People who come to work with chronic pain problems … show difficulty in making even simple decisions … according to new research on chronic pain’s harm to the brain.
Researcher Dante Chivalo found that people with chronic pain suffer from a front
region of the cortex mostly associated with emotion that “never shuts up.” 
Because pain affected mental areas fail to deactivate when they should … workers’ brains are stuck in full throttle ... wearing out neurons and altering their connections to each other.
When pain keeps certain areas of the brain active over time, the brain rewires itself for this dysfunctional perception and apparently the changed wiring can disrupt normal brain behaviors. How so?
The new wiring created under chronic pain … causes depression in some and can put others in a bad mood at work. This imbalanced condition not only makes it harder to make good decisions ... but can also erode business relationships that require people to be in a good mood to collaborate.
How does your business support personnel who suffer from chronic pain? Perhaps it’s time to hear practical solutions from workers who have overcome this problem. We’ve all met and been inspired by them.
Ellen, I have a boss that suffers from so much chronic pain that it is soon going to have an enormous impact on his career. When you work with someone with chronic pain, it is difficult to determine whether they are acting from their true feelings or from the pain. This causes a lot of emotional pain for everyone and brings an unusual dimension into the working relationship. One person's pain becomes everyone's pain as the people who interact with the person struggle to understand and react appropriately. The toll one person's pain takes on everyone around them can be inestimable. In my case, I try to determine whether negative responses are valid or reactionary and to be tolerant. In the end, I miss the balance of the give and take that can occur when I am trying to discuss issues or concerns with someone who is not using all his tolerance on chronic pain. I guess it comes down to this. I try to be supportive, but when that becomes a chronically needed response; who supports the supporter? There may not be enough of us to go around in response to one person's chronic pain. In any event, all the effort that goes into that takes a toll somewhere.
Linda
Posted by: Linda Zdanowicz | February 8, 2008 4:20 AM | Permalink to Comment