Mental health
How to deal with low mood and anxiety
Living with pain can be stressful and exhausting. Negative thinking can creep in, with thoughts such as “there’s no point in doing things” and “whatever I do makes the pain worse.” Confidence starts to drop and you may find yourself in another vicious cycle, which could lead to depression and anxiety.
There are ways to break this vicious cycle and reclaim your sense of well-being. These include:
- Get involved in enjoyable activities, and keep socialising with family or friends. You may not feel motivated to do this when feeling low but doing this regardless will help to release feel good chemicals and prevent you from becoming isolated.
- Talk to friends and family about how you’re feeling. It really does help to talk – share your feelings of loss, sadness and anger and explore real, hopeful possibilities for the future. This will help you to find a different and more positive way to live better with pain.
- Identify triggers and learn to deal with them: Very often the same patterns make us come unstuck. Is there something (not necessarily the pain itself) that always triggers stress or upset? Is there a way to prepare yourself better if you know a trigger is coming up?
- It’s ok to ask for help and accept it when it’s offered. To manage the intensity of pain we need a team of people around us who we can call on for support – family, friends, colleagues or neighbours. Who could you turn to on a really bad day?
- Focus on what you can do and set easy, achievable goals. Acknowledge whatever you’ve managed to achieve despite the pain. Instead of keeping a pain diary, try making time every day to log an entry in a journal for ‘My Achievements’. Make sure you give yourself the credit you deserve.
- Helpful thoughts: Sometimes it helps to have some good coping thoughts when you are anxious or stressed. It can help to write your own coping thoughts or save them on your mobile to remind and reassure you when anxious feelings start to bother you.
- Soothe the stress of pain with relaxation exercises or mindfulness. See our relaxation exercises, on the practical strategies section, for more guidance. If you find these helpful, try to build time to practice these into your normal routine.
- Consider your diet, sleep and activity level: try to practice healthy lifestyle habits to improve overall health. See Healthy Living for more information.
Free Online Resources
- Living Life to the Full’ can help you to understand and manage moods especially depression and anxiety.
- Living Well with Pain | NHS Sheffield Talking Therapies is designed to help you learn new coping strategies to better manage your pain and the impact it has on your life, including your emotional wellbeing.