Category: Caring for People in Pain
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Making Change Happen
Last year, I wrote an essay called What’s Working? A 5-Minute Exercise for a Better Life for Psychology Today. Although everything else seems to have changed since last year, the ideas in that essay have not. Today, I want to talk about using it to take a few steps forward that will make your next year better. …
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News 5 Cleveland Talks About 1step2life
We were very excited that Taneisha Cordell of News5 Cleveland, an ABC affiliated covered the development of 1step2life. Development of the app was inspired by my son, Sean’s, struggles with intractable persistent pain. He talks here about his struggles and how 1step2life has helped him feel empowered to take back his life. For their full…
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Following Doctor’s Orders
When teens don’t believe parents or doctors have the right to set rules, they don’t follow them.
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Kids Who Go To School In Pain
Note: I wrote this years ago, when my son’s migraines first when chronic. Much has changed in our lives. Sending him to school with his pain remains one of the hardest things my husband and I – and certainly our son – has ever had to do. But every single day he went – maybe…
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Being Organized Is Even More Important When You’ve Got No Energy To Spare
I write a lot about organizing, because I have too much to do and very few spoons to spare. I also know that if I don’t write things down, they spin around in my head and keep me from sleeping. If we try to keep everything in our head without an organizational system, we keep…
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Pain, Emotions, & the Amygdala
Pain leads to depression. Depression leads to pain. The amygdala mediates it all.
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Pain, Ambiguous Loss, & Acceptance
Acceptance means holding both a painful now and a hopeful future in our minds· Death can be a harsh shock, as someone is ripped from us and is no longer present in our lives. It has a finality to it – that’s part of the shock and much of the pain. But it is real…
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Caregiver Mode: Unique to 1step2life
A mother’s despair This app began as a search for a tool. My son was in horrible pain – in bed, in the dark, barely holding on to school. When I looked at him, my first thought was always the same – How much pain is he in? Then I’d wonder if he’d taken his…
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We’ve Launched! The Weekly Check In
Everyone’s pain is different and everyone is in a different place in their journey.
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You Can Curse
How do you cope when things feel their worst? You can cry. Or laugh. Or curse.
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A Life Changing Event
When do I get my old life back? The answer is, you don’t. That’s why they call it a ‘life changing event.’
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School: The Big Picture
Families need to work together towards a shared goal: helping children grew into healthy happy adolescents and adolescents make successful transitions to adulthood.
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Getting Kids In Pain To School
Concrete tips on moving a teen in pain out of bed and towards functioning.
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It’s hard being a parent
It’s so hard as a parent when you are desperately hoping your child will just make it to school and squeak through to graduation. And so hard to listen to even your dearest friends fret about things that you’d give your eye teeth to be worrying about. It’s just hard.
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Everyone’s got a friend with ‘the’ cure.
You know they mean well. You know they care. In fact, they’re trying to be sympathetic and make a connection. But when you tell them you have severe chronic migraines and they say ‘oh yeah, my sister-in-law gets migraines too’, and then ask if you if you’ve tried Excedrin Migraine . . . . No,…
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Refining the Interface
Many people living with chronic pain are sensitive to the environment. On the down side, there’s the pain. Allodynia is a condition where modest stimuli – like brushing your hair – triggers pain. It’s common in people who have migraine, regional pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, other conditions. I remember my son cringing from the sound of…
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We are getting so close!
The developers have been working hard to take our dream and turn it into an app that you can download from the AppStore or GooglePlay. We are getting so close! We are currently working through our fourth version of the app, making sure the user interface is as clear and easy to use as we…
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Children and COVID-19: What Parents Should Know.
I just wrote a new blog for Psychology Today on COVID-19 and kids. As the parent of someone who is chronically ill, I not only worry that he’ll be sick with the flu or COVID-19 or a cold. I worry that getting any of those viruses will kick off another long spike in pain. Keeping…
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Getting Kids to Open Up
When your child is in pain, it’s easy to focus in on the three things that worry us: pain, pills, and homework. I know for myself, just seeing my son’s face triggers that mental checklist.
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New Edition Released of Parenting a Child in Chronic Pain
As a developmental psychologist who has studied parenting on four continents, I can tell you a lot about raising teenagers. But nothing prepared me for watching my son shaking under the covers flinching from the light, and unable to speak from pain.
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