How to Hack Your Brain When You're in Pain | Amy Baxter | TED

I live in chronic nerve pain. The pushback against opiates has gotten so severe that the people who actually need home care with opiates can't get it. I agree there are a lot of techniques that can help manage pain, and I don't personally ever expect to be completely out of pain. I just would like to be in not enough pain that I can get out of bed and get dressed, instead of curled up in a ball wanting to literally die. The fight against opiate addiction has gone too far, and it's now actively harming people who need access to those medications.

As a chronic pain sufferer for over 30 years I find the delivery here a bit flippant. I have five autoimmune diseases that cause severe inflammation, pain and disfigurement. I’ve had 22 surgeries. Without my pain management, using opioids, I wouldn’t want to live. Managing my pain allows me some quality of life. I agree that it’s unrealistic to think any medication will erase your pain without putting you in a coma and that pharma was highly negligent pushing oxy but let’s not swing all the way to the other side. I also find the mocking of certain truths like “staying ahead of your pain“ to be highly disagreeable. I’d like folks to be able to spend a week in my body and experience what it’s like and then see what they have to say. That said, I’m all for new non medication alternatives.

Having opioid pain medication helped me handle my surgical recovery. I didn’t need to take it til I needed to but simply having it on hand meant I had a level of reassurance that was very important for me to get through something excruciatingly painful. I cannot imagine how awful it is for people to suffer chronic pain and have no treatment option today. We shouldn’t allow people to suffer this way and we shouldn’t allow addicts to dictate pain relief for the truly sick and injured who need and deserve pain relief as a patient right. No one is “coaching” patients and no doctor has five minutes to relate anything near what you are describing. Advil isn’t good enough but that’s exactly what people enduring recovery from major surgery are relegated to. I hope one day we have a true solution to pain that is safe and effective regardless of how it works. For now, however, we have drugs and they shouldn’t be withheld just because of a fear of addiction.

This video landed perfectly in my timeline.. Recovering from a surgery. It has empathy written all over it. This is so impactful for many to lead a better life.

This was a great talk. I am 67 and have dealt with pain my entire life. When I was younger, it was from being abused. Older, from stress, PTSD, and poor diet, all undiagnosed. I KNOW I would love opioids, so I have never touched them. I have told my son, that I reserve opioids for when I am ready to die. Every day I learn more about how to deal with this. I wish I had known all this new science when I was younger, but we know what we know and forgive ourselves for what we don't.

Great Ted talk! We need so much more research into treating pain without medications. I have Fibromyalgia and something I have learned over the years is fear is the key. If you lesson fear, you gain control. Fear steals control. Like part of what you said, if you can switch it from fear to aggravation, that's huge. Our brain is so powerful. But even though it is so powerful, dealing with chronic pain causes brain fog because so many of its resources are being used to "treat" the pain. Thank you for what you do!

Yeah. I always love it when someone who doesn't have chronic pain tells us all about how to ignore pain. (near fatal accident survivor)

I've lived (if you can call it living) with Chronic Myalgic Encephalitis (Yanks call it 'fibromyalgia') for thirty years and this charming lady is talking about acute pain, which to a person with chronic pain is like a shrink talking about depression to someone who is suicidal. And since there are tens of millions of people living with CME, I think we'd appreciate someone who was a little less entertaining and little more inclined to research what's destroyed our lives, instead of 'owies' from an injection or acute pain from surgery. I will say this about chronic pain....injections, venipuncture, and other unpleasant medical procedures are insignificant now. Yes, when I stub a toe or hit my thumb with the proverbial hammer it hurts like a M-F, but I have very little emotional reaction, since it's only a temporary amplification of what is a permanent state of being. Welcome to my world.

Brilliant. Thank you, Amy Baxter.
As someone who lives with chronic pain, I am extremely thankful for you sharing this vital information. Hopefully Baxter's TED Talk helps bring about real change in the medical world regarding pain treatment and pain management.

I am one of those pain patients. Thank you for this. Got tears streaming. Thank you.

