What is self management?
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At Live Well with Pain, we know that living with persistent pain can impact on every aspect of your life, even to the point where it feels like it has become your life.
Self-management looks at all these parts of your life and offers ways to make changes so you can get more out of your life.
It’s about discovering new ways to deal with the effects of pain on your life, learning new skills, and ‘taking back control.’
Getting your life back
As anyone living with pain knows, pain doesn’t only have a physical impact. It affects your mood, it disrupts sleep patterns and daily activities. It impacts on your family and friendships and your ability to work. In other words pain affects every aspect of your life.
While it may be true that persistent pain can’t be cured, there are many other parts of your life where changes can be made.
As someone living with pain has put it: “self-management is about shrinking the part of your life that is about pain, and growing the other parts of your life, so that pain no longer dominates.”
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Explore some of the popular self-management topics that people with pain find most useful . . .
Get help on your self-care journey
Learning to self-manage your pain takes time. It takes effort. And it will involve learning new skills.
So it’s often better to get help and support.
You can get help from GPs, physiotherapists, pharmacists, social prescribers and a whole range of other practitioners.
Some may already be using Live Well with Pain’s approach in their work. They will have the knowledge and skills to support you on your self-management journey.
Tell your GP or other member of your heath care team that you want to find out more about self-managing your pain. They will be able to help you do this.
For practitioners – printed guides to offer the people you’re supporting
Live Well with Pain’s printed booklets are the ideal aid for practitioners to use in their consultations.
Based on the acclaimed ‘ten footsteps’ approach, they cover many of the main topics you’ll find on this website. There are guides on Pacing, Sleep, Goal Setting and even one that gives an overview of all Ten Footsteps.
Giving your patient or client a booklet to take away with them following a consultation is a simple but effective way to reinforce your self-management messages.
These professionally produced booklets can be ordered in short runs of as little as 50 copies. And because they are printed ‘on-demand’, they are not only cost-effective, they can be with you in as little as a week. So you can get started guiding your patients or clients on their self-management journey.
