Coping suggestions?

So I've dealt with the back pain for awhile. I have some things that I do to help cope with my back pain. Things that help to take my mind away from the pain (as much as is possible given circumstances anyways).

Right now we are attempting to close on a house my husband and I want to move into. It has been a very stressful six weeks. We were supposed to have moved in on tuesday. Anyways, I would like to hear how everyone handles stress, and it's effects on our pain.

For me at least, when I am mad/upset/stressed, my pain gets worse. I also end up with the usual aches and pains being magnified. Each day while things build up, my pain is getting worse. Sure, it's not as bad as it has been. BUT, my techniques aren't working.

Sometimes reading, or listening to music really loud, will give me just enough that I'm not focused on the pain. Also, when pain is really bad, I work on breathing differently, and focusing on my breathing versus the pain. IT's hard to do, but sometimes I manage.

Other ideas?

Wow I know where you're at...just moved (after having house on the market forever,3+yrs) so know what a stress that whole thing is. My sympathies...

Have you ever done any Yoga, progressive relaxation? Mantra?Sitting Zen etc?

I think the other response talked about focusing on a part of your body. That's a good one. This type of focus I learned when studying zen a long ago when I lived in Japan. But, being a slothful one, I have not made it a key part of my lifestyle (this IS relevant, pls bear with me). But when my world collapsed and I entered the wonderful world of CP in 1984 I dug it out of the inner tool sack and found it a life-saver.

There's tons written on it, under various monikers: meditation, progressive relaxation, behavioral medicine, mind-body awareness, cybernetics self-induction, self-hypnosis, trance state induction, etc etc. The part that I think you can find helpful at times like this is the breathing part. if you can find some good step-by-step instructions about how to do progressive relaxation, you can get yourself into a state of deep relaxation in fairly short order once you try it a few times. Where your mind goes once in that state if of course where the long-term challenge becomes and I won't address that. (Later I'll add the method I use if you're interested).

I just want to say that the relaxation stuff is sort of like building a 'base' for running; if someone runs say 1.5miles a day, say 5x a week, and works their way up to 3.5miles 4x a week and 7 on weekends, their base resting pulse tends to lower,and their ability to physically relax should be correspondingly lower as well. The pertinence to our CP situation is IMHO this: if one regularly gets the body-mind to that very relaxed state, and builds up a 'base', then, when that major BS stressor comes along, the coping tends to improve slightly. PLUS...since you're accustomed to ordering your body (in so many words) to knock it off, to slow down, settle down and just relax -- because of that new body awareness, chances are that you'll still have worse pain on stress days, but lose some of that helpless feeling; and, depending on the organicity of the pain (ie, structural vs just nerve damage) you may surprise yourself that your pain tolerance threshold actually improves. (ex: formerly, a major stress event took you to 9, after your 'conditioning' of yourself you may be able to get yourself back to baseline pain level (whatever that may be).

I know there are cynics about all this, but all I can say is that because of my improved awareness (built painfully and very slowly over the years from 1986 to today) that what used to lay me out for 3 days I can now get through without even having to up my meds or hit the horizontal for days. I'm sure that many here can put their own twist on this self-awareness aspect. Sorry if I sound preachy, but I stopped my Cymbalta cause I'm totally hyped(manic)....so I'm tending to rant, sorry. Hope it helps.