I’m so tired of coping: Self regulation, executive functions and chronic pain

Changes take energy – that’s nothing new, I know, but perhaps something as clinicians we might forget when we work with people who have chronic pain. I was thinking about this as I’ve had a week away from regular blogging so I could focus on writing and some self care.  Things are busy and [...]

Acceptance worksheets and more

Trying to help someone begin the process of accepting chronic pain is no easy task. My observation is that people need time to recognise that their pain problem is not acute pain  (so it won’t ‘heal’), and go through the process of seeking ‘the cause’ (so the ‘cure’ can be found), then begin the long [...]

What is self management in chronic pain?

Self management. It’s term we use very often in pain management, but do we really agree about what we’re talking about?
Maybe self management is different things to different people, maybe even different things to different people at different times! But if we don’t talk about what we’re aiming for, especially if we’re in a [...]

It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it?

I have a bit of a theme happening – health care interactions. I think it’s because this week I’ve been talking about this with patients, and it seems to be something that either raises the hackles or fills them with gratitude! Anyway, I was glad to find this paper the other day on [...]

Seeing people progress

A quick post this morning before I search for some Friday funnies!
I saw a few patients this week after having had just over a fortnight off work – and you know how sometimes working in pain management can seem unrewarding, progress can be incredibly slow, one step forward, two sideways… Well here are some progress [...]

Bouncing back – resilience

After looking at positive coping in my post from yesterday, I hoped to bring an assessment to light – and lo and behold I found one!
This brief assessment differs from other resilience measures in that it looks at recovery, resistance, growth and adaptation rather than simply the resources a person might bring into a stressful [...]

Accentuate the positive

How often do we spend most of our assessment time looking at people’s problems, deficits, functional difficulties? I know that much of my time in assessment involves looking across a range of domains and experiences – and whooops! by the time we come to an end I’ve hardly looked at what this person has continued [...]

The process of moving towards valued actions

Another in a mini-series on values and actions, stimulated by reading about ACT, or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
For many of the people I work with, remaining committed to a set of actions that lead towards a desired goal seems to be a very challenging thing. Often, at a one-month review, I find one group [...]

Acceptance – musings

I asked the participants in the pain management group to think about the words ‘acceptance’ and ‘change‘ yesterday.  One person asked whether you had to ‘give up hope’ to accept chronic pain, and another said he could ‘never accept that things wouldn’t return to normal, I don’t want this change’.
At the time I didn’t want [...]

A couple of geeky websites!

I just thought I’d post a couple of websites I’ve found over the past couple of days – using StumbleUpon. If you haven’t tried StumbleUpon, and you find yourself at a loose end, or just feel like ‘browsing’ the internet instead of watching TV, try it! Full of cool sites that show up [...]