How stress affects chronic pain

Having pain every minute of every day is not a lot of fun, but what makes it worse is knowing that every day things can make it worse. Changes in hormones and regular body changes before during and after menstruation make the pain worse. Stress also makes the pain worse. Stress often causes people to tighten up their muscles, without being aware they are doing so. This tightening can cause muscle spasms in some people (people like me with nerve damage or back issues for example) and just the added tension of tight muscles will increase the pain. The mental aspects of stress (such as whirling thoughts etc) lower my ability to deal with or pretty much ignore pain that is between a 2 or 5 on the pain scale. Instead, because my mind is so overwhelmed and I am mentally/emotionally exhausted, my coping skills are low and pain that is at a 2 might feel like it is at a 4. My pain tolerance goes down. This seems to be true for most CP (Chronic Pain) patients that I know.

Fighting pain, dealing with it, and/or just ignoring it every minute of every day takes a great deal of energy. If my energy is focused elsewhere (by whatever stressful situation is going on) then I have less energy to deal with my pain. This can cause me to feel more pain than usual, or even other symptoms such as all-over achiness that I do not normally have. I find myself napping multiple times a day and still sleeping for a minimum of 6 hours (or more) at night, I am tired after being awake for just a couple hours.

Facing a possible mastectomy and cancer diagnosis is extremely stressful, and it is affecting my pain levels. The fear, the unknown, the being left in the dark right now isn't helping either. My pain is higher than usual, my tolerance is lower, and my skin is now sensitive to touch. Even a light hug with arms around my shoulders causes my entire back and pelvis to throb. This doesn't usually happen unless I am in a severe pain crisis. I know most of this is caused by the stress and worry I am feeling. I am trying to keep myself from going nuts, doing deep breathing, meditating, stitching, cleaning (My bedroom looks MUCH better now!) and other means of stress relief, but it isn't making the stress go away. These things are simply keeping me from going insane and just running away somewhere.

So how does stress affect chronic pain? It makes it worse.