If you have had a back, neck, or any kind of bodily injury, then you are probably all too familiar with chronic pain and the problems it brings into your daily life. For 22 years, I worked with chronic and acute pain patients in a medical psychology setting. Most of the patients I counseled were victims of car accidents or work-related injuries. I became very familiar with the problems that developed after an injury-inducing event. Undersleeping, oversleeping, anxiety attacks, depression, pain, and sometimes loss of income. During physical recovery time, despite various degrees of pain that the patients felt, they became depressed from boredom. Whether they were unable to work temporarily or permanently, boredom and frustration were a regular theme during our counseling sessions. Often, I was successful with helping a patient improve their sleeping habits or anxiety attacks, but I was always looking for ways to help them feel more emotionally stimulated during a long recovery.
About seven years into my counseling with chronic and acute pain patients, I injured my back. Bending improperly to make my bed caused a sensation of a rubber band snapping and breaking in my lower back. Although I had never experienced this, I knew from various descriptions that my patients had given over the years that I had injured a disk. Sure enough, the medical tests showed a severely herniated lumbar disk. In addition, I had acquired considerable nerve damage from the injury in both legs.
As I lay in bed that night, wracked with new pain, I wondered how all of this was going to affect my life. An unsympathetic boss who's practice I faithfully worked in refused me any time off, despite my doctor's recommendation of four weeks rest time. I had to keep my job, I needed the money. I couldn't take anything stronger than Tylenol because of my need to stay clear-headed for the patients that I so loved to counsel. How ironic, I thought as I lay on my bed each morning, having my shoes put on by my husband of only five months, then going to work to help others with the same injury. Somehow I kept my pain a secret from my caring patients, telling them that my odd walk was due to too much time at the gym. It was humbling, being in tears during physical therapy surrounded by others who could have been my own patients.
One day, I was reviewing some papers I had written in college. My eye was drawn to a paragraph about crisis management. I had included the concept of the Chinese symbol for "crisis", which also stands for the word, "opportunity" in the Chinese language. This back injury was a crisis, for sure. What type of opportunity could possibly arise from this in my life, or more importantly, my patients' lives? I thought bitterly of how I had always been a physical person. According to my doctor, no more bowling, horseback riding, skating. Ever. Where was my opportunity in all this? I was angry. I saw this emotion in my patients, as well. I had successfully helped patients work through their feelings of anger and loss, but I was guided mostly by counseling theories I had learned and incorporated into my own intuitive style.
Things were different now, I knew. My new health status changed everything. If I didn't work through my own anger at my limitations and find the "opportunity", I would be on equal footing with my patients. This would make me an ineffective pain management therapist. Determined to continue helping and healing my patients, I ignored my pain at work. One day, a new patient that I had recently acquired, was near tears as he described the horrible pain he experienced in his legs as a result of a lumbar disk injury. Without thinking, I said, " I know what you mean". He stopped and looked at me and said, "no you don't. you can't understand what this feels like". I briefly explained that I had suffered the same injury as he did. To say that this small bit of self-disclosure had an incredibly positive impact on my counseling results was a major understatement. Everything changed within me and how I related to injured people. I felt more confident, and patients sensed this, responding more positively to the therapy. Seeing that I was an injured person like them helped them see that there might be a light at the end of their dark, dark tunnel.
My mission was to pass the "crisis/opportunity" concept, as I now called it, onto every patient that I worked with. Now, instead of hiding the fact that I had a back injury, I shared this with the patients who had similar or the same injury. I explained the concept briefly to each patient during our first meeting, and then asked them to keep it in the back of their mind for future reference. I referred to the future because in the beginning of therapy, the patient's focus was always on the present and the pain they were experiencing, both emotionally and physically. Many of them never believed that they would improve.
As therapy progressed, large and small opportunities would materialize. For example: A woman who now needed to be driven to her doctor appointments asked her daughters to help her with rides. They were happy to do it, and as a result, she got to spend more time with her family than she had before her injury. This made her happier, despite the seriousness of her pain. A male patient, who wasn't able to work temporarily, began to teach himself to cook. He knew nothing about cooking, and in fact, didn't much like it. However, his wife, who worked full-time, loved it! She came home to a hot meal several days a week, which deflected much of the tension as a result of the patient's inability to work.
Finally, the most dramatic example, and my favorite: I had a patient who had a severe neck injury. After surgery, he was bedridden for many months with a neck brace. He watched TV for several hours a day because he was barely able to move. One day, there was a program on TV about learning how to draw and paint. My patient found it boring, and turned it off. The next day, he changed his mind and watched the show with a pencil and paper in his weak hands. He watched every day and practiced, discovering that he had amazing artistic skill. When he wasn't confined to bed any longer, he began to paint. Eventually, he showed some of his pictures at amateur art shows and even sold some of them. I'm proud to say that I am a buyer of one of those paintings! This painting hangs in my living room, reminding me of the amazing strength, will, and beauty of the human spirit. Talk about opportunity!
Victoria Cimino has a Master's Degree in Education from Antioch University. She currently owns a motivational/life coaching company and works with clients by phone all over the US. Prior to coaching, Victoria worked as a psychotherapist specializing in pain management, anxiety,and general issues. She has also taught biofeedback and relaxation techniques to chronic and acute pain patients. To learn more about what coaching can do for you, go to Victoria's website at http://www.RisingStarMotivationalCoach.com or call toll free 9am-9pm EST 877-838-8366.
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