I had a doctor tell me 30 years ago that if I was a horse, they'd take me out back and shoot me my back is so bad. add to that it is a degenerative issue and only gets worse with every passing day. but me, who's been denied disability 3 times when i applies over decade ago, is denied any relief at all. i had a pain dr. for 8 years that provided enough meds for me to be able to function halfway and not be in absolute misery 24/7. he dropped me 6 years ago because a pee test showed a trace amount of weed in my system. how dare i go to an indoor concert 3 days before my appointment. so no new pain dr. will even consider taking me on as a patient, and primary care dr. refuse to prescribe any pain meds. so I'm f-cked. It's nothing less than inhumane and cruel to withhold pain meds from chronic severe long-term pain sufferers. period...and they plain don't give a FK.

Best TED Talk in weeks if not months... - and I watch all of them! Thanks for an amazing LifeHack!

I have had severe nerve pain for six weeks due to a fall. I have been refused proper pain management and have actually become suicidal at times. I would rather be dependent on opiates than live like this

I have been dealing with intractable pain for 28 years, sometimes being bedridden. I’ve learned on my own how to deal with my pain. It’s interesting that I often will sit and jiggle my leg/legs and/or arm(s) to help myself feel better and I will often go sit outside in the winter (bundled appropriately, of course) in the ungodly cold and jiggle both legs with my forearms resting on them (or with my elbows resting on my knees, my head on my hands) so my whole body vibrates as I breathe in and meditate. I can alternate the pattern of the jiggling as much as I want to reach any part of my body. It helps more than any pill has. Distraction, focus, grounding—so many other things you wouldn’t expect—have wound up helping. I’ve also recently had stellate ganglion blocks (spinal) for ptsd with pain (they do not work for everyone nor are they covered by insurance for everyone either). I do find medical marijuana helps as well. I know some can’t do that, but I was so anti before I started. Now I think I’d have died if I didn’t agree because I was at my breaking point and couldn’t take being bedridden anymore. It added extra pain on top because I couldn’t move. Having the edge taken away helped me move which helped me jiggle which helped me move…lol And finding something—anything—to laugh about has been beyond helpful. I change my perspective whenever I can! I ask others to help me find a different perspective on something if I’m unable to do so. (Not someone who tells me to just get over it. We’ve parted ways long ago.) It helps tremendously.

Just keep going. Please. The depression on top is like being kicked over and over when you’re down. It’s— there’s nothing that can describe what it is. So now you’ll need to address the issue of depression as well because chronic pain causes depression and depression can cause/increase pain. But do address it with your doctor. All the people saying they’ve “been depressed” don’t understand depression. Depression is a chemical response in your brain. Being sad or down isn’t the same as having depression—which is a medical condition that affects your brain in insidious ways. In your ability to think clearly, in the way you care for and carry your body, in your relationships, your school or job, your quality of life, and even possibly, your life. It’s a serious health concern. Please take it as such. You matter. ❤

Here i have been writing poetry and prose about being content within agony, thinking it was this spiritual journey and what i was doing was hacking my brain like a professional without realizing it. Thank you.

👍👍100% agree that "more comfortable" is a worthy goal!
I will probably never experience another pain free day; if I gave up on "more comfortable" I would only have "never comfortable" to fall back on 🤷🏼‍♀️

I have suffered from chronic pain most of my 69 years, the only thing that has ever helped was learning about the true source - the brain NOT the body. Understanding leads to control, reliance on pills just helps the pharmaceutical companies. This is a GREAT explanation! Thank you, I hope more people enduring chronic pain would follow your advice.

This talk honestly brought tears to my eyes. I am not in chronic pain, but my wife is. After just binge watching Painkiller, this is a must watch

I hurt to the point I am exhausted everyday. I don’t use opioids but have chronic pain. Kiss my butt with this. I work I have family I don’t have good health insurance. The thing that gets me is she is negating the very real pain someone is in.

Oh, this talk was so educational as well as entertaining. Loved it.

“What you feel is mostly what you expect to feel.” Brilliant!