The Pain Amplifier
Just like your stereo at home, the Pain Amplifier adds volume to the severity of the pain you feel. It is based from the different things in your environment, either negative or positive, that may affect how you feel pain.
The pain amplifier is like your home or car stereo. It has a volume button that ranges from one to ten, just like the pain scale used by most clinics and pain doctors. Now add to this a thing called a pre-amplifier, or “boost-amp”, a box that allows you to get much more power to the main stereo or radio, and a lot more volume. Sort of like when you hook up your television through your stereo at home. (see illustration)
If you set your main radio or stereo at the highest number, ten, and your pre-amp at the same ten, your speakers will be damaged, eventually causing destruction of the whole system. This is also true with the pain amplifier If your original pain scale pain is five or six, and your pain amplifier is set on eight, the five or six you're experiencing every day can be crippling.
As we travel through the pain cycle, on the negative side, we are turning up the volume on the pain amplifier, higher and higher as things get worse and worse. The more negative the things that happen, the more this increases our sensitivity to pain, eventually surrounding our whole world with it. The noise from this pain becomes much too loud to concentrate on anything else.
People who are all the way down the negative side of the pain path are feeling pain so loud that they can become bedridden with a scale pain of two! As we swing the curve from Surrender to Belief (see Pain Cycle Chart) and travel to the positive side of the cycle, we begin to turn the amplifier volume down.
Now, add in education, treatments, and therapies to our lives and the amplifier volume goes further down, until, eventually, the pain goes deep into the background and you can now concentrate on other, more positive things in your life. This happens over time, whatever time it takes for an individual to complete the journey.
I can vouch for this, because, in my case the scale pain hasn't changed in five years. It had always been at an average of six to seven, with mornings being eight to nine. But my pain amplifier is now down to two or three. My pain is far in the background. When I walk more than 5 miles, it goes down to one, thus putting pain further and further back.
Two years ago I would be bedridden with a six to seven, I would have had an emergency room visit with an eight to nine, and be completely disabled with a ten. Now, a six to seven is mild, an eight to nine means I can still accomplish most tasks and only a ten would put me into a bed-ridden state.
One of the keys in pain education, I believe, is to learn the difference between damaging and non-damaging pain. I learned, from a qualified physical therapist, that the way I was walking and standing, my posture, was causing constantly damaging pain. I learned to do this the right way, but every day, I must stretch and move my body. It is very painful but this pain is non-damaging and will quickly subside.
Further studies in books and from information on the Internet led me to become very educated in my diseases, and the biggest part of damaging pain was gone. Fear.
Education is also the only non-invasive treatment that you can perform yourself, and see an immediate effect in turning down the volume of the pain amplifier.
You will learn through trial and error to listen to your body and do what it says. You will learn to stop the damaging actions, to understand all the things you are doing to cause it. You will learn to live through the non-damaging pain, and to “Do what you can, When you can” to complete your journey into positivity. Constantly turning down the volume of the pain amplifier.
These are questions designed to help the pain sufferer determine where your Pain Amplifier is set.
If you answer yes, turn the volume up, if you answer no, turn it down.
If you set your main radio or stereo at the highest number, ten, and your pre-amp at the same ten, your speakers will be damaged, eventually causing destruction of the whole system. This is also true with the pain amplifier If your original pain scale pain is five or six, and your pain amplifier is set on eight, the five or six you're experiencing every day can be crippling.
As we travel through the pain cycle, on the negative side, we are turning up the volume on the pain amplifier, higher and higher as things get worse and worse. The more negative the things that happen, the more this increases our sensitivity to pain, eventually surrounding our whole world with it. The noise from this pain becomes much too loud to concentrate on anything else.
People who are all the way down the negative side of the pain path are feeling pain so loud that they can become bedridden with a scale pain of two! As we swing the curve from Surrender to Belief (see Pain Cycle Chart) and travel to the positive side of the cycle, we begin to turn the amplifier volume down.
Now, add in education, treatments, and therapies to our lives and the amplifier volume goes further down, until, eventually, the pain goes deep into the background and you can now concentrate on other, more positive things in your life. This happens over time, whatever time it takes for an individual to complete the journey.
I can vouch for this, because, in my case the scale pain hasn't changed in five years. It had always been at an average of six to seven, with mornings being eight to nine. But my pain amplifier is now down to two or three. My pain is far in the background. When I walk more than 5 miles, it goes down to one, thus putting pain further and further back.
Two years ago I would be bedridden with a six to seven, I would have had an emergency room visit with an eight to nine, and be completely disabled with a ten. Now, a six to seven is mild, an eight to nine means I can still accomplish most tasks and only a ten would put me into a bed-ridden state.
One of the keys in pain education, I believe, is to learn the difference between damaging and non-damaging pain. I learned, from a qualified physical therapist, that the way I was walking and standing, my posture, was causing constantly damaging pain. I learned to do this the right way, but every day, I must stretch and move my body. It is very painful but this pain is non-damaging and will quickly subside.
Further studies in books and from information on the Internet led me to become very educated in my diseases, and the biggest part of damaging pain was gone. Fear.
Education is also the only non-invasive treatment that you can perform yourself, and see an immediate effect in turning down the volume of the pain amplifier.
You will learn through trial and error to listen to your body and do what it says. You will learn to stop the damaging actions, to understand all the things you are doing to cause it. You will learn to live through the non-damaging pain, and to “Do what you can, When you can” to complete your journey into positivity. Constantly turning down the volume of the pain amplifier.
These are questions designed to help the pain sufferer determine where your Pain Amplifier is set.
If you answer yes, turn the volume up, if you answer no, turn it down.
- Have you lost your recreational activities, sports, hobbies, etc. ?
- Have you lost your social life, meeting with friends, going out?
- Have you become sad, depressed, or gloomy?
- Do you have periods where you see no hope for the future?
- Do you say to yourself, “I feel so bad, my pain is so bad, today's going to be a bad day, I just can't do this.”
- Do you feel that there is no help for you, that you are “stuck with this?”
- Do you fight your pain, trying to be who you used to be, attacking your work, at your job or at home.
- Do you become easily agitated, especially at things not going right, even small things like buttoning a shirt or losing your keys.
- Do you experience pain that causes you to be unsure of your future?
- Do you feel that no one believes you, that people think you are lying, faking, being lazy, or cheating and using your illness to do this?
- Do you know exactly what's causing your pain, exactly what your medicines do, exactly what therapy is trying to accomplish? Do you blame God, or yourself, or the medical system for your demise?