Travel to interesting places online!

Today’s post is about some of the interesting links you can find online.  Mostly links to do with brains, psychology and pain – but not all!
Genes to Cognition Online – featuring the 3-D brain, lovely interactive graphical interface to burrow down into really interesting topics like cognitive processes, disorders, research approaches and neuroimaging research, you [...]

Attention to pain: A neurocognitive model

Something that really frustrates me is the way psychology can be seen as ‘woolly’ or ’soft’ simply because the constructs being studied can’t be touched or visualised.  So although I don’t think that neuroimaging represents ‘psychological’ constructs in any sort of a one-to-one sense, it is nice to be able to point to research that [...]

Fine tuning activity levels

A couple of days ago I wrote about activity patterns, and a study from Maastricht University that looked at the variable levels of activity that people with chronic pain can engage in. The study was designed to look at the pattern of activity from day to day, and found ‘… that for most of [...]

Reflections on ACT case formulation in chronic pain

I’ve been reviewing ACT and contextual cognitive behavioural therapy in chronic pain management over the past year or so, and it’s really interesting reflecting on the different way in which I see people after being exposed to the ACT approach.
Just to recap, some of the main precepts of ACT and CCBT are:

people’s attempts to control [...]

Decision making and cognitive psychology

How do we make decisions about treatment? What errors are we likely to make and can we counter those errors?
These are really important questions to ask ourselves as clinicians if we want to avoid leaping into decisions that won’t stand up to scrutiny. Unfortunately it does mean we need to learn a bit [...]

Some useful questions…

When we’re working with people who have pain, and especially when we’re asking them to do things differently, we’re going to notice ’shifts’ or changes in their presentation that suggest they’re responding to the situation – usually it’s an ‘automatic thought’ that’s jumping in, or perhaps it’s the emotional response to an AT that they’re [...]

Cognitive behaviour for pain worksheet – client information

It’s not always easy to find freely available client worksheets that reflect ‘real life’ situations, and are written for the age and reading level of the people we often see. For example, most of the people I work with are practical ‘hands-on’ people who don’t like reading or writing, and are either very visual [...]

CBT Workshop!

If you’re wanting a short, practical and interactive workshop on using cognitive and behavioural approaches for managing chronic pain, book yourself in for the CBT Workshop on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th May 2008.
This workshop is an introduction to using cognitive and behavioural approaches with people experiencing chronic pain, and is designed for occupational therapists, physiotherapists, [...]

Checking thoughts during activity

Why would we want to work with thoughts?
It’s not always essential to directly address thoughts but many times thoughts become quite unhelpful and prevent the person from engaging in your therapy. It can prevent them from adopting new skills (eg using pacing or even maintaining activity despite pain), or mean that they ‘resist’ therapy [...]

Responding to real but unhelpful beliefs

One of my beefs about cognitive therapy has to be the concept of ‘maladaptive’ or ‘erroneous’ beliefs. For many people experiencing pain, their beliefs are based on experience since developing persistent pain – so we could readily be called out if we suggest that their belief that ‘I always get a flare-up when I [...]