Wow, I haven't posted a pinch for nearly a year! I was open with you, my lovely readers, and myself that pinches would sometimes be irregular. Things happened last year that meant pinches had to take a backseat. One of those things was that I took a creative non-fiction writing course as part of my …
Category: pain science
Where there’s one…(1)
A curious feature of chronic pain conditions is that people tend to have more than one. The term "chronic overlapping pain conditions" (COPCs) describes the co-occurrence of more than one of ten named conditions (1). Imagine a Venn-diagram type overlap of the symptoms of each condition. Photo by Paulina Milde-Jachowska on Unsplash The ten named …
Student guest post: Emily McCarthy
Earlier in the year I was interviewed by a student, Emily McCarthy, writing a creative non-fiction piece on pain management. Emily interviewed me about my lived experience of managing pain as well as research I have contributed to. Emily also interviewed Toby Hall a clinician with extensive experience helping people to manage their pain. I'm …
Doing research on pain
In this big pinch, I'm going to describe some of my PhD work that looked at attention in pain, as a concrete example of the research process to understand why pain makes it hard to think. Words in blue bold text are research jargon; I'll define these as we go along. Science is a team …
Thoughts (3) – the b word
The hardest thing about my ongoing pain is the recurring thought that I am a burden. It's taken me over a month to write this post. That's how hard it is to even think about, even now when most of the time I don't have thoughts that I am a burden. When my pain is …
Sad, not happy
Question from health professional: "How do you feel?" Answer from me: "Sad... not happy". Pain is multidimensional. The experience of pain is not generated from physiological processes alone. Considering the multidimensionality of pain is especially important for both 1) understanding why chronic pain has such a large impact on peoples' lives, and 2) for developing …
Thoughts (2)
I drafted this pinch on my phone one evening. I've left the first half as I wrote it in the moment. Pain in the moment It is 6.20pm on a Tuesday evening and I'm struggling. My pain has flared up over the last week. I'm stuck in a loop where I'm sore so I'm not …
Fibromyalgia (1)
I planned to make this post live on Friday. However today, Tuesday 12th May, is Fibromyalgia Awareness Day. The topic seemed appropriate. My chronic pain has the diagnosis fibromyalgia. I can see that I'm going to write many pinches about fibromyalgia as this is my pain condition. I've labelled this pinch "fibromyalgia (1)" as I …
Thoughts
One of the key changes in the way that I think about my pain that resulted in great improvements in how I manage my pain is: Chronic pain is my brain and body being really, really, really good at protecting me. I was first introduced to this way of thinking about pain at the Pain …
Pinches of Pain 