Pain Management
THERAPY DESCRIPTION
What is Pain Management?
When medical doctors and diagnostic scans can’t give an adequate explanation of someone’s pain then they often diagnose someone as having chronic pain also known as persistent pain. Whatever the label given, this is real physical pain but without a clear medical solution. Sometimes even if there is a clear medical problem, there isn’t always a fix or surgery. Sometimes the medication or surgeries that get offered don’t work or can make things worse. Sometimes the answer given by medical doctors is that you’ve just got to find a way to live with it. But who would want to live with pain?
Therapy Benefits
There are plenty of people out there who will tell you that they can treat your pain so that you can live pain free. I won’t tell you that because I don’t believe it is true. As horrible as pain is, we need it. It helps protect us and keeps us safe, but in persistent pain that system has become too good at its job and can go off at the slightest thing. I believe that if we can understand our pain and have a different relationship with it then we can feel more confident managing our pain and in some circumstances turn down the sensitivity of that system to a point where persistent pain no longer bothers us.
PAIN MANAGEMENT
Why would I see a Psychologist for a physical condition?
Firstly although pain is considered a physical condition it impacts on every aspect of our lives. It affects our mood, sleep, relationships, home life, social life, work life, health, movement, self esteem and confidence as well as our ability to do the things that we enjoy.
Secondly it can affect our identity as we can feel like we lose who we are because the pain takes over. Connecting with ourselves and our values can help us to remind ourselves who we are despite the pain and not let it be our defining feature.
Thirdly, although pain is physical, once we understand pain we realise that it is processed in the brain and so we can use psychological strategies and therapy to help manage it.
Psychological therapy can help with all these things and more.
Finally the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends Psychological Therapy for Chronic Pain in the form of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT).
PAIN MANAGEMENT
Pain Therapies
There are three main approaches that I take to pain management. Everyone is different so each journey is different and may involve one, two or all of these approaches.
Pain Psycho-education
Understanding Pain and what is happening in our minds and bodies can help to take away some of the fear of pain.
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance of pain may seem like a perverse idea but dropping the fight with pain can give us more capacity to engage with life.
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Compassion Focused Therapy
This approach can help if you find yourself in a boom and bust pattern of good and bad days to develop balance and more compassionate strategies.