Pain Behaviour Activity

Having looked all over the place for some suitable activities for people to become aware of their own pain behaviour and then learn to change it, I decided to put together one of my own. Now, unlike the posts I’ve made recently, I have no research to determine its effectiveness, but I hope you’ll [...]

Exposure therapy - not so fast buddy!

From what I’ve posted so far this week, you might think that I would propose exposure therapy be something for all therapists to use with people, but no! I think it’s something that only some people will adopt, and it’s only useful for some people. Although all of us can incorporate some aspects of [...]

Working with a kinesiophobic person

One of the biggest challenges when working with someone who is fearful of pain and avoids movement is that although it’s very much like any sort of phobia, it differs on one essential point: people who are spider phobic, socially phobic, fearful of flying or heights or whatever are usually aware at some level that [...]

Accepting Low Back Pain: Is It Related to a Good Quality of Life?

Victoria L. Mason, Beth Mathias, and Suzanne M. Skevington
This study examines an area of disability ‘adjustment’ that is becoming increasingly important in to therapists and others interested in what helps someone develop readiness to adopt self management rather than an ongoing search for a ‘cure’.
Acceptance refers to ‘a willingness to have pain without [...]

Positive psychology - Polyanna or Promising?

I was hoping to post on positive psychology and chronic pain, but have failed to find any specific references using these two headings - I then had a brain-wave and without waiting for someone reading this to locate something for me… I remembered the body of research in contextual cognitive behavioural therapy - mainly by [...]

It’s not enough just to feel - it’s about ‘what do you feel?’

 
Pain. 2007 Dec 1

Tactile discrimination, but not tactile stimulation alone, reduces chronic limb pain.
Moseley GL, Zalucki NM, Wiech K

This interesting study by the prolific Lorimer Moseley suggests that it’s not good enough for people with complex regional pain syndrome to just be exposed to tactile stimuli, but they need to do something with that [...]

Task Persistence - the least used coping skill

Apart from pacing, there can be few coping strategies that people dislike more than task persistence.
What is task persistence and why do people dislike it?
Task persistence is about maintaining activity despite fluctuations of pain intensity - allowing pain to increase without stopping. Isn’t that pacing, you say? Well, perhaps part of pacing … [...]