{"id":6269,"date":"2014-10-20T06:06:45","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T10:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/?p=6269"},"modified":"2025-09-04T14:39:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T18:39:43","slug":"how-a-pain-support-group-can-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/6269\/how-a-pain-support-group-can-help\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Pain Support Group Can Help"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article\u00a0is in our\u00a0series Why You Should\u00a0See a Pain Management Psychiatrist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For many years, I’ve offered Coping with Pain<\/em> support groups. These sessions have both\u00a0skill-building\u00a0(learning exercises such as relaxation and visualization) and\u00a0discussions on living with chronic pain (issues such as family issues, staying positive, working towards acceptance). Some patients find them so helpful, they attend more than 1 series.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What are the benefits of these types of groups?<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Decrease isolation
\n<\/strong>Many people with pain lose work friends,\u00a0and can’t do as much\u00a0with friends and family. Pain can be very isolating. Groups can increase your\u00a0socialization. Groups can help people realize they aren’t the only ones with significant pain – others in the group really understand your pain.\u00a0You\u00a0feel less\u00a0isolated.<\/p>\n

2. Problem-solve with others<\/strong>
\nEach person\u00a0in a group knows ways to cope with pain. Sharing these can help others, and group members benefit from things others have learned. There’s less re-inventing the wheel to figure out how to cope with pain.<\/p>\n

3. Help others<\/strong>
\nPatients with pain often do less – at work, at home, hobbies, etc. They become the help-ee rather than the help-er, mostly receiving assistance. Helping others in support groups lets patients have more balance between helping and being helped. Helping others often increases self-esteem.<\/p>\n

4. Expand support networks<\/strong>
\nAs we said above, pain can be isolating. Adding new people to your support network can be good for you, to have other people to rely on. As well, this can lessen the load of those already in your support network, who may sometimes feel\u00a0overburdened from the impact of your chronic illness.<\/p>\n

5. Share resources<\/strong>
\nLiving with chronic pain often means living with limitations and challenges\u00a0– living a new type of life. Sharing resources, information, and tricks and tips is an advantage of a group.<\/p>\n

One important challenge of\u00a0a group is to keep it focused on coping<\/em> with pain. Groups should not settle into complaining, focusing on pain, or focusing on whose pain is worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article\u00a0is in our\u00a0series Why You Should\u00a0See a Pain Management Psychiatrist. For many years, I’ve offered Coping with Pain support groups. These sessions have both\u00a0skill-building\u00a0(learning exercises such as relaxation and visualization) and\u00a0discussions on living with chronic pain (issues such as family issues, staying positive, working towards acceptance). Some patients find them so helpful, they attend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6269"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8063,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions\/8063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}