For the visual amongst us - CB Worksheet

I’m a very visual person, I love to see what I’m doing, and I use visual imagery a lot in my language and my processing. Many of our clients are also visual - or they’re kinaesthetic - and they need to see and manipulate rather than listen and talk.
At some point while working with [...]

Why CBT? How do patients feel about it?

There are many different therapies out there - why is CBT (or one of the newer variants) the Chosen One?
I gave a few reasons yesterday -
* that people are capable of change,
* can accept self responsibility for their actions,
* that what we think and believe about a situation can affect our emotions and responses, [...]

I wonder if this applies to any pain management ‘cures’?

Mind, body and pain

For lots of therapists, the connection between mind and body is so clear that we forget many people just have no concept of how the two might be connected. So often in the web there are wild statements about pain that it’s tempting to think that no-one’s prepared to get it right or to [...]

Evaluation of a CBT informed pain management programme

A few posts ago I discussed the challenges of transferring research into practice, and discussed the examples of laterality training and graded exposure for CRPS. It’s difficult to know exactly what results to expect when moving from carefully selected participants to all-comers, and from highly detailed and prescribed protocols to more general principles and [...]

Science and therapists

I’ll admit I’ve been warped a little by psychologists. No, I haven’t learned to blame my parents for how I’ve turned out (that’s why my mother wouldn’t let me study psychology when I left school!), but psychology as a field of science has definitely made me more thoughtful and critical of how I make [...]

Self regulation readings

Self regulation is a concept we often use in pain management and in other areas of therapy where setting and achieving goals is a key aspect.
This post by Dale Schunk provides an excellent overview of some of the main areas in the approach, and includes a definition I particularly like Self-regulation, or systematic [...]

Announcing! The International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA)

I just got this through the email today, from Positive Psychology!
We are delighted to announce the founding of a new organization: The International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA). The purpose of this organization is to promote the science and practice of positive psychology and to facilitate communication and collaboration among researchers and practitioners around [...]

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 [...]

The future of psychological management of chronic pain

One of my guru’s in chronic pain is Dr Lance McCracken from University of Bath.
I found this great powerpoint presentation, with his voiceover today, on the future of psychology in chronic pain. A great lecture that is well worth saving some time and listening to. Grab a couple of colleagues, a bottle of [...]