The planned flare: why you can’t always avoid pain

Today, I am sharing something personal with you because I value you.

In OT school, we learned about all sorts of different specialties we could go into.

Spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, pediatrics, mental health…

…but as soon as I got a taste for hands, it was OVER.

All the specialties of OT are amazing, and I truly believe the right OTs end up exactly where they are meant to be. For me, this was definitely hand therapy.

Why, you ask?

Well, let me ask you something.
What’s your favorite thing to do? Do you have a hobby or activity you absolutely love?

Really think about it for a minute, then come back to me.

I’m going to guess this activity is dependent in some large or small part on your hand function. Gripping, manipulating, weight bearing, holding, turning, stirring, swinging, strumming - whatever your activity is, your hands are likely involved, and the health of your hands may influence how much you enjoy said activity.

This is why I am passionate about helping people with their hands.
Once your hands are feeling better, you can truly enjoy your favorite activities again.

On the flip side… sometimes, you can be doing everything ‘right’ and still experience pain.

This could be, in part, due to your desire to participate in your favorite activity such as playing the guitar, swinging a tennis racket, or baking…but you know your hands will hurt as you do the thing.

Let’s talk about the planned pain flare.

This has come up quite a bit in our biweekly Healthy Hands Academy calls.

“Golfing hurts my hands but I don’t want to give it up.”

“Eating a restricted diet helps my symptoms  but I don’t just want to eat broccoli & apples for the rest of my life.”

“I love to cook but it can make my hands hurt.”

“Knitting is my favorite but maybe I should do it less because of my pain.”

HEAR ME OUT.

While there are plenty of things you can do to decrease your pain as you golf, cook, knit etc…

…such as using hand supports, getting into a good exercise routine, modifying the activity, and consuming anti-inflammatory foods…

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you still hurt.

And that’s okay.

YOU ARE HUMAN.

There’s no way you can always do all the things all the time.

Sometimes you will knowingly do things that will cause your hands to hurt.

Again, you are HUMAN.

The key here is having tools in your toolbox - be it quick pain relief, hand supports (check out my free guides for arthritis and hypermobility), gadgets, or exercises - that you can come to as you need them.

But your goal should never be to experience no pain ever again, because that’s setting yourself up for disappointment. Rather, your goal should be to have tools in your hand pain toolbox at the ready, and to begin to start using them in your everyday life.

If you can shift your focus to improving your habits by 1% each day, you’ll end up thirty seven times better within a year than if you hadn’t improved at all.

So instead of trying to change everything all at once and make huge leaps, just to burn yourself out of ever wearing a brace or doing a single hand exercise again…

Focus on improving by 1% today, and give yourself the grace you need when you can’t do all the things all the time.

No one can.