Chronic pain affects over 51 million Americans, and if you’re one of those affected, you’re probably familiar with approaches that rely mainly on medication.1 The problem is that chronic pain rarely comes from a single cause, and treating it as purely physical can leave a lot unaddressed.
Research now recognizes that chronic pain is closely tied to psychological distress and lifestyle habits, which is why new clinical guidelines have started moving towards nonpharmacological chronic pain treatments.2 These are science-backed, actionable strategies that can help you cope with chronic pain without medication.
Founded in 2010, A Mission For Michael (AMFM) offers specialized mental health care across California, Minnesota, and Virginia. Our accredited facilities provide residential and outpatient programs, utilizing evidence-based therapies such as CBT, DBT, and EMDR.
Our dedicated team of licensed professionals ensures every client receives the best care possible, supported by accreditation from The Joint Commission. We are committed to safety and personalized treatment plans.
What Is Chronic Pain?
Before we can explore strategies to cope with chronic pain naturally, we first need to understand what that pain is and where it comes from. Pain is easy to resent, but it exists for a reason. It’s the body’s way of telling you something needs attention, and without that signal, we’d be far more vulnerable to injury and illness than we realize.
Imagine accidentally resting your hand on a hot stove. If there were no pain, you would leave your hand there, resulting in serious burns. When we feel sudden pain, we instinctively do whatever we can to make it stop. In this case, the pain makes you pull your hand away, and this reaction helps to prevent further injury.3
Chronic pain is a pain that continues or keeps returning for longer than three months.4 The problem with chronic pain is that the protective nature of sudden pain is no longer needed. For instance, you may be experiencing pain after surgery or from an illness like cancer. There’s often nothing you can do in the moment to stop it in the same immediate way. However, this doesn’t stop the nervous system from continuing to send pain signals.
The worry with someone experiencing chronic pain is how it can impact their quality of life and make them more vulnerable to adverse outcomes, like opioid addiction and mental health conditions.5
The Link Between Mental Health and Chronic Pain
Many people managing chronic pain have co-occurring mental health issues. Sometimes, these predate whatever is causing the pain, with symptoms getting worse as a result. In other cases, the pain may trigger completely new mental health conditions.
Chronic Pain and Depression
The link between chronic pain and depression is one of the most well-documented relationships, with research estimating that around one-third to nearly half of people with chronic pain experience clinical depression.6
Chronic pain often limits mobility, and when that’s combined with a fear that your circumstances might not improve, it can drive a depressed mood.
Depression can also increase how intensely you perceive pain, while pain itself can make depressive episodes even worse, showing a bidirectional relationship between the two.6
Anxiety and Pain
Coping with chronic pain can create fear and worry, two things that feed into anxiety. For example, you may worry and fear the next flare-up. You’re not sure when it will come, but in the moments where there’s no pain, you spend a lot of that time waiting for it to arrive.
Another worry may be medical bills, as dealing with chronic pain from a pharmaceutical standpoint isn’t cheap. And if the pain stops you from working, that can add a whole other layer of stress.
It’s easy to see why studies have noted that around 40% of people with chronic pain also have serious symptoms of anxiety.7
Just in the same way as depression and pain reinforce each other, so can anxiety and pain. Being anxious increases muscle tension and keeps the body in a heightened state of alertness, which can make pain feel more intense.7
Five Science-Backed Tips for Chronic Pain Management
In the past, the standard approach to chronic pain has relied mainly on medications like opioids. Opioids can be effective for short-term pain relief, but if used long-term, they can create dependencies and addictions.
Because of this, the CDC now recommends non-pharmacologic interventions as a first line of chronic pain treatment.8 This means moving towards strategies that don’t involve drugs should be the starting point in chronic pain management. Unfortunately, research shows that these types of approaches are still underused, and access to them depends a lot on the education and awareness surrounding them.8
If you’re managing long-term pain and your current approach feels like it could be causing problems, here are some proven ways to improve quality of life with chronic pain:
1. Try Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT is an adaptable form of therapy that focuses on the relationship between your thoughts and feelings and how they impact your behaviors. When it’s used to treat chronic pain, CBT aims to help you identify and challenge the thought patterns that make pain harder to deal with.
For example, catastrophizing, where your mind jumps straight to the worst possible outcome, is incredibly common among people managing long-term pain. Using CBT for chronic pain helps you interrupt and overcome these negative thinking patterns.
Research shows that CBT for chronic pain can reduce pain intensity while also improving mood and quality of life, which makes it very useful when mental health and chronic pain are both present.9
2. Practice Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation trains your attention to stay in the present moment, usually by focusing on the breath or on physical sensations in the body.
For someone with chronic pain, this might sound counterintuitive, because the last thing you want to do is focus on what hurts. But the aim here is to change your relationship with pain.
Regular mindfulness practice can help calm the nervous system and reduce the stress response that makes pain feel worse.
Research has found that mindfulness-based programs lead to meaningful reductions in pain intensity, which are linked to meaningful improvements in quality of life.10 They are also effective coping strategies for pain-related stress, as you can quiet your mind whenever it is causing distress.
The beauty of meditation is that it doesn’t require any equipment or a big time commitment. Practicing just a few minutes a day can start to make a difference in how you deal with chronic pain.
3. Engage in Regular Light Exercise
Moving your body when you’re in pain can feel like the last thing you want to do, but research consistently shows that gentle exercise is one of the most effective natural strategies for managing chronic pain.
Activities like walking or stretching help keep muscles strong and joints flexible, and exercise triggers the release of endorphins, which are the body’s own painkillers.
