What can you do to help yourself?

Persistent pain often causes disability and distress. The distress can involve feeling depressed, anxious, tense or worried. This can often make the pain even worse. This may in turn increase your distress and, with worsening pain, this creates a downward spiral. Whilst it may not be possible to get rid of your pain, it is possible to significantly reduce the disability and distress it causes.

Developing strategies to manage your pain can help to reverse this spiral and bring the pain and distress back to bearable levels. It can be useful to think of managing persistent pain as being like using a toolbox. Inside this toolbox there are strategies which may give some relief when used alone. However, when chosen carefully and used together, they can give better long term relief.

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