It’s not rocket science - it’s respecting the individual

Using cognitive behavioral therapies in pain management isn’t really rocket science, it’s simply being aware of the principles of learning from both a cognitive (thinking) point of view and a behavioural point of view. It is, however, complex - by that I mean, there are many threads to systematically follow and actively manage.
There does [...]

Pain Blog Carnival!

Every month like clockwork ‘How to cope with Pain’ Blog has a carnival roundup of the best in pain management posts in the internet. If you haven’t visited before, head on over there today - loads of things to read, and links to places I’ll bet you haven’t been before.

Sleep - pain - sleep - pain - sleep

Today a client and I were discussing sleep. She said to me
‘Why is it that I can’t get off to sleep because I’m so sore, then I have a bad pain day, I’m really tired,
and I still can’t go off to sleep, so the next day I have a worse pain day.’
We’ve known anecdotally [...]

When you need to change tack…

There are some times when things just don’t go the way you plan…Therapists don’t very often publicise when things don’t work out, but I think we can learn a lot from these situations - and the reflection process models one of the ways that we can help patients learn from every situation too. As [...]

Working with cognitive behavioural therapy - Introducing CBT to a client

For a therapy that has great empirical support and can be used by any and all members of the interdisciplinary team, you can’t really go far from cognitive behavioural therapy. Waaaay back in the olden days when I was originally trained as an occupational therapist, CBT was the province of psychologists only - and [...]

Why can he go surfing but can’t do the vacuuming?

Social contract theory is a theory drawn from evolutionary psychology - a ‘cheater detection’ system if you like. Following on from yesterdays post about detecting faking in pain, this study examines the judgements observers (in this case, friends and relatives of people with pain) in a study where four vignettes were presented. Each [...]

Faking and malingering (again!)

One of the most popular posts I’ve written on this blog concerns ‘faking’ or ‘malingering’. I’m curious about this, because even though I have been asked many times whether I have had patients that are ‘faking’, I don’t think about it very often myself. I suppose it is a subject that is dear [...]

Return to work and chronic pain

Again this post is a bit of a reflective one, but also refers to the literature a wee bit too…
I’ve posted before about the importance of support in the workplace for people returning to work…and of the value of work to people living with chronic pain.
How about some of the wider issues that may [...]

A Prospective Analysis of Acceptance of Pain and Values-Based Action in Patients With Chronic Pain

Lance M. McCracken and Kevin E. Vowles
These two researchers have been publishing more and more on acceptance and values and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Contextual Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CCBT), and this paper is another example of the type of work being undertaken.
The objective was to ‘prospectively investigate the combined processes of acceptance of [...]

Practical techniques of mindfulness

I’ve been looking around at quite a few different ways to learn and practice mindfulness. There are heaps and I realise that I’m just dipping my toe in water that has been flowing for many hundreds of years really.
If the essence of mindfulness is to be fully present, then most of us have probably [...]