Studies have found that consistent physical activity reduces pain in those with conditions like arthritis, along with alleviating symptoms of anxiety.11 These kinds of results make regular light exercise key in building an overall chronic pain management program.
4. Focus on Diet and Nutrition
What you eat can influence how you experience pain, and this is an area that a lot of people overlook. Chronic inflammation is a contributor to pain in conditions like arthritis and fibromyalgia, and certain diets can either increase that inflammation or help reduce it.
A Mediterranean-style diet that focuses heavily on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, olive oil, and fatty fish rich in omega-3s has shown real promise. A study on fibromyalgia patients found that those who followed this type of diet for eight weeks reported far less pain and better daily function compared to a control group.12
Highly processed foods and heavy alcohol consumption can promote inflammation, so reducing these where you can is worth considering. Of course, diet alone won’t resolve chronic pain, but it gives your body better conditions to manage it.
5. Practice Yoga
Yoga combines gentle stretching and breathing exercises, which makes it well-suited for people dealing with chronic pain.
Yoga styles like Hatha focus on slow movements that can be modified depending on your ability. The deep breathing element also helps to promote relaxation and reduce the stress that compounds pain.
Scientific reviews have found yoga to be both effective and safe for reducing chronic pain levels and improving physical function.13 The benefits have been demonstrated in conditions like chronic low back pain and neck pain, where regular practice led to reduced pain intensity and greater mobility.
Some studies also report reductions in pain-related anxiety symptoms among participants who stuck with a consistent yoga schedule.14
If you’re new to the idea of yoga, it could be beneficial to work with an instructor who understands chronic pain and can then guide you through the basics. That way, you can find an approach that works for you.
What to Do if Your Mental Health Has Been Affected by Chronic Pain
When you’ve been coping with chronic pain for a long time, your focus can narrow to just getting through each day with the least amount of discomfort possible. That’s a completely understandable response, but it can leave the mental health side of things unaddressed for months or even years, and that’s where conditions like depression and anxiety start to take hold.
A Mission For Michael provides mental health treatment for people whose chronic pain has led to psychological difficulties. We use a range of pain management therapy forms and evidence-based approaches to help you manage the emotional impact of chronic pain. These include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), mindfulness, yoga, and medication education.
If you’d like to learn more about how AMFM can help, call us today. A member of our team will be happy to talk you through your options and guide you on the next steps.
References
- Rikard, M. (2023). Chronic pain among adults—United States, 2019–2021. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 72(15). https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7215a1
- Rhon, D. I., Fritz, J. M., Greenlee, T. A., Dry, K. E., Mayhew, R. J., Laugesen, M. C., Dragusin, E., & Teyhen, D. S. (2021). Move to health: A holistic approach to the management of chronic low back pain: An intervention and implementation protocol developed for a pragmatic clinical trial. Journal of Translational Medicine, 19(1), 357. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-021-03013-y
- Del Giudice, C., & Papesh, M. H. (2024). Ouch! What is pain and why do we need it? Frontiers for Young Minds, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2023.1221084
- Cleveland Clinic. (2021). Chronic pain. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/4798-chronic-pain
- Dydyk, A., & Conermann, T. (2024). Chronic pain. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553030/
- Vadivelu, N., Kai, A. M., Kodumudi, G., Babayan, K., Fontes, M., & Burg, M. M. (2017). Pain and psychology: A reciprocal relationship. The Ochsner Journal, 17(2), 173–180. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5472077/
- Aaron, R. V., Ravyts, S. G., Carnahan, N. D., Bhattiprolu, K., Harte, N., McCaulley, C. C., Vitalicia, L., Rogers, A. B., Wegener, S. T., & Dudeney, J. (2025). Prevalence of depression and anxiety among adults with chronic pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Network Open, 8(3), e250268. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.0268
- Parman, N. L., Schmicker, R. H., & Rundell, S. D. (2025). Use of nonpharmacologic interventions by adults with high-impact chronic pain in the United States: A cross-sectional analysis. Pain Research and Management, 2025(1). https://doi.org/10.1155/prm/5213178
- Lim, J.-A., Choi, S.-H., Lee, W. J., Jang, J. H., Moon, J. Y., Kim, Y. C., & Kang, D.-H. (2018). Cognitive behavioral therapy for patients with chronic pain. Medicine, 97(23). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5999451/
- Dubey, A., & Muley, P. A. (2023). Meditation: A promising approach for alleviating chronic pain. Cureus, 15(11), e49244. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.49244
- Polaski, A. M., Phelps, A. L., Kostek, M. C., Szucs, K. A., & Kolber, B. J. (2019). Exercise-induced hypoalgesia: A meta-analysis of exercise dosing for the treatment of chronic pain. PLOS ONE, 14(1), e0210418. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210418
- Casini, I., Ladisa, V., Clemente, L., Delussi, M., Rostanzo, E., Peparini, S., Aloisi, A. M., & de Tommaso, M. (2024). A personalized Mediterranean diet improves pain and quality of life in patients with fibromyalgia. Pain and Therapy, 13(3), 609–620. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40122-024-00598-2
- Crevelario de Melo, R., Ribeiro, A., & Luquine, C. (2021). Effectiveness and safety of yoga to treat chronic and acute pain: A rapid review of systematic reviews. BMJ Open, 11(12), e048536. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-048536
- Holtzman, S., & Beggs, R. T. (2013). Yoga for chronic low back pain: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Pain Research and Management, 18(5), 267–272. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/105919
