Practical strategies to manage persistent pain
Pacing
Pacing Pain Management
Avoiding the boom and bust cycle
Pain can affect how you manage the range of activities in your day. We can tend to use pain as a guide: “Oh, my pain has increased…I’d better stop or rest.” Or: “I must get this done before the pain increases again.”
Sound familiar? It’s very common to fall into an unhelpful trap of over-doing or ‘trying to keep up’ patterns, where on days with less pain you find yourself doing catch-up jobs, extra work and spending more time to complete the task or activity.
Sometimes only pain or tiredness stops you. Then you find you have severe pain flare-ups, are exhausted and have to rest for hours or days until pain levels lessen. This pattern is called the ‘Boom and Bust cycle’.
It leads to being stuck in the vicious cycle of pain. It is miserable and your confidence drops. Taking action early to plan in a more balanced approach means less severe pain flare-ups which impact on your health and life.
Balancing daily activities
Learning to find your personal balance of activity and relaxation – such as changing or doing activities in different postures and places – can lead to a better life. Building confidence like this means you can do more of the things you want.
Pacing means taking a break before you think you need to – before your pain or tiredness increases. It can help you to do more with less pain and stress.
When considering what you’re going to do each day – keep a healthy balance of activities which include work, rest and play. Consider including a balance of activities which provide:
- Enjoyment such as spending time with friends or practicing a hobby.
- Purpose. Those activities which bring a sense of achievement or worthwhile-ness. This could be work, helping others, providing a service, DIY, gardening.
- Relaxation. Ensure you set time aside and schedule in periods of rest and relaxation. Make healthy changes to your diet and sleep routine.
- Movement. Doing any activity will help to motivate and energise you. Do something in spite of how you’re feeling! It will improve your mood if you’re feeling depressed, and helps use up the energy created by the adrenaline response if you’re feeling stressed, anxious or angry.
Planning, prioritising and pacing these activities can really help with controlling pain and flare-ups. Here are our tips on how to do this:
- Prepare ahead. Decide what you are going to do, when, how, who with. Set time aside each day, perhaps in the evening, to plan the next day. Be realistic in what you hope to achieve – don’t aim too high.
- Prioritise what would be the most important, most urgent, most helpful, most effective thing to do. Write it down (use the Weekly Planner or diary)
- Defer or delegate tasks which may not need to be done at all or could be done by others
- Commit to doing it! And do it, regardless of, or in spite of, how you think or feel.
- Reflect on how the activity affects you. If it was unhelpful, then ask yourself if you could have done anything differently. If it has a helpful or positive effect, then plan to do more. What else could you do?