Pain management in groups using a CBT approach – Why do it?

This week I’m looking a working effectively with groups for pain management using a CBT approach.  Someone said recently ‘why should six clinicians be tied up for three weeks with only six patients? there are other people who need pain management too’ – and over the past ten years I’ve seen numerous attempts to move [...]

Theories of emotion, self-regulation and pain

Can chronic pain be a force that shapes how we go about responding to challenges within our environments?
Does chronic pain influence how we feel emotionally about daily activities that contribute to overall goals, and perhaps negatively bias the way we think about the process of setting and achieving goals?
I’ve already concluded that having [...]

Chronic pain management is NOT just like ‘any other chronic disease’

The other day someone said to me that managing chronic pain was just the same as managing something like diabetes, hypertension, asthma or any other chronic disease.  It irked me at the time and I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was that bothered me, but after a couple of days thinking about [...]

Hypnosis for chronic pain management: How it works maybe?

There are plenty of people who look at me as if I’m stepping right into woowoo when I start to talk about hypnosis for managing chronic pain. I’m happy to say that science has provided some good evidence that not only does hypnosis have a neurophysiological basis, but it also has some good effect.
What [...]

It’s hard work researching teamwork

After writing about teams and models and the distinct possibility of talking past each other, I had a very quick search for a paper on teamwork and models this morning, and came across this one by a group of Canadian researchers. It is, like many of these pieces of research into the messy and [...]

Talking past each other? Models and interdisciplinary teams

As time passes, therapists can form their own way of working with people – sometimes we get away with this by calling our treatment models ‘eclectic’.  This can be a euphemism for ‘I’ll use whatever I think fits’, or even ‘I like doing this, so this is what I’ll do’!
While this may not be too [...]

That old mind-body thing again…

Editor’s Selection IconI am not a philosopher.  Neither am I very conversant in the arguments around consciousness.  But working in pain management means the mind-body debate is something I run into now and again.  Is pain all about the body? Is pain all about the mind? Or is it both?  Which influences the other?
This debate [...]

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 [...]

Pain and rheumatology: an overview of the problem

One of the most common reasons to visit a doctor is musculoskeletal pain. And one of the first symptoms of a rheumatological disorder is pain – so it’s great to find this succinct overview of pain in rheumatological disorders. I think one of the saddest findings I’ve read recently (I blogged about it [...]

What is an acceptable outcome?

Recently I’ve been doing some content analysis of the responses people entering our service have to the question ‘What is your goal for pain management?’ The question is designed to find out what it is that people want so that in some way we can work to meet their expectations.
Along similar lines I’ve been [...]