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 [...]

Control or acceptance?

I’ve been reading a wee bit of ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy recently. I’m trying to find a relatively simple way to explain ACT to my patients, many of whom just don’t do reading, and prefer living life in a practical way, rather than an intellectual or even spiritual way. I’m not sure [...]

Values and goals

I can’t recall exactly where I heard it, but values are like a compass - they provide general guidance as to what is important in life, while goals are the map of how we are going to get there. I’ve been mulling over this as I worked with some people over the past couple [...]

Motivating people to make changes (iii)

The third of a series about using values and empathy to help people make choices
The previous two installments in this series have introduced the concepts of stages of readiness for change, rapport and empathy and appreciating that the people we work with have their own values influencing the choices they make. This paper introduces [...]

Motivating people to make changes (ii)

The second of a series about using values and empathy to help people make choices
The first installment in this series looked at why people might not be doing what we think they ‘should’ and how they might show this. This installment looks at developing rapport and reviews the essential interpersonal skills that are needed.
Rapport [...]

Motivating people to make changes (i)

The first of a series about using values and empathy to help people make choices
Most of our training in health care provision assumes that:

the people we will be working with are ready to receive our knowledge/expertise
we know more than they do (about what they should [...]

Motivate Healthy Habits

Rick Botelho and his Motivate Healthy Habits site is one of my favourite authors and websites on motivation and self management especially in primary care.
Take a moment or two to read through this site, it gives some of the foundation information on health change for individuals.
I’ve also included a great powerpoint presentation by Rick Botelho [...]

The gift of Fibromyalgia - one woman’s view

A quick link to a wonderful post by Moonbeammcqueen on her blog ‘FibromyOWgia’. I loved her representation of the opportunities that something like chronic pain can give - depending on one’s view of it. From adversity comes change and triumph and discovery. Not a bad way to view life I think. [...]

Resilience and coping

Resilience is the ability to positively adapt to changing circumstances or challenges. In chronic pain, this can be operationalised as having high pain intensity, with low interference in activites, and little emotional burden (Karoly & Ruehlman, 2006).
Strangely, more people than not are resilient - fewer people seek treatment than those who just ‘get on’ with [...]

Welcome to the first post! Values

You can talk to Merrolee about this blog, it was seeing hers that ‘inspired’ me to get around to starting this blog. An idea that had, I must admit, been kicking around in my brain for quite a wee while…
Finally I got around to it…
This will be a ‘from time to time’ blog, just [...]