Episode 4: Pain Flare Days - How to Cope When Nothing Helps

In this episode, Greg and Rich tackle "Pain Flare Days," offering strategies for when it feels like nothing helps. They explore the power of distraction through hobbies, the importance of self-compassion and giving yourself grace, and why you should never be afraid to ask for help and break the silence around suffering.

Greg: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Support and Kindness podcast with Greg and Rich. I'm Greg and in the room today we've also got Rich. It's September the 27th, can you believe? Where did the summer go? I don't know, but it's gone. Never to be returned until next year, apparently. Today, we're going to be doing episode four. The title is Pain Flare Days. How do you cope when nothing helps, when you're having a bad pain day? Rich, do you have any thoughts on that?

Rich: Well, it's a, it's a tough, it's a tough prompt to begin with, you know, we're already saying nothing helps. So, you know, we're already almost starting from a, from a point of, of defeat or exhaustion or when you're feeling like giving up or how do you cope when, you know, everything you've tried, your medication isn't working, your basic doctor ordered regimen isn't giving you any relief. What are the things that you turn to?

Greg: It's very valid though, isn't it? Because you said it's almost like you're giving up, nothing works. There are days certainly for me that it does feel that way though, whatever you turn to doesn't help. Maybe reframing the question, what what do you do when nothing seems to be helping? You're right though, how we, how we word things can make a big difference even to ourselves. I'm glad that you caught that. In no means did I mean this to be kind of defeating, but we're talking about, you know, when nothing seems, nothing seems to help. It's a, it's a crap day for all intents and purposes. Yeah.

Rich: When nothing seems to help, you know, what do you do? You vent, whether it's, I know in my younger days, I used to play video games and be rude to my roommates and be an overall jerk to my family before I learned not to take out my pain on others, but you still you vent, whether it's a punching bag virtually or physically, you express that pain somehow.

Greg: Right. Sharing, right? Sharing with someone.

Rich: Yeah, sharing the pain with loved ones.

Greg: I know for me, distraction therapy appears to help a lot when it works, right? It doesn't always work. One one of my therapists used to believe in, you know, watching videos or playing games or a hobby or coloring or whatever that is, but she used to all also say, do the opposite to what you want to do. So if you don't want to go out, go out. But that's really easy to say and it's it's not when you're in it, it's really tough, you know, hail Mary and a prayer, right?

Rich: It's quite challenging.

Greg: Yeah, yeah. Do you do you have any hobbies or anything that anything that you turn to, Rich?

Rich: Growing up, my hobbies were very physical. I was into rock climbing and mountain biking and football, soccer, whatever you want to call it. And as as my body's failed me, as I've had some traumatic brain injuries and it hasn't been a good idea to be out there putting my brain at risk. I've had to look for new hobbies. It's been kind of a a struggle in adulthood to find things that I enjoy. I like the competitive aspect of sport and I tried to get into that with gaming and gambling, but I got too too angry with gaming and and chased game, I chased the win too much with with gambling.

Greg: You ever tried the the fantasy, the fun is it fantasy, I don't know much about it, but is it fantasy league football? Am I saying that?

Rich: I love it.

Greg: Okay.

Rich: I love it. I do that and I do it with my family and I do it with friends for fun. I don't do it for money. I just do it for fun and it's great. It keeps me busy during the week. It it's fun and it it keeps me it distracts me. It's a great distraction. It's a wonderful example of a of a thing that I do to take my mind off of being in pain because I'm looking up, you know, statistics or or player matchups or whatever and I'm not paying any attention to how my back feels or what have you. It's a great example, Greg.

Greg: Right. I, you know, I discovered I like coloring. I haven't done it for a while and I got some of those adult coloring things are like curse words like, you know, F you and you know, things that we can't really say on the podcast are not safe for work, but you get the idea they're themed. And I also got some really cool coloring pages that are like embossed felt. Like so where the black is on the pages, the outlines, they're in felt and that's kind of pretty cool. And I got some good pens and paint pens and but I haven't done that for a while. And I discovered once that I like beading as well. I was like, really? I like beading. I go figure, right? I'm like this 400 pound guy, six foot tall, like likes beading. So, yeah, why not?

Rich: That's great.

Greg: I mean, we've got to have a hobby or whatever and for you, you sound like you get a lot of relief from the fantasy thing. Before we came on air, you had said your your wife had suffered with pain for many years as well and this sparked a conversation between you and your wife on the topic, right?

