I don’t think many healthcare professionals truly understand how pain affects people.

I don’t think many healthcare professionals truly understand how pain affects people. 

Waking up day after day, not thinking about what day it is, but how much pain they will be in. 

Persistent pain becomes their master, of how much it’ll let them do that day. 

It breaks down a person resolve to the point, where they have dark thoughts about themselves and future.”

This is how my pain affected me back in the day. Going by the emails I receive daily, pain affects them in similar ways. 

I think healthcare professionals do their best with the knowledge and skills they have been given, but these will not be enough to truly know how persistent pain affects people, both physically, mentally and emotionally. 

My experience

I realised a few years in (around 1993) living with pain, I was on my own and the professionals I was engaging with didn’t have the knowledge and skills to help me.

I needed a Plan B, so I started up a back pain support group, so I could be others who were in the same pickle as me and perhaps learn some tips and possibly skills to help manage my back pain. I just knew there was something out there other than pills and treatments to help me get back on track.

It paid off one October evening in 1994, at the monthly back support group meeting. Someone told me about something about a pain management programme they went on in London called INPUT. I was inquisitive and made contact with them asking if someone would come and tell the support group what they did.

A Clinical Psychologist called Amanda Williams was kind enough to come along and speak to the group about the INPUT programme. I was all ears, as this was what I was looking for. The ‘something’ I could learn to manage my back pain myself. I applied to go in the programme and in July 1996 I did.  

I met other people like me and healthcare professionals who truly understood the affects pain has on people and also knew how to help me and others on the programme.  These healthcare professionals had the skills many are not taught.

The programme had such an affect on me and of course, putting in the work I was able stop taking pain medication in 1997 or seeing any healthcare professionals about my back pain.

I was back on track and back in the driving seat of life.

I think you know what happened next…”