Pain Psychology is run along with "Pain Management" three words to describe "Pain Psychology" from my experience, condescending, belittling, detrimental. I felt the need to write this so that another person may not have to deal with such a poorly structured mentally draining detrimental service. I do not know if this is for all "Pain Psychologists" but the one I seen liked to point out that they were not medically trained, yes, that's right, someone that has no idea of your pain, your illness, your disabilities, the horrendous effect physically of the latter mentioned, is sitting there with zero knowledge or experience of the above and telling you to do this and that after 10 minutes of sitting across from you and telling you how you feel because you're wrong, anything you say is invalid, they are the "professional" ie they are right and you are wrong, you are made to feel like you are wrong, going against them is like going against a 40 ft wall and challenging them on what they say is met with "you are in denial" and "you do not accept your illness" which is really contradicting considering they make you feel like your illness is all imaginary! they really do like to do a number on you mentally, you'll be more than likely just assumed as someone "depressed" and inflicting your disabilities on yourself due to your mood because lets face it, people in chronic pain are super cheerful, right? I feel like I can't win with this service, if you go there saying you are in chronic pain but lead a normal life you will be met with "it can't be that bad then" if you say your mood is low due to your illnesses then you will be deemed as mentally ill and imagining your illnesses and pain or exacerbating them.
I found it detrimental to my health and my mental health, it made me feel invalidated, misunderstood and extremely alone, it was like talking a foreign language to someone that does not and will not ever understand, quite frankly it made me feel a lot worse. From the start of the journey of dealing with "Pain Management" and "Pain Psychology" the experience was very much not about pain and more about mood, I think the very patronising "questionnaire" they send out prior to attending "Pain Management" confirms that. Also I found it very strange how in the first session of "Pain Psychology" the person asked questions prying into my family life and if I had ever been abused as a child, at that point I should have walked out! is it really about helping you "deal with your pain" if they are trying to pin your illnesses on some past life experience?I think it is misleading and very rude to assume and send patients to this service and mask it as being about helping you deal with pain and asking such prying rude irrelevant questions.
My final point is that these services need to understand that genuine health issues are going on with a lot of patients, that no amount of "Mindfulness" and "Pain Psychology" are going to help in the slightest with certain illnesses, I feel like they view everyone as the same, I do not know if it's due to volume of people they see that it all just merges into one but in my experience they aren't treating patients as individuals and are treating them more like herds of depressed sheep that can be cured by "Mindfulness" apps on your phone and skipping in the park. My point is you can gloss over the cracks but unless you fix the cracks and deal with the main problem then the gloss does not matter, the cracks are still underneath. In my opinion some patients need medical and medicinal intervention and unless that is explored then all the gloss in the world, ie "Psychology" and "Mindfulness" is fruitless, taking patients seriously and listening are two serious issues that need to be addressed with these services and they need to address this overwhelming impression from the start that your pain is all imaginary.
"Pain Psychology has been detrimental to my health"
About: Ayrshire Central Hospital Ayrshire Central Hospital Irvine KA12 8SS
Posted by Fobbedoff (as ),
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Update posted by Fobbedoff