Building positive emotional experiences is key to pain management because it helps shift focus away from pain and fosters emotional well-being. Engaging in enjoyable activities, social connections, and small daily accomplishments can boost mood, reduce stress, and improve coping skills. Over time, these positive moments can help rewire the brain’s response to pain, making it feel less overwhelming. Use your list of positive experiences that you created in the previous activity to make a plan to do more of the things that make your feel good.

download the build positive emotional experiences plan

Select the ‘Download Activity‘ button below to create your plan. Save the file as a PDF on your computer or phone. If you have a printer, you may print it. If you are completing the activity on your mobile phone, click here for instructions.

schedule positive experiences

Schedule your positive experiences on your calendar. Be sure to add reminders.

upload to Nurse Practitioner or Psychologist

If you are completing the Pain Program with a Certified Goalistics Nurse Practitioner or Psychologist, make sure you submit the PDF using the ‘Upload Activity‘ button below.

Practice Relaxation, Manage Negativity, and Increase Positivity

Learning activities

Manage Emotions Through Relaxation

Meditation and relaxation can be valuable tools to gain better control over emotions. Learn to accept your emotions, soothe yourself, and quiet down.

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Identify Negative Emotional Triggers

Negative emotions can make it harder to manage your pain. Learn to to identify the situations, people, experiences, or thoughts that make you feel bad.

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Manage Negative Emotional Triggers

In this activity, you will select three negative emotional triggers. Then you will learn coping strategies and create plans to manage these triggers.

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Identify Positive Emotional Triggers

Having a better emotional life includes not only reducing and managing negative triggers and emotions, but also building positive experiences and emotions. This activity will help you to identify the activities, events, and experiences that lead to positive emotions

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Build Positive Emotional Experiences

Positive emotional experiences can help make managing pain easier and more effective.  After creating a list of your own positive emotional triggers, this activity will help you plan ways to incorporate them into daily life.

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