Costa Women Blogs

I am so blessed to call Marbella home… The website presenting my work has just gone through a renovation, and if you’re interested in the Connection between science and spirit, and want to understand why and how unity –LOVE– is only possible because of our diversity, I’d love you to visit and connect! Enjoy the rain on this glorious Costa del Sol day as we celebrate all that is Andalucia!  https://mereon.org

Thoughts are NOT FACTS. Just because you think it, does not make it TRUE. For good mental health, self-monitor your internal dialogue. What are you saying to yourself about a person or situation?     Do you know if your perception is even true?   We all see life through a filter. Every single one of us. This is our perception. Our perception is fuelled by emotions primarily. We act on these thoughts! We react to our internal dialogue.   Therefore, our thoughts can run our lives.   All of this happens and we typically are not even aware of it. This is why self-awareness is so helpful.   What do emotions boil down to? Basically, its Love and Fear.   Becoming more self-aware of your internal dialogue and the source of your actions is very liberating.   To realise why you are feeling or thinking like you are and to isolate the emotions behind it is life changing. You can do a lot of this through your own efforts. You can achieve a lot by even beginning to choose to become self-aware of your internal dialogue.   Question your perception, chase down your emotion to its source and take a look at it. That is what ‘mindfulness’ is all about.   It is your mind for you to understand and take charge of! Otherwise, your thoughts and emotions are running your life for you.   About the author: Clair O’Brien Meany is a professional psychotherapist with an educational background in Psychology, Psychotherapy & Coaching. Clarity Therapy is her professional practice and offers face to face sessions in the Costa del Sol area and also appointments phone/online using Skype, Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger video calling. Website: www. claritytherapy.es       Follow on Twitter: @ClaritySpain  Follow on Facebook: @ClarityTherapySpain  

In my first post about chronic pain I explained the difference between chronic pain and acute pain and how pain functions in the body. In my second post I talked about central sensitization and how this complicates treatment for patients with chronic pain – making them, quite literally, feel more pain, more easily with less stimulation. So now I want to put this in a real life context. Knee Surgery – a pain in the knee Recent evidence suggests that as many as 20% of patients who have a Total Knee Replacement (TKR) continue to suffer chronic pain after surgery. The follow up looked into who this 20% might be – are there any common themes? Women Patients with untreated depression Higher pain intensities before surgery We know women have a higher incidence of chronic pain. We also now know that pain messages in women are conveyed using a different biological system to men. So it makes sense that women don’t respond as well to the pharmaceutical options, the pain persists and then they get caught in the central sensitization / chronic pain loop. There have been a number of studies linking depression to pain. It’s still a bit chicken and egg – does depression make people more sensitive to pain or does the pain lead to depression? But many NHS pain management clinics in the UK use anti-depressants as part of their pain treatment plan. And then we get to the last one – higher pain intensities before surgery. As I have spoken about in Part 1 and Part 2, patients with chronic pain and central sensitization feel more pain more easily. So even though the original cause of pain is resolved (new knee), their system is still overloaded, the lion is still in the room. Let’s walk through this: Patient has knee pain Patient goes to Doctor and gets pain medication (underlying issue not treated) Pain persists and gets worse (because the underlying problem was never treated) Pain becomes Chronic Pain with central sensitization Doctor refers to a surgeon for a knee replacement Knee replaced Central sensitization ignored so pain persists. So I’ve got knee pain . . . . Get treatment early before the pain becomes Chronic. And treat the actual problem, don’t just mask it with painkillers. If you have already had a Knee Replacement or other Knee Surgery and are still in pain, get help. You’re not crazy, you’re not making it up. Your entire nervous system needs to be supported and your body needs help to understand that your knee doesn’t need protecting anymore (that’s what pain is, a protection signal).

