate way so that you can improve the quality of life. Whenever you experience pain, it is always appropriate to ask: "What is my pain trying to tell me?" Remember, pain is trying to tell you that something is wrong, that you should find out exactly what it is, and find a way to address it—not mask it.

Our pain system is a crucial component of our makeup and essential to our ongoing survival. Could you imagine how bad it could get if we didn’t have pain receptors and kept putting ourselves in situations that could seriously damage our body? Imagine that you’re in the kitchen talking on the phone and you put your hand down on a hot burner. Without pain receptors your first indication that something was wrong would be your flesh burning.

Knowledge is Power

To effectively manage a pain condition it is important that you understand exactly what is going on with your body. When you are in pain you experience both physical and psychological symptoms. To understand the language of pain, you must learn to listen to how the pain echoes and reverberates between the physical, psychological, and social dimensions of your human condition. Pain is truly a total human experience that affects all aspects of human functioning.

Personal empowerment is the best—and only—way out

When you are in pain for a long period of time you can begin feeling victimized by your pain. You hate your pain. You want to escape from your pain and are willing to do anything to obtain relief. Unfortunately, the way out for many people leads to self-defeating behaviors, including abusing pain medication.

To learn more about effective chronic pain management please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.


You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website http://www.addiction-free.com/ If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you're in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

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.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

We Need To Improve Chronic Pain Management

Reducing the burden of uncontrolled chronic pain is a societal necessity, a medical challenge and an economic requirement. Chronic pain, if not recognized and treated as a chronic illness, takes an enormous personal toll on millions of patients and their families, and leads to increased health care costs.

Chronic pain can also compromise the productivity of the U.S. workforce. Although the impact of pain on patients and on society is among the most serious of public health concerns, chronic pain has been largely left out of the current national debate on health reform. The nation must take the necessary steps to re-define chronic pain as a unique chronic illness and must immediately address this public health crisis.

To learn more on the need to improve both access and quality of chronic pain management please check out our News & Research post this month on Chronic Pain Management Must Improve.


You can learn more about chronic pain management and the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website http://www.addiction-free.com/ If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you're in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

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.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

Monday, January 11, 2010

An Attitude Gratitude - AKA Counting My Blessings

As we begin a new year I always look back at the past year to remind myself of all that I’m grateful for. This is a simple process for me as I complete a daily gratitude journal of 5-10 specific things I’m grateful for each day. At the end of each month I review all of the days and pick my top 20 Gratitudes for that month. Now as the year ends I review each month’s top 20 and pick the top 20 things I’m grateful for that year.

You may be wondering; what does gratitude lists have to do with chronic pain management? A LOT! When people live with chronic pain on a daily basis they can become discouraged, frustrated, and very depressed. One of the tools I use and teach to my patients is to look at what they're grateful for in every situation.

I also want to encourage people to focus on what they want—not what they don’t want. So instead of the focus being I don’t want to hurt or live with this unbearable pain; I encourage people to instead focus on enjoying what they have and what they are grateful for.

Of course chronic pain management is not that simple but I believe that focusing on gratitude is a necessary component for any one living with chronic pain. To learn about some roadblocks for effective chronic pain management and ways to overcome adversity please read my latest article Overcoming Obstacles for Effective Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles 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 and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.


To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

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.