Rich: Yes, we had a conversation about it and things that we talked about was just giving yourself grace to take the time you need due to the pain that you're feeling, practicing patience with yourself, excusing yourself to give yourself grace to hurt. It's it's so easy to get angry or self-critical or depressed, to not give ourselves grace when we cancel plans because we hurt too much to participate or...

Greg: It's like being go ea- go easy on ourselves, right?

Rich: Yeah.

Greg: Not judgmental, we're not a failure, we're not broken or defective or whatever. You said some I like or I got was you were almost saying like, allow yourself to feel the pain, right? And I think maybe there's some power in that. Maybe there's there's power of feeling alive in that pain or I I don't know. I'm a big believer in like you've got to have like opposites to appreciate things, like if you don't know what it's like to be in the darkness, you can't appreciate light. If you, you know, if you've never experienced pain, you don't get that experience of when you're not in pain because for you it's, you know, if you don't suffer from pain, it, you know, it's normal and you've got no barometer. So I think when we suffer from chronic pain, sometimes allowing ourselves to feel it, then when we're not in pain, we we really can appreciate the the gold in that. I don't know if that makes any sense.

Rich: Yeah, yeah, I can say it's similar to addiction.

Greg: I'm looking through my notes and I've done the distraction therapy, lowering expectations, the coloring. I played online jigsaw puzzles for a while. That was pretty cool. And I don't remember there's several sites you can do it on, like in a room by your own or you can play with other people or you can share the link and do like a private session. Maybe we should do, maybe we'll do that on one of our support groups just for giggles.

Rich: Sounds like fun.

Greg: Yeah, jigsaw puzzle. Grand Theft Auto, but there's an anger thing comes out with that though. I haven't, I play that sometimes. but I've been having problems right now with my my computer. It's actually out for repair at the moment. Other distractions, Rich?

Rich: Audio books. Taking naps, right? Naps Naps can be a good...

Greg: Naps are good.

Rich: If you can cook, if you think you're going to be able to eat. I like to care for other people. I know it seems crazy, but I like to I like to care for other people.

Greg: There's a great, there's a lot of science demonstrates that kindness and being kind to to other people helps us so much, if not more so than the other person. You know, you've got like the natural opiates of the body, you've heard of the runner's high, right? Well, that's a similar phenomenon as the helper's high, oxytocin, which is like the love hormone, and that's released when we're kind, and they've done all kinds of studies even watching kind acts can really help. So it doesn't it doesn't sound silly at all, Rich. There's backed on science with that, mate.

Rich: Oh, that's fascinating.

Greg: Yeah, yeah. Wrapping up, I think we've covered some some great materials.

Rich: Yeah, I think we've covered a lot of good material.

Greg: I think asking for help as well, right? And then receiving it. Don't don't be afraid to ask for help and whether that's asking a spouse, a loved one, a home health aid, a doctor, a nurse, a friend, not nothing wrong with asking for help and if you do, try and be specific, the more specific we we can be, the better help we can get, but it's not easy to do, so. But not giving up, never give up.

Rich: I think those are two of the key points that, you know, I don't know who our audience is necessarily, but two adult men ask for help and don't give up because it's really easy to to suffer in silence.

Greg: Yeah, you don't have to do this alone. You know, and if you've got no one else to reach out to, you can reach out to me, Rich. I'm I know, I'm sure that you'd be open. Leave us a comment. Go to the website, kindnessrx.org, listen to these podcasts on the website or wherever you get them from. Read the show notes. I'll put a couple of things in there. What I would say, if you're really struggling and you're in distress, is 988 is the suicide prevention line in the United States. If you're not, if you're in crisis, pain, mental health, whatever it is, don't be afraid to use it. Even if you're not suicidal, you can call and say, look, I'm not suicidal, but I need someone to talk to. They'll they'll have a conversation to you. But I'll put some other resources in there for pain specific as well. Any anything else, Rich?

Rich: No, that's it. Thank you and have a great week, guys.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah, thanks for listening to us. Come back again next week. If you've got a question or a topic that you'd like for us to discuss, please let us know again at kindnessrx.org and we'd be happy to take that under consideration. Thanks. Rich, have a great week, man, and I'll see you in group through the week.

Rich: All right, take care, Greg.

Greg: All right, bye.