Complex Pain Recovery® is a powerful resource that can promote a greater understanding and a new perspective through empowering a changed attitude that will promote joy, peace, and contentment despite your pain. Group is a safe environment to explore options and to get feedback from a wide variety of thoughts and feelings. We will gain awareness of how our actions play a part and impact others. This is a place to assess the triumphs and the setbacks and to get and give support to those who are experiencing many of the same problems that you may be experiencing. You will come to realize that you are not alone as others come alongside you in your struggles to provide mutual support by sharing experiences, strengths, and hopes.
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Group Objectives
To live our lives to the fullest by minimizing the effects of chronic pain in our lives, while increasing our overall daily functioning and helping others to do the same.
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Embark on the journey from a patient in pain to a person who manages chronic pain one day at a time.
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Gain support from other group members on how they have coped, exploring what has and has not worked. We will focus on abilities, not disabilities. You will learn to set priorities, reach goals, & assert your basic rights.
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Gain insight into how your chronic pain is affecting your loved ones in much the same way as the pain affects you, learning to create a “new normal.”
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Address topics such as isolation, uncertainty, fear, depression, grief, guilt, self-worth, anger, and the loss of career or job due to chronic pain.​
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Complex Pain Recovery® Class Program
Session 1 — Mind Body Connection and How Stress Plays a Leading Role: Living with chronic pain is a stressful reality and can become an obsession. We all have biological, emotional, and cognitive responses to pain. Learning how you judge or appraise the pain experience is key to being able to restructure your thoughts, which will impact how you respond to everyday situations. Goals will be identified. A baseline will be explored to begin implementing pacing techniques.
Session 2 — Pain and the Brain and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Living with chronic pain can alter your thoughts over time to a negative thought pattern. Becoming aware and being able to recognize the cognitive distortions, or negative thought patterns, can change how you experience pain.
Session 3 — Going Deeper learning to Evaluate, Challenging, and Restructure the Automatic Thoughts. Your new thoughts will be explored and affirmed based on facts and evidence. Creating more realistic alternative responses will promote a new perspective and create a positive impact on your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Session 4 — Mindfulness Learning to Let Go. Introducing mindfulness as a cognitive tool to create a different relationship with your thoughts and to integrate your deeper belief system to create a recovery mindset. Learning to let go and relax is paramount to recovery.
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Session 5 — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is a form of behavioral therapy that takes the view that by accepting negative thoughts and feelings, individuals can choose a valued direction in which to take action and make positive changes.
Session 6 — Assertive Communication and Helping Our Loved Ones Understand. Living with chronic pain increases your emotional needs. Learning to express your needs in an assertive and more effective manner will enable you to effectively manage situations and communicate with the people in your life to create a “new normal.”
Session 7 —Explore Writing Techniques and Plans for Continued Recovery “Writing about stressful situations is one of the easiest ways for people to release the negative effects of stress from their bodies and their lives.” –James Pennebaker, PhD.