Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy

I am doing this paper for University on Pain Management and have spent the last few days collating my research, perusing books and journals just to piece the paper together.  I am that tired from late nights, in fact I am utterly exhausted.  I cannnot wait, for when I can have an early night and not have to wake up at the crack of dawn (though crack of dawn in the winter here is like 8am so in essence I am getting up when the world is still resting)!

Anyway, back to my pain management paper.  When I first started with this work, I thought the entire subject was so complex I wouldn't be able to grasp it.  Just trying to think about all the different factors in pain management as one big process, made it as clear as mud.  But as with anything in science, you've got to break it down.  So with a breakdown of all the chemical processes and the gate-way theories and what not, I started to understand pain management a little better.  So much so that when I got to the section on Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), I was truly fascinated.  When I had to support a friend through cancer sometime back, I could have done with understanding CBT.

I was quick to discuss my findings with her.  CBT uses the idea that cognition and behaviour affect pain experience, emphasising that patients can control pain.  The notion is that CBT attempts to help patients cope with pain using various strategies. Patients can be trained to use distraction techniques such as thinking of pleasant images, challenging negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ideas.  They are also encouraged to reattribute pain, use relaxation techniques and adopt stress management.  These techniques apparently help respond better to pain experience. 

So talking to her, to put such a technique into practice, we eventually agreed that it would be possible.  Distracting away from the pain, does take your mind of it.  But that distraction has to come completely from the mind.  It's not a case of saying, I'll play scrabble and forget I have back pain, when your mind is still buzzing with the words I'm in pain! 

As complex as the body systems are it is a case of working and forcing the 'mind over matter' :)

Aisha