Are you ready for a chronic pain rehabilitation program?

How do you know if you are ready to participate in a chronic pain rehabilitation program?

Chronic pain rehabilitation programs defined

Chronic pain rehabilitation programs are a traditional form of chronic pain management. 

They are intensive, interdisciplinary therapies that typically occur on a daily basis. They coach patients how to self-manage chronic pain and the common secondary stressors that result from pain, such as insomnia, depression, anxiety and stress. They also help patients return to work. Lastly, they help patients to reduce the need for on-going healthcare services for chronic pain.

Criteria for participating in a chronic pain rehabilitation program

Healthcare providers typically use three criteria to determine whether a patient is a good candidate for a chronic pain rehabilitation program. The criteria are the following:

• Noncancer pain lasting longer than six months
• All reasonable medical options for the treatment of the pain have been exhausted
• The patient accepts that his or her pain is truly chronic and needs to learn how to self-manage chronic pain

The third one is the kicker. The vast majority of patients referred to chronic pain rehabilitation programs have chronic pain and have exhausted all reasonable options for their pain disorder. Their providers know it and the patients tend to know it too. It’s easy for both providers and patients to know when pain is chronic. It’s lasted longer than six months, usually for years. However, knowing that pain is chronic is different from accepting that pain is chronic.

Accepting that chronic pain is really chronic

Unlike their healthcare providers, patients with chronic pain face the challenge of accepting the chronicity of their pain. Acceptance is an emotional process that patients go through when having chronic pain.

For many patients, the initial phase of acceptance is fraught with refusals to accept it. ‘There just simply has to be a way to fix this problem,’ one might say at this point. As such, patients commonly continue to seek evaluation and care from specialist after specialist in attempts to find a cure for their pain disorder. At this point in the process of acceptance, the underlying belief is that hope lies in finding a cure and that without a cure there is no hope. Given this belief, it makes sense that patients might know that they have chronic pain (in the sense that they know it is lasting a long time, maybe even years), but yet refuse to accept that their pain is truly chronic (in the sense that there is no cure). For if the belief is that the only way to have hope is to find a cure, then to give up hope of a cure is tantamount to becoming despondent. Hopelessness is a powerful motivator that fuels on-going refusals to give up hope in a cure.

When patients are at this point in the process of acceptance, they are not yet ready for a chronic pain rehabilitation program. They typically don’t succeed in learning to successfully self-manage chronic pain because their motivation lies elsewhere. Namely, their hope lies in finding a cure. They haven’t yet accepted that their chronic pain is truly chronic. They haven’t yet found a new way to have hope.

This observation is not a criticism. It's just that such patients don't meet criteria for being a candidate for a chronic pain rehabilitation program. They have not fully accepted the chronicity of their pain and instead they prefer to seek care other than self-management or rehabilitation.

Accepting that you can't manage pain with opioids for the rest of your life

Difficulties with accepting the need to self-manage pain without opioid medications is another common struggle that gets in the way of participating in a chronic pain rehabilitation program. Many patients have worked through the afore-mentioned problems with accepting that there is no cure, but have found hope through long-term opioid management. They recognize that they have chronic pain and that chronic really means chronic. Nonetheless, they have kept from becoming hopeless by managing their pain with the long-term use of opioid pain medications. As such, they have been able to go on with life even in the absence of a cure.

Some patients in this position recognize that their long-term use of opioid medications is not sustainable indefinitely. They recognize that the medications lose their effectiveness over time. They have increased their dose at different times, but with each increase in their dose, they have eventually become tolerant yet again. They recognize that they can’t periodically increase their dose indefinitely. As such, they understand that the use of such medications cannot be a viable long-term way to manage pain.

This problem of opioid medications becoming ineffective over time is called tolerance.

It too is a difficult problem to accept. It is common for patients to struggle with accepting that the long-term use of opioid medications won’t be effective indefinitely. The implication is that at some point patients will need to learn how to self-manage pain without the use of such medications. Patients commonly struggle to accept that need too. It’s easy to put these problems off and deal with them another day. In other words, it’s easy to refrain from accepting them.

When patients aren't at a point of accepting that they need to do something about these problems, they aren't ready to particiapte in a chronic pain rehabilitation program. They oftentimes don't believe it is possible to successfullly self-manage chronic pain without the use of opioid medications. As such, they don't succeed in learning how to do it in a chronic pain rehabilitation program.

This observation too is not a criticism. It's just that such patients don't meet criteria for being a candidate for a chronic pain rehabilitation program when they have not fully accepted the chronicity of pain and their need to self-manage it.

Acceptance of the need to learn how to self-manage pain

Patients are good candidates for participating in a chronic pain rehabilitation program when they accept both. They accept the chronicity of their pain and the need to learn to self-manage their pain. Of course, they don’t know how to successfully self-manage pain yet, but they have reached a sufficient degree of acceptance that they are ready to learn. As a result, they seek out participation in a chronic pain rehabilitation program and often succeed in their goals – to be able to live well, engage in life and work, while at the same time managing their chronic pain at tolerable levels.

Accepting the chronicity of pain opens up a whole new way of getting better and a whole new way of having hope.

Author: Murray J. McAllister, PsyD

Date of last modification: February 4, 2013