Joining a Support Group

by Margaret Knight Manager Support Groups and Carer Support, Chronic Pain Australia

Chronic Pain Australia recognises that you are the person to whom your pain means the most. You know it the best. Yours is the life it is trying to steal.

You may not be aware that you can learn ways to influence your pain. One of the ways is to use breathing patterns and the relaxation response. Women giving birth have been shown how to modify their pain experience by using this tool for a long time, and we can show you how to use this skill, along with other skills, to begin to have some control over your pain.

It might surprise you to know that one in 5 people in Australia experience persistent pain. Of course, every person has a different pain experience, but chronic pain affects people’s lives in a very similar way. Pain robs people of their past lifestyle. It takes their jobs, their friends, their sport, their self-confidence even their personalities. In fact, you can wind up feeling as if you don’t know who you are any more.

Added to this is the feeling of stigmatism. People you have worked alongside, friends, family, employers, sometimes health workers, and often insurance and compensation companies, seem to regard you with suspicion after a while. Few people fake pain conditions but we all feel marked by their behaviour. All these terrible feelings add up to make a person living with pain feel pretty lonely and isolated.

One of the worst things a person with chronic pain feels is that they are all alone. It seems that nobody else can understand how your life has been destroyed by this phantom of a condition. You spend a lot of time trying to explain to medical people, insurance people, compensation people, lawyers and your family and friends just how you feel.

But you end up frustrated, angry and bewildered, as well as having to endure the exhaustion and sleeplessness and the incessant pain. You can feel that nobody really believes your pain is as bad as you say. After all, how can you prove something that is invisible? Sometimes you wonder if you are going crazy!

The team at Chronic Pain Australia know this feeling well. Many of us live with chronic pain and have been to this place. We have discovered that we can help people living with pain:

  1. By organising support groups that allow people suffering from persistent pain to find one another and to join with other folks who understand and believe the pain experience.
  2. To pass on proven pain management skills that other people living with pain use to influence their pain in a positive way so that they can improve the quality of their lives.
  3. To work together to support and encourage fellow group members on this bumpy journey we take together.
  4. We learn how our emotions influence the chemicals manufactured by our bodies and how we can use this knowledge to block the bad chemicals and encourage the ones that make us feel better.
  5. We work on taking back control of our day to day living and how to ask for what we need in an assertive manner.
  6. The human body is meant to move. Many of us are frightened to move in case we make our condition worse. We demonstrate the use of pacing, and encourage appropriate goal setting, so that we are able to move again, and take a meaningful place in our communities.
  7. We share helpful hints for managing pain with one another.
  8. We remind one another that there are ways that we can still enjoy life and have some fun despite our pain.
  9. We congratulate ourselves and one another when we excel.

Above all, Chronic Pain Australia Support Groups are places of understanding, encouragement and learning to put living back into life. We are not medical practitioners and no medical advice is given. We suggest seeking appropriate medical care if it is needed. If participants have undertaken pain management courses at pain clinics or rehabilitation centres, we encourage maintenance of skills learned. The aim of the groups is to enhance daily living skills in a positive atmosphere of friendship and support.

If you feel that you would like to lead a group, or find a group in your area, please contact Margaret Knight (margaret@chronicpainassociation.org.au). It is time we joined together to fight this thief that is trying to steal our lives!