6 Ways CBT Can Help With Managing Chronic Pain

Chronic pain is one of the most commonly heard complaints at doctors’ offices and healthcare clinics across the country. It is pretty common at the KindlyMD health clinics in Utah, where patients are offered a variety of traditional and nontraditional therapies. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of them.

KindlyMD’s approach to healthcare is holistic in nature. Clinicians seek to treat the whole person rather than just the physical body. And when the complaint is chronic pain, they may recommend a combination of medicines, lifestyle changes, and mental health services. That takes us back to CBT.

A Mental Health Therapy

CBT is a mental health therapy through and through. There are no medications involved. A patient does not undergo any physical procedures. Instead, a patient spends time talking with a therapist in order to address thoughts and emotions.

The therapy is rooted in the understanding that thoughts, emotions, and physical feelings are inherently linked. Changing one can heavily influence the other two. Changing two will have a definite impact on the third. In a chronic pain setting, the idea is to help a person feel better by teaching him to change his thoughts and emotions toward pain.

6 Ways It Helps

Without getting into all the details and mechanisms behind CBT, it’s a therapy more and more clinics are offering chronic pain patients. In turn, patients report varying levels of success. For many, CBT is a way to manage chronic pain on a daily basis. Here’s how it helps:

1. It Changes Patient Perception

CBT is purposely designed to change a patient’s perception about whatever topic is being addressed. When pain is the topic, a change of perception can actually alter the physical experience. Changed perceptions do not necessarily take away pain, but they can put it on the backburner so that it is not the dominant factor in a person’s life.

2. It Provides Coping Strategies

CBT helps chronic pain patients by providing new coping strategies. Coping is a skill we all need to learn at some point in our lives. Chronic pain patients need to learn it in order to continue leading productive lives.

3. It Reduces Stress and Arousal

Next, CBT is designed to reduce stress and arousal. Since both emotions can make pain worse, reducing them is an important aspect of managing the pain experience.

4. It Increases Positive Engagement

CBT seeks to reshape negative thoughts and emotions. In so doing, it increases positive engagement. Patients learn to engage in positive activities. They learn to channel their thoughts in a more positive direction. The end result is less focus on pain as a negative experience.

5. It Improves Daily Function

When a chronic pain patient’s thoughts and emotions are reshaped, they tend to contribute to improved daily function. The more active and functional a patient is, the less they focus on pain. That changes the pain experience.

6. It Improves Quality of Life

Finally, changing the way a patient thinks and feels about chronic pain can have a significant impact on quality of life. In turn, a higher quality of life encourages fewer negative thoughts and emotions about pain. A person’s pain experience is improved while managing pain becomes easier.

The experts at KindlyMD point out that CBT doesn’t work for every chronic pain patient. It is also not a therapy that has to be offered exclusive of all other options. CBT actually tends to work best when it’s combined with other pain management strategies. It is just one part of a much larger approach to helping patients feel better.