Video script: introduction to pain
GGC - 12 Week Pain Management Programme
This content is designed for the participants of the GGC Pain Management Programme.
1. This is the first of a series of videos which hopes to give you a greater understanding of your pain.
2. When you have chronic pain, people tell us that it can be a very lonely experience. Nobody else can truly understand the pain that you are experiencing as they can’t feel it. We are all different in our own way which means that everyone’s pain and their experience of pain is unique to them. You may look the way you have always looked on the outside and this can sometimes mean that people tell us that they often feel that they are not believed when they try to explain their pain and the impact that it has on their life.
3. Pain is actually much more common than people think. We used to think that pain affected 1 in 5 of the Scottish population. A recent health survey by the Scottish government has found that 1 in 3 of us will be affected by chronic pain at any given time. Is this number a surprise to you? Think of the people around you, how many of them may have some degree of chronic pain that is different for each of us.
4. What is pain? The scientific definition of pain that we use globally is that pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage”. This means that the experience of pain is much more complex than the sensations that we experience and that we can experience pain in the absence of damage to tissues in our body. Next weeks vidoes will talk about the physiological processes that take place in our body when we experience pain and what happens when we have had pain for a long time.
5. When we think about pain we often think about acute pain. This is the term that we use to describe pain that has been present for less than 12-16 weeks. This might be pain after you have sprained an ankle or had an operation. When we think about spraining our ankle we see a number of changes around the ankle such as swelling and bruising as well as the pain that you feel. All of these changes serve the purpose of making us change what we do. Think about when you sprained an ankle or pulled a muscle. You might have been limping. You may have had to rest more. You might have been limited in the shoes that you could wear. All of these changes that we make, allow the healing process to take place. As our tissues heal and repair, our pain levels gradually reduce and we then build back our movement and activity levels. In this instance, our pain is useful. We can also learn from pain in order to keep us safe. An example of this is the heat from a fire which becomes more intense as we move closer. This lets us know to move back so that we can avoid a burn.
6. Chronic pain is very different from acute pain. It serves a much less useful purpose. If we think back to the strategies that we use for acute pain such as rest and avoiding things that make us sore, we know that is not helpful for chronic pain as you still experience pain despite perhaps doing those things over and over again. Next week we will talk about why chronic pain is different but what I want you to take away from this video, is that chronic pain and acute pain are very different.
7. If we are saying that acute and chronic pain are different, then it makes sense that we need a different set of tools in order to manage chronic pain and improve quality of life. During the coming weeks of the pain management programme, you will be introduced to a range of strategies to help you live better with your pain. Some of these might be things that you have tried before.
8. In summary, chronic pain is much more common than we think. We don’t have to damage our tissues in order to experience pain (or other sensations). We know that acute pain can be useful when we have a new injury but that chronic pain is much less useful and it can get in the way of things that are important to us and affect all areas of life. We hope to help you build a new tool kit in order to live well with your pain.