Living with chronic back pain

Many people who have chronic pain are frustrated if nobody knows exactly what is causing it. This is very often the case with back pain in particular. It is then considered to be "non-specific" back pain. Some start questioning their own pain perception – and may even be accused of imagining it all. But just because no clear cause can be found, it doesn't mean that they're simply imagining the pain. This is not always easy for other people at home and at work to understand, and it may lead to conflicts. Those who are in pain often feel upset if others don't take them seriously or show understanding.

It can be helpful to find out more about how chronic pain arises. Knowing more about it yourself can make it easier to explain it to others, too.

It usually isn't possible to find one specific cause of chronic back pain. Treatments often only help a little, for a short time, or have a different effect in different people. It is also often difficult to tell whether a given treatment will help because it hasn't been tested enough in good-quality scientific studies. So people with chronic low back pain sometimes need to find out for themselves what helps, and what doesn't.

It is not a good idea to try out every treatment approach you hear about, though. The back pain treatments that haven't been scientifically proven to work rarely have serious side effects. But they're often expensive and take up time and energy that would be better used in other ways. In the long term, many people find it more helpful to accept the chronic pain and focus on finding ways to better cope with it in everyday life.

Some people say that they feel better when they focus on other things rather than on the pain. It sometimes also helps if you take a bit more time to do everything, and adjust your daily routine to suit your ability. Even though it's not always easy, over time many people with chronic back pain learn how to actively shape their everyday lives and improve their quality of life again. Treatment approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy, internet-based programs and multimodal pain management can help here, too.