Chronic Pain Counselling

Chronic pain symptoms present in many different ways. Experiencing symptoms that are not connected to easily identifiable or understandable causes, or that last beyond your expectations for healing can be confusing, scary, and aggravating. As you venture to make sense of your pain, perhaps continuing to search for elusive structural reasons for your distress, your frustrations and stress may grow, in turn contributing to more pain and suffering.

With time, your pain system may become overprotective and sensitized, but it is never too late to retrain your mind and body to understand pain more accurately. Addressing the way you think, behave, and feel about pain can drastically change the way you experience it. 

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Understanding that chronic pain symptoms are often not structurally caused and are, in fact, products of changes in our nervous system, neural pathways in the brain, and our learned reactions to distress, validates your experience and sets the stage for treating your overprotective pain system.

Common chronic pain conditions include: 

  • Low back and neck pain 

  • Persistent sports injuries

  • Headache

  • Fibromyalgia

  • Arthritis and joint pain

  • Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)

  • Nerve Pain

  • Inflammatory disease

  • Somatic Symptom Disorder (SSD)

Counselling for chronic pain works to help you heal from these brain and nervous system concerns by utilizing evidence-based therapies that target:

  • Pain knowledge

  • Your danger alarm system 

  • Your response systems (sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system)

  • Thoughts and beliefs about pain and healing

  • Common and understandable fears surrounding chronic pain

  • Coping strategies (active vs passive, helpful vs unhelpful)

  • Movement strategies for both mind and body

Taking a biopsychosocial approach to treating chronic pain means prioritizing the psychological and social aspects of suffering as much as the biological symptoms of pain that often demand so much of your attention. This includes addressing your culturally and socially informed relationship to pain, events and relationships through life that influence your pain experiences, as well as acknowledging life factors that were present at the onset of pain. The impact that chronic pain symptoms have on our mental health is undeniable yet often overlooked. Commonly, mental health concerns connected to chronic pain include, but are not limited to: 

  • Low mood and depression

  • Anxiety and unhelpful thinking

  • Increased stress

  • Anger

  • Life transitions

  • Trauma

  • Sleep issues

  • Career issues

  • Relationship concerns

Your mental health contributes significantly to the way that you experience pain, and the way you experience pain contributes greatly to your mental health. The most effective approach to treating pain, therefore, acknowledges this intimate relationship between your mind and body and works to break the cycle of pain and suffering through the use of biological, psychosocial, and social strategies. Evidence-based treatments such as ACT, CBT, PRT, CFT, and MBSR focus on retraining the brain and nervous system to experience pain differently, to reduce fear associated with pain, to help you to re-engage in meaningful activities, and to create harmony in your pain system. Treatment for the psychological and social sides of pain may include:

  • Education and understanding

  • Exploring the impact of life events on your pain experience

  • Emotional awareness and regulation

  • Behavioral activation/habit optimization

  • Mindfulness

  • Visualization

  • Somatic tracking

  • Relaxation

  • Addressing unhelpful thoughts/improving helpful self-talk 

  • Breath work

  • Fear reduction

  • Increasing safety in movement

  • Movement strategies

  • Connecting with leisure/hobbies/passions

  • Acceptance of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories

  • Exploring personality factors

  • Improving sleep

  • Building resiliency through action 

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