How do you manage your RA pain without letting it control your life?

@Camremi  We can just live each day as best we can. I wake up each morning thinking I am going to do this and that but I am lucky i can do one thing. It takes me awhile to even get myself together. I am learning to live with the pain.  With my meds its not as bad as it was. Its dosen't ever completely go away at least for me. But their are better days. Between my RA & my OA. Each day I have back pain & sciatica pain with RA.  I can't walk far even with my cane. I have to stop and sit between every stage when I am cooking. You just have to plan you day out and do your best. It's a new way of living. 

Idk how I missed this discussion, but I relate to this feeling on a deep level. I was diagnosed before 30 I had (and still have) a hard time accepting it. For a while, especially early on, my pain and RA consumed everything I did. I couldn't escape it. I think with time and trial and error and finally finding the right combination of meds and habits I think I've gotten to a place where I feel like I exist apart from my RA. So I guess for me my answer would be through pushing on your doctor to find you meds that work for you, by not accepting to constantly live in pain, and then a bit of self-work. 

Anybody with a chronic pain disease knows how difficult it is to manage pain, and it really upsets me at times that society has adopted the same label for me as a drug addict just because Im not a superhero and need medicine that gives me a better quality of life.

I use muscle relaxer and Tylenol #4 for pain. I’m also using Cimzia once a month which I do see relief. The week before I use it I’m usually hurting really bad, the nurse practitioner that I was seeing said that at first she was going to take me off of it because I wasn’t sure if it was helping me because I also Fibromyalgia and I didn’t know if it was the problem or the RA. I didn’t know how to determine what one was more severe. Well she retired and then I saw the doctor all the time and I explained how the week before the injection I was having severe pain and the day I did my injections I could tell later that day and the next the pain was starting get better. She smiled and said it’s working and she was not going to take me off of it. Thank goodness. So every month when the 13thvof the month comes around I look forward to the injections.