Mind Over Matter: How to Use Mindfulness to Manage Your Chronic Pain

Living with chronic pain can be physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting, especially if you can’t find a treatment that works well.

At Klarity Clinic, our experienced medical team provides medically supervised ketamine infusion therapy to ease your pain and improve your overall quality of life. 

We also believe in the benefits of alternative therapies like acupuncture and mindfulness techniques like meditation for managing chronic pain throughout your life.

Causes of chronic pain

Chronic pain describes pain that lasts six months or longer. This kind of pain can interfere with your ability to work and be physically active.

A range of conditions can trigger chronic pain, including injuries from an auto accident or fall and medical conditions like:

• Obesity
• Arthritis
• Infections
• Fibromyalgia
• Inflammatory diseases
• Nerve damage (neuropathy)

You may also be prone to experiencing chronic pain as you get older as a result of the natural biological changes that occur with aging.

Why medical help is essential for chronic pain

Unfortunately, many with chronic pain are so desperate to find pain relief, they’ll try anything. This can lead to medication misuse that can ultimately result in serious health complications, addiction, and premature death.

For this reason, our Klarity Clinic team recommends that you consult with an experienced pain management specialist when you can no longer manage chronic pain on your own with rest and over-the-counter medications.

We provide comprehensive medical evaluations to identify the source of your pain and can determine if ketamine infusion therapy is a good fit for you. Ketamine therapy may be the solution you need when other pain management strategies aren’t effective.

We can also recommend lifestyle changes and mindfulness techniques you can use moving forward to minimize your risk for more severe pain.

How mindfulness works for chronic pain

Mindfulness strategies like meditation can help you redirect persistent thoughts about pain, so you can better cope with a chronic pain condition. With daily practice, meditation teaches you how to recognize the thoughts you’re having from moment to moment in a more mindful way.

Mindfulness techniques like yoga and stress management can support your physical health and recovery from a chronic pain condition.

As part of your ketamine therapy plan, we can also refer you to a specialist for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a type of psychological counseling that helps you understand thoughts and behaviors that play a role in your pain, so you can make necessary changes.

Though you may be skeptical about the benefits of mindfulness, especially when you aren’t feeling well, our team strongly recommends that you stick with it. With just a few minutes a day of regular practice, you gain a lot of insight into how you think, feel, and act about your pain condition. This insight can make your pain easier to manage and reduce your risk of it worsening.

Call the Klarity Clinic office near you to schedule a chronic pain consultation, or book an appointment online today.