MrsFiona I’m not surprised that would be the case, pain clinics all over tend to offer support groups and psychological therapies as ways to cope with chronic pain. That said though it often depends on the underlying reason for pain. One of the common causes, that include those who fall into the catagory who would likely have some benefit from self care, social support, validation/understanding type interventions, is chronic pain resulting from a previous injury. One thing that happens when our bodies experience pain is that our nerves at the area of pain fragment off, so effectively increase senstivity to experiencing pain. At the same time the receptors in our brain that pick up on pain increase as we experience it, so again increase sensitivity to feeling pain. So the underlying injury can heal with the correct treatment but a person is left with chronic pain because now their nervous system is wired up to feel pain more easily, even though there is no longer an injury. It’s a bit like how stress sensitises a person until they experience anxiety or stress over normal every day things because their brain has became so heightened to picking up on it, like hyper vigilance. It’s why people in pain should always take their prescribed pain meds because interrupting the pain signals before chronic pain becomes set in is important. This is also the group that after the injury is resolved are less likely to benefit from long term pain meds and have better response to the likes of low dose anti depressants for pain, and show the best response to support groups, cbt/mindfulness etc for managing pain long term. (Speaking generally here of course and I’m paraphrasing my many pain clinic consultants over the yrs).
Then there’s those of us who have underlying conditions that cause pain due to disability or illness. We may experience the above also but often advice for our pain management differs, specifically related to our conditions. I have elher danlos syndrome (and a fuck tone of other disabilities and health problems, but I’m not playing top trumps). When I am injured (dislocated, sublaxed or partially dislocated, or soft tissue injuries around this) the advice is straight to bed, up my opiates to oxy or diamorphine and Valium ontop (as well as my usual pregabilin). My rheumatologists always emphasis strongly to get the pain under control first as experiencing pain switches off core muscles and leaves me at risk of further dislocation due to not moving carefully enough. Then I go down to usual codine again instead and started back on tiny physio moves from bed, to careful Pilates in the house, to building up to hydrotherapy then careful weights at my gym. Getting the drugs right makes it more possible to move with ‘less’ pain and enables careful exercise which builds muscle and ‘reduces’ the risk of dislocation. (I used to sneeze and dislocated several joints, now I’ve built up to mostly just sublaxing and being able to care for my kids multiple disabilities around this, which is a huge improvement even though the reality is taking 20-40 odd tablets in a day (adhd meds, sleeping meds, side effects meds and so on too). I have chronic pain too, and then a lot of the physical symptoms like digestive problems/hemoraging problems that come with pain also (although I don’t have the worst ones of heart problems which I’m hugely greatful for). So when I’m functioning at my usual something like care, support, some pampering and human contact helps some, but couldn’t come close to cutting it when injured. I’m aware eds is by no means the worst of painful disabilities (although the way my drs seem happy to throw serious controlled drugs at me you’d think it was. I’m a walking pharmacy most days).
Anyways, not meaning to me rail this, or be woe is me, but I wanted to say I appreciate your point, and that you’re correct that support and care and social contact are approaches that help with plenty who suffer pain, and that despite it being a fair bit more complicated for plenty of us I welcome your contribution to the thread. I would think the point of a book about accepting our bodies for a child experiencing long term pain would be a similar understanding compassionate and soothing approach, so rather than the kid being told to try harder, get over it, suck it up etc would be a care giver encouraging them to be kind to themselves when they experience pain and to take some soothing time out doing something that makes them feel good with friends, like maybe sensory toys and a singing game. I would see that idea of accepting our bodies as they are and not seeing them as wrong or blaming them as a beneficial idea that can be adapted for kids with disabilities also, and I don’t think the message of accepting our bodies in general terms needs to be specified only for kids with disabilities (or kids from differing ethnic backgrounds) for those kids to benefit from that general message, and/or from being visable in a book about that, even if not directly about disabilities.