Daily Pain Care Plan: Things that challenge you
This is Part 4 of a 4-part series on Daily Pain Care Plan. Download your accompanying worksheet for your own Daily Pain Care Plan here
Go to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this Daily Pain Care Plan series.
It may sound counterintuitive to incorporate things that “challenge” you in a Pain Care plan. After all, just waking up and showering may already feel like an enormous task that leaves you quite exhausted.
However, it is very easy to slip into the habit of withdrawing from all social or physical activities due to the fear of pain. Without some appropriate “challenges” that help keep you anchored in who you are, your inherent strength, and your social circles, you may start to lose yourself. Part of your Pain Care plan is to make sure that you are still participating in activities -- albeit in adjusted manners, frequencies, and intensities -- that continue to bring you joy, connection, and a sense of self-esteem and accomplishment.
Setting up safe boundaries
Do not confuse this concept with the mentality of “No pain, no gain;” do not mistake this concept of “doing things that challenge you” for overexerting your body in exercise or pushing into the pain, believing that if you can just toughen yourself and your body up, your pain can be resolved.
Quite the contrary, in fact.
The first step is to recognize where your boundaries are in your energy and physical exertions in your day-to-day activities. The boundaries are defined by the amount of exertion your body can safely put in without flaring up. Once you’ve defined these boundaries, you want to work just up to the edges of those boundaries, challenging to expand those edges just a little bit each time without overexertion.
For example, you may start with a 5 minute walk around your neighborhood as your first data point. If you feel fine or even invigorated right afterwards or the day after, that’s a good indication that you are working within your boundary. If on the next day you go on a 10 minute walk for your second data point, and you find yourself quite exhausted afterwards, then you may have gone beyond the edge of your boundary. You can safely assume that your “edge” is somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes of exertion. For your third data point, you may try a 7 minute walk. You find yourself feeling invigorated with some mild fatigue, but you recover fairly quickly a couple of hours later. That, my friend, is your “edge.” That is the boundary that you want to gently challenge yourself to expand slowly over time -- days, weeks, or months.
There is certainly an art and patience to find where your boundary and your edge is, but once you do so, you can use that as your marker to gently challenge the edges of that envelope.
Learning how to walk again
Transformation requires growth, and oftentimes growth comes with some uncomfortable moments and sensations. When working with a sensitized nervous system, it is important to maintain growth without overwhelming the body.
When we are dealing with persistent pain, we have to relearn how to do a lot of things with different expectations and radical acceptance. Look at this as an opportunity to learn how to walk again in new, and perhaps better, ways.
Download your own Daily Pain Care Plan here.
This is Part 4 of a 4-part series on Daily Pain Care Plan. Download your accompanying worksheet for your own Daily Pain Care Plan here
Go to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this Daily Pain Care Plan series.
Take action
Okay friends. I'd love to hear from you now. What are some things you can think of that feels challenging for you but could be a marker and milestone for your pain care journey? Once you've identified that milestone, break it down into smaller steps over periods of weeks or months that will slowly take you to that milestone. It is to be able to walk for 20 minutes without stopping? Then a small step you can take towards that goal is to start with a 5 minute walk tomorrow and work intelligently and intuitively with your edges.
Keep yourself accountable by sharing below. By sharing and acknowledging your commitment, the intention can transform into action.
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