From discussing daily symptoms with your spine specialist to seeking support from friends and family members, communication is an essential part of effective chronic pain management. While verbalizing your feelings about your chronic pain can be helpful, expressing yourself with writing can be just as therapeutic.
Providing Clarity
Putting your feeling down into words can serve as a personal source of strength and clarity. Start with a simple diary or online journal. Once you get more comfortable with your writing, consider contributing to a chronic pain blog or start your own with WordPress.
Inspiring Others
You can share your thoughts with a fictional story or write about topics other than your chronic pain. How personal you get with your writing is entirely up to you. You may ultimately inspire other chronic pain sufferers to consider writing.
Changing Focus
Getting involved with writing can give you something else to focus on other than your pain. If you’re new to writing, start small or consider showing some of your early writing to loved ones and friends.
Setting New Goals
Further divert your attention from your pain by setting goals with your writing. For instance, you may want to try your hand at publishing a short story or a how-to manual for dealing with chronic pain. Take pride in the goals you achieve.
Learning from Others
If you opt to write multiple posts for other blogs or start your own blog, comments you get may be surprisingly educational. You may receive tips and suggestions from others who are living with the same type of pain that you can use to better manage your own chronic pain. If this does happen, consider inviting those submitting useful comments to write a guest post or become a contributor to your blog.
Should your chronic pain prevent you from writing as much as you’d like, consider using voice recognition software to automatically put your words down on your computer, laptop, or tablet. Google Voice is a free accessory you can use for this purpose. If you get writer’s block, take a break and start writing again when you have more to express.
For other conservative back pain treatments, call The Spine Institute Center in Los Angeles at (310) 828-7757. Our team of spine specialists can diagnose the source of your pain and present you with all possible treatment options.