In my first article about chronic pain I started to explain a little about why chronic pain is different and needs to be treated differently. I talked about the science behind it and how pain works. Now let’s start to put that into context of how chronic pain affects you and how it makes you feel. One of the terms we often use when talking about chronic pain is “central sensitization“. This means that your entirenervous system becomes super sensitive to the tiniest possible pain signal – you quite literally feel more pain. And it is this key process which is the difference between chronic pain and “normal” pain. So what is central sensitization? Two Lions Walk into a Bar… Imagine you are watching television minding your own business when a big African lion walks into the room. What happens to your body systems? Adrenaline pumps through the bloodstream, increasing heart rate, breathing, alertness, etc. Big strong muscles turn on; smaller muscles turn off. Voice becomes louder and your speech becomes short and sharp. Shallow and fast breathing. Digestion slows. Memory fogs. Reproductive systems stop (unless you dig lions?!) Many other things. When the lion leaves the room, the body returns to its previous resting state. A chronic pain state with central sensitization is like having this lion following you at all times.  This state, which can be perpetuated by many factors, can keep the above changes to your system going relentlessly. So what do I do? One of the key goals of treating a chronic pain patient is not only to find the original source of the pain and help resolve that, but also to tame that lion. So how do these points translate to treating my patients? I believe them. When someone says “doing this hurts” I believe that it hurts them. Pain is personal. And each of my patients has their own personal pain level. I examine the whole body – if pain messages are long term they get confused, so where the patient feels pain might not be the cause. I support and treat the nervous system where these long term pain message get “stuck”. I talk to my patients and support them – often if you understand what is happening and it’s significance it can help enormously and make that lion a lot less scary.

What is Chronic Pain? The dictionary definition of chronic pain is “any pain that lasts longer than 12 weeks.” For many of my patients, by the time they come to see me, they have seen numerous therapists, tried many medications and even had surgeries, all with varying degrees of success. And those weeks have become months or years. Is Chronic Pain different? Yes. The difference lies in how we understand pain – There is a problem in a muscle, joint, bone, ligament, organ . . . . some form of tissue in the body. This sends a message through the nerves that there is pain We feel pain Except that actually pain is a LOT more complicated than that. An amazing guy called Lorimer Moseley, a physiotherapist who went on to train as a neuroscientist and now does pain research in Australia has done a huge amount of research and explains it far better than I can, so if you want to understand the mechanics better I suggest watching one (or ten!) of his video lectures. This is one of his shorter ones and one of my personal favourites. Now the important part for chronic pain sufferers is this: Once a pain “pathway” or route is created in the brain it becomes easier to use.  The Road Often Traveled Think of a neural pathway that would lead to a pain experience as a dirt road. If  you get a lot of traffic along that pathway, eventually the pathway is going to have to get bigger to accommodate it. So the pathway is widened.  Maybe the next step is the pathway gets paved, then the pathway becomes a dual carriageway and so on. The more that pain pathway runs, the better it does it.  The pain experience happens faster and faster and easier and easier as the traffic increases.  So what does this mean for me and my chronic pain? It means that patients with chronic pain do, genuinely, feel more pain from less stimulation. And this means certain treatments aren’t applicable. Patients with chronic pain are more sensitive. It means a proper, physical assessment is hugely important – when you have chronic pain these pain signals get confused and cover a wider area – so you get more pain, more easily, over a wider area. It means we need to help teach your body to stop protecting something that doesn’t need protecting anymore (that’s what pain is – a protection signal!). Read Chronic Pain – Part 2 Chronic Pain – Part 3

I am really pleased to be the new host for the Costa Women group West of Marbella. My work as a Holistic life coach and intuitive gives me the life/ work balance that I need. As so many of us working from home, the interaction with other like minded people is an enjoyable part of my life and the group helps me achieve that. I moved to Spain nearly two years ago. I came across the group a couple of months prior to relocating. I struck up an online friendship with a Belgian woman who was moving from France around the same time.When we eventually met,I realised that I was so fortunate to have found someone with whom I really connected and have ‘a partner in crime ‘to explore the area . It made my integration so much easier. No matter what we were doing in the week , we made time to go and sit on the beach for a couple of hours on Sunday mornings and exchange ideas,contacts and useful phone numbers of work men, furniture suppliers and so much more.( We were both renovating our houses) My friend has the advantage of speaking fluent Spanish, and I nick named her my ‘friend with benefits'(!) Looking back we had our own mini CW group. No matter what the reason is for relocating, once you arrive it can be daunting. It doesn’t matter if you are young, middle aged,in your prime, single or with a partner/ family. Suddenly you realise that it’s not as easy to go and see your best friends, and you have to start from scratch. CW is full of like minded women, from all backgrounds that like you, have made the leap of faith to up sticks and move. What is so incredible is that with this common denominator comes an openness to help each other and great friendships can be formed. The meetings always flow easily and it’s like we have known each other for years. So here I am , lucky enough to have become a new host. It’s the beginning of a new chapter …. I’m looking forward to meeting lots of you at our meetings held on the second Wednesday of each month ( except August) at Neli G’s just off the A7 in Estepona. Alison less