Louis Zantema
5 January 2020
Louis is a GZ-Psychologist with a great passion for gaming. For him, a game training that offers therapy is the most valuable thing you can develop: especially for pain complaints, which are on the interesting intersection of body and mind. His aim is to make himself dispensable as a therapist.
When you are working on your pain, the pain itself is not the most important thing to focus your attention on. In fact, focusing too much attention on your pain can even work against you. This may seem contradictory, but let me explain.
- Too much attention to reducing the pain means that you are always working on it. And by being busy with it all the time, you increase the chance of your brain hurting.
- Almost all strategies that have a positive influence on pain take a longer time to work. Especially the strategies you execute yourself. It doesn't make much sense to focus directly on your pain when, for example, you start exercising more.
- Focus your attention on the fun things. Fun is the biggest opponent of pain.
- Ultimately, it is about making your life more enjoyable and worthwhile. There is a chance that the pain will stay or sometimes come back, even if you try so hard. Hopefully it will then be possible to focus your attention on the activities that you can (again) undertake.