A common experience for clinicians and therapists
People ask me about Pain Coach Mentoring with me. What is it specifically?
Here’s a run down. You can also click the link above.
Working in healthcare you will meet many people suffering chronic pain and illness.
It is unavoidable.
Yet there is minimal training for healthcare professionals in how to help them.
Despite it being the biggest global health burden affecting millions and millions of people.
I am sure you can bring someone to mind you know is suffering. It could be you.
Are you struggling or stuck with what to do to help?
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Chronic pain is without doubt a highly specialist field.
That is why I founded Pain Coaching around 20 years ago.
To meet the huge need.
The way we are working is not working.
For chronic pain the biomedical model is not fit for purpose.
The only way we can understand people and help them is with a broader approach — seeing the whole person in their lived world.
We must be able to bring the experience described by the person together with any findings (both positive and negative).
And the design and create a way forward with the person.
A collaboration.
Ideas of fixing and telling people what to do, don’t work.
There is nothing to be done to the person.
Instead we meet them where they are, establish their needs and aspirations with clarity and move forward from there.
There are a number of lenses to come through: e.g. predictive processing, enactivism, embodied cognition.
But before that is your way of being. Your spirit.
There are no specific techniques or therapies for chronic pain. So, you need a range of approaches at your fingertips to meet the person and their needs.
At least as important, if not more so, is your way of being. The way you are, the way you connect, engage, and re-connect. Both experience and data are clear on this point.
This is what we shape together, and then build your knowledge, skills and know-how.
To coach the person to get results.
skills and strategies
People suffering chronic pain need to understand their experiences.
The Pain Coach starts by exploring the narrative with the person, connecting by listening deeply, with care and curiosity. With a handle on the person and their lived experience, you can begin to help them understand their pain.
Next we clarify what they want to achieve. Their picture(s) of success. Their aspirations.
This is the direction to point towards and travel.
The exploration and discovery stage sets the scene and offers the opportunity to share important insights and ensure they are understood.
Some examples of insights I share:
- appreciation over expectation
- process over prize
- the up and down nature of learning and progress
- self-care is not selfish
- be here now
- focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want
- overcoming pain is learning process
- what can I do, rather than what I can’t
- where my attention goes, my energy flows
- it’s not what’s happening that matters as much as how you relate (and respond)
Insights are the catalysts of change.
With clarity on the person’s aspirations, the Pain Coach suggests specific skills and strategies (behaviours) to work towards the picture of success.
Building your range of offerings is important because of the widely differing needs of people suffering chronic pain.
There is another key ingredient.
And this is where Pain Coaching takes it to another level. For success.
The know-how.
Coaching people to coach themselves in their world where they make the difference.
The know-how
This is the essence of Pain Coaching.
Helping the person understand their pain and then how to put their specific skills and strategies into practice to get results.
Each practice is different.
Each training session is different.
The person needs to know how to prepare, how to focus and be present, how to design the practice (the skills, the numbers, the breaks etc) and how to recover.
And they need to know how to match it to their needs in that moment according to how they are feeling and what is happening.
There is much detail and nuance.
Without the detail, it is guess work.
By following a protocol you assume that everyone is the same and at the same point. They are not.
Personalised care meets the person where they are and moves forward from that position.
It is ever-changing.
you shine the light
A Pain Coach sees the person first.
A person with strengths and a positive history.
A person with capabilities and motivation to get better.
To live themselves better.
The Pain Coach shines the light on the person, and offers a way forward through a caring collaboration.
Guiding, helping, and encouraging along the way until the person has the confidence and know-how to continue independently.
There is great hope for people suffering chronic pain to improve their lives in many ways.
The Pain Coach has a unique role in helping them achieve success.
Interested?
Get in touch if you want to start your journey in Pain Coaching, bringing light to peoples lives.
r.s.