Living with chronic pain and illness can bring up a lot of anxiety. You might be feeling a daily sense of worry, wondering if you will be able to manage your anxiety that increases when health and pain symptoms suddenly strike. While everyone’s anxiety symptoms and experiences with chronic pain and illness are different, I hear so many stories about how health symptoms interfere with daily life.

I am sure you have heard it over and over again how important it is to get a good night’s sleep. It’s right up there with eating well and exercising right? In this article I hope to add new perspectives as to why bedtime rest is important and what you can do to support better nighttime habits.

Are you familiar with the term secondary trauma? Chances are that this is the first time you are hearing about it, so let me give you a brief description of what this phrase actually means. Secondary trauma is defined as experiencing, hearing about, or being witness to life threatening or life-changing events of another person on a regular basis.

Experiencing life when you have chronic pain and illness can be difficult when it comes to maintaining relationships. If you developed your illness as an adult for instance, adjusting to your new normal also means having to make big life adjustments. Making adjustments due to medical illness was something I did, and it was hard. Some of what I share here is based on my own experiences and the experiences of friends with medical illness.

When experiencing uncomfortable sensations in the body what do you do? Do you ignore them? Do you try and distract yourself from what you are feeling? Or do you stop and sit still to understand what is going on within yourself? Most of the time it is hard to stop and take a moment to check in with sensations and emotions because life is just too busy. There are so many obligations and distractions that keep you moving from place to place without a moment to catch your breath.

Experiencing the blues over the summer may be surprising to hear, but it does happen to many of us. Here will will explore some reasons why you may be feeling blue and what you can do to cope.

How can we get through the holidays more stress free? This can seem managing holiday stress is an impossible task, but by exploring some ideas shared here you will see that it is possible. After all, the holidays are not just about running around trying to please everyone. That desire to please others and be everywhere for everyone can leave you feeling both depleted and resentful. Instead, these ideas can help keep the stress and overwhelm at bay allowing more time for fun, enjoyment and connection.

Holiday parties, work parties and family commitments can really be stressful for people who have social anxiety. Under normal circumstances an anxious person might be able to come up with some excuses as to why they cannot attend a party or social gathering, but when it comes to the holiday season this can be even harder to manage.

Practicing deep belly breathing is one of the most effective ways to help calm down the mind and body. To get an idea about what a deep belly breath looks like, I want you to place one hand under your belly button and the other hand on your chest.

Self-care is something we hear about often. We hear that adding in a self-care practice is important for our overall well-being. So then why is it so hard to actually get the ball rolling on taking care of our needs? Self-care may sound good in theory, but to actually implement it is an entirely different story. Do you ever wonder why that might be the case?

There are so many studies showing the positive effects of meditation such as improved sleep, reduced blood pressure and greater focus to name a few. Even though we are aware of these benefits, it seems to be hard to actually implement this practice. Why is this? Well for many, the idea of mediating can sound a little intimidating.

Pain management often means incorporating a regular self care routine. That is because our bodies respond well when we stick to a schedule. This is especially true when talking about sleep routines for pain management. When we do this, our body intuitively knows when to go to sleep and when to wake up in the morning which aids in healing and repair work.

Living life with a high levels of physical pain is something many people experience. I deal with chronic pain and know how much it can interfere with daily life. It is my hope that the approaches shared here will provide options to those who dealing with persistent physical pain.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, we all should be relaxing two hours before bed. They share that this is very helpful in keeping stress levels down. I mean it is good to know what the experts say about this, however it is not realistic to follow what they recommend. In a perfect world, we would be able to follow these guidelines, but for those of us who are looking for more practical ideas; here’s one to consider.