1step2life

An app for people living with chronic pain and those who love them

[1step2life]

What's the difference between a service dog, therapy dog, and emotional support dog?

Dogs and other pets can be immensely helpful for folks living with chronic pain or other serious conditions like anxiety and depression. Dogs with ’emotional support’ vests are appearing in classrooms across the country. People have tried to bring peacocks on board planes as support animals. My dog and I are just beginning our training as a therapy dog team, and our trainer said the most common…

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Brain fog? Try humming it out.

Humming stimulates the vagus nerve and can help reduce brain fog and stress.

Brain fog. You can’t think well and have trouble focusing. During my recent bout of COVID, the first sign was that I could not think well and felt like I was slogging through mud. Brain fog is a common part of pain, stress, anxiety, and exhaustion. Jim Donovan recommends this simple technique for reducing fog and restoring focus. It works by vibrating your throat and stimulating the vagus…

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Are you drinking TOO MUCH water?

Are you drinking TOO MUCH water? People living with pain get asked about hydration so much, it's easy to just roll your eyes. Being under and OVER hydrated can both cause pain, dizziness, and headache.

Hydration is important for everyone. Folks with chronic pain get really tired of being asked if they’re drinking enough water. I know my son does. But how much too drink is a more complicated question than it first appears. And important enough to thinking about before rolling your eyes when asked – when more time – if you’re hydrating. A few things to keep in mind: We need water to live. It’s…

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Programs to Treat Children in Pain

An updated list of resources and 100 programs that treat childhood pain.

Tonya Palermo is an outstanding researcher and practitioner working with children in pain. She wrote a terrific workbook that is essentially a pain rehab program in a book – Managing Your Child’s Chronic Pain. Working with the International Association for the Study of Pain’s Special Interest Group on Pain in Childhood, she maintains a list of resources for academics (which I think are great for…

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Cyles of Five: Another Way To Disrupt Anxiety

Cycles of 5 is a simple technique to disrupt immediate pain or anxiety.

When you are overwhelmed with pain or anxiety, you perceive THREAT. That’s a healthy response. The amygdala is the part of your brain that processes emotions. When it perceives threat, it responded by triggering the production of cortisol and other hormones that trigger a flight or fight response. Your heart beats faster, your stomach and intestines stop digesting food. You become hyper-aware of…

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Want To Learn To Breathe?

Want To Learn To Breath? Relax. Focus. Reduce your stress. Help your pain. And hear a great story about how watching Avatar the Last Airbender helped life coach Deron Essex learn meditation and change his life.

Learning to breathe, meditate, or do biofeedback doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to cost money. It doesn’t require you to leave your house.It’s BREATHING and focusing. It’s what people did in cold medieval churches and in Tibetan monestaries. It’s what I learned to do – and got me through – labor! You can do this. Personally, I like practicing meditation in very short spots. For me,…

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Five Finger Breathing

Stress and anxiety make pain harder to cope with. This simple technique uses no tech and no equipment. Just use a finger and a hand to help you time and slow down your breathing. Focusing on the touch can make it easier to focus on breathing. You can repeat this exercise as often as needed. While you relax, notice points of tension. I often notice I’ve been tensing my jaw and shoulders.…

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Patience

Patience is one of the most important skills for a parent when their child is in poin. You need to push, cajole, & support. But sometimes you just have to wait.

One of the best things I learned when my son became ill with chronic migraines was patience. That and teamwork. The Doctors will tell you that adolescents with migraines have to keep interacting with the world.  That is really difficult for parents to get their heads around. Kids have to keep going to school even if they are in pain. You feel like a bad parent.  But if you don’t do it, the…

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NYTimes Says There's Never Been A Better Time To Have a Headache

A NY Times article argues there has never been a better time to suffer from headaches. We are finally getting taken seriously.

Sunday’s NY times published a front-page article on headache. It talked about the decades (centuries) of neglect of headache disorders – a disease identified as one of the most disabling diseases in the world today. It talks about the FINALLY rising awareness of the seriousness of these diseases.It talks about new headache treatments – CGRP – and our new understanding of migraine as a…

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The 1step2life Podcast

Follow 1step2life on five major podcasting platforms. A podcast for people living with chronic pain and parents of children in pain.

1step2life: For those living with chronic pain and the people who love them. Honest talk for people living with persistent pain, chronic illness long COVID or other complex medical conditions. Dr. Nancy Darling is a psychologist who studies adolescent parenting and the mom of a son with severe chronic migraines. Living with chronic pain or illness shrinks your world, limits your social life,…

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Beating yourself up about parenting?

It's tough when your child is always in pain. And it takes TIME. Don't beat yourself up. Focus on the things that are most important to your child. Love. Routines. High standards.

I have studied parenting on five continents for close to four decades. I’m also a mom — the mom of two sons, one of them who is very sick. I know what it is to beat yourself up about not being a perfect parent.  But too many parents beat themselves because they are trying to meet two entirely different, incompatible, and unrealistic standards. Most parents – and I’m going to focus on mothers…

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Podcast: Parenting a Child With Migraine

Dr. Nancy Darling talks about her experiences as a mom when her son was suddenly overwhelmed with pain from severe chronic migraine. Her work as a psychologist led to the development of the 1step2life app for children in pain and their their parents.

I am so honored to be interviewed for the Living With An Invisible Injury podcast.  Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XKewmmW7AAKnQ2sVxWVWP?si=JyFZgMQLTYKGzPSpYJ5ouA&dl_branch=1 Interested? Follow us! Subscribe Check out the 1step2life app! Start where you are. Set your own goals. Take back your life. A tool for tracking goals, emotions, and success, not just logging pain. And…

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Why did a psychologist who studies families develop an app for tracking pain?

How did a psychologist who studies families wind up developing an app for tracking pain? When my son developed debilitating migraine disease, it became obvious that tools for people in pain weren't built on either rehabilitation of developmental science.

The fact that the 1step2life app grew completely out of our experience is a family is so deeply ingrained into the fibre of me being that I forget to tell people about it. Hence this post. I was asked for information about 1step2life by the editors of MyChronicBrain – an online magazine and newsletter for people living with migraine. So I wrote up part of our story.I want to share some of what I…

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Pain and the TMJ: It's complicated!

Pain and the TMJ: It's complicated! The joint connecting the jaw to the skull is very complex, closely linked to facial nerves involved in migraine, and under tremendous stress. No wonder it often causes pain.

It’s really sort of amazing how complicated the working of the jaw is and how little we even think about chewing and swallowing until something goes wrong. I became interested in the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and its related dysfunctions a couple of years ago when my mother took a really bad fall. She got a concussion that, fortunately, recovered well. But they almost ignored the fact that…

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Reminders Of Progress

Reminders Of Progress: I'd forgotten all about my son's constant vomiting. Until half a dozen vomit bags spilled out onto the sidewalk. Then it all came back.

It’s been discouraging lately. Things seem better. Classes finished. Social life opening up. Exercise improving. But the setbacks still get you. The mourning for where you think you should be instead of where you really are. That’s where I was today. Until I got into my car. I opened the back door. The dog jumped out. And out of the door’s side pocket spilled half a dozen car sickness bags. Not…

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How does multi-disciplinary pain treatment work?

Pain 101: How does multi-disciplinary pain treament work? An introduction to the bio-psycho-social model.

Understanding pain helps people understand why they feel the way they do. It can be part of a multi-disciplinary approach to treating chronic pain. Here, I talk about the bio-psycho-social model of pain, focusing on different parts of the pain process and how they can be modified. I gave this talk on May 17, 2021 to a group, all of whom were over 70. One of the best observations came from a…

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Avoid Panic With Plan A, B, and C

Avoid Panic With Plan A, B, and C

I remember that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every Sunday afternoon. Sunday at 3:00 was youth orchestra. When my son first developed migraine disease, attacks came like clockwork. Every Sunday around 2:30, he’d begin to yawn. Then the auras would start. I’d see him start wincing from light and then, just as we were ready to go out the door to orchestra, violin in hand, the pain would…

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