Chronic Pain Counselling for Couples, Family, and Friends

As much as chronic pain feels like an individual and isolating experience, it is common for pain, and the resulting changes that occur in your life, to significantly affect your relationships with your supporters, partners, and those closest to you. It can feel like an impossible task to effectively communicate to others what you are experiencing and how you are relating to your pain, especially when you feel stuck. It can be equally difficult to offer support to someone you care for who is experiencing chronic pain. It is common to feel confusion, guilt, anger, fear, and a sense of helplessness when experiencing chronic pain AND when supporting someone in pain.

a hand drawn illustration of a man and a woman

Ensuring that you and those who support you are aligned as a team with your pain beliefs, management approaches, and goals for healing is imperative for successful chronic pain outcomes.

Important questions to answer when addressing chronic pain as a couple or team may include: 

  • Do we understand and agree on the underlying cause of the pain?

  • What does helpful and unhelpful communication look and sound like?

  • How do we promote healing and encourage helpful thoughts and behaviors? 

  • Are we speaking the same pain language?  

  • Are our goals for healing aligned with collective values? 

  • Do we have a plan for ‘setbacks’ or ‘pain flares’? 

  • Are we prioritizing interdependence and autonomy? 

  • How do we live our lives as fully as possible despite our current pain experience?

In order to ensure that you and your key supporters are aligned in the management of pain, I offer pain counselling for couples, family members, and friends.

In addition to counselling, pain education, symptom-management training, and treatment to address the underlying cause of your pain, couples and support system sessions will prioritize topics such as:

  • Aligning healthcare philosophy, beliefs and approach

  • Communication

  • Collective Goal Setting

  • Interdependence

  • Trust

  • Healthy relationship habits and routines

  • Sleep and Intimacy

  • Career and Financial Stress

  • Hope, Optimism, Courage