Pain management psychotherapy is designed to reduce your attention to your pain and illness, while acknowledging your distress. It helps you experience your pain and illness differently, in a more manageable way. It also helps you to improve the quality of your life and your self image.
It can assist you in communicating with your family about pain, and in changing feelings of hopelessness to those of hopefulness. Pain management psychotherapy is an alternative or a complement to medicine for pain management, depending on your physician’s treatment plan. Psychotherapy can help you to maintain or reduce the use of pain medicine, and to tolerate levels of discomfort that seem otherwise intolerable. The techniques used are ones that can be practiced at home, so that life becomes increasing more comfortable.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- EMDR for Pain Management
- Relaxation Training
- Hypnosis for Pain Reduction
- Family Interventions
- Flexible Individual Treatment
Now to explain a bit more about what we do:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy assists pain patients in changing typical beliefs about pain that make recovery harder, such as “I need to get back to normal”, “I can’t do anything until I’m well”, etc. those kinds of normal beliefs and reactions occur, but changing them and substituting more effective beliefs and behaviors makes a rewarding life easier to develop.
EMDR: Through pairing pain images and sensations with bilateral stimulation, pain intensity, memory and reactivity are lessened. Bilateral stimulation allows the quieting of pain sensitivity, altering pain perception.
Relaxation Training: Learning specific methods of relaxation including progressive muscle relaxation and guided imagery allows reduction as pain related anxiety and reduces pain sensitivity, allowing for more effective pain management and a higher quality of life.
Hypnosis for Pain Reduction: Hypnosis allows the sympathetic nervous system to reduce over functioning, allowing the parasympathetic nervous system to regulate the body and improve its effectiveness. It also promotes inner focus of attention and concentration on calmness and hopeful solutions.
Family Interventions: Often family members develop depression, frustration, and anxiety in relationship to their loved one’s pain or illness, and family conflict or misunderstanding may ensue. Family counseling allows family members to communicate their worries and concerns in a constructive manner, leading to ideas for solutions.
Flexible Individual Treatment: Each pain patient has a unique context in which he/she experiences pain and/or illness, therefore, treatment is individualized to include the components that are most likely to be effective.