Understanding your pain

So, what can I do about it?

Once we understand how our pain works and what it is affected by, we can learn to manage and cope with the pain in daily life and during flare-ups. There is no one size fits all and everyone experiences pain differently. This website covers the most impactful things that you can do to help manage your pain, as supported by the research. We have divided these into 6 pillars:

1. Understanding your pain

Knowledge is power and there’s nothing worse than feeling helpless in the face of pain. Understanding your pain and what it means can help you to deal with it.

Be inspired by real patient’s stories:

• Read about Ivor’s experience. Understanding about his persistent pain helped him go from depending on a wheelchair to climbing mountains.
• Listen to this podcast where Pete Moore, patient advocate and creator of the Pain Toolkit, discusses his own personal journey of feeling helpless with persistent pain to being empowered to help himself and others live life to the fullest, despite pain.
• Watch this short clip featuring Tina, who lives with persistent pain: Living Well with Persistent Pain – Tina’s Story. She has also created a website to help people like herself, to live well with pain. 

Learn more:

• Website: https://livewellwithpain.co.uk has been created by pain management specialists with the aim of equipping those in pain with the knowledge, skills and hope for a better way forward. They have a free, step-by-step online guide called ‘Ten footsteps’ to help those with persistent pain.
• Website: English Home (retrainpain.org) This website explains pain in short, easy to follow lessons, also available in 20 other languages.
• Need more support to manage your pain? Visit our page about treatments which includes more information about locally based pain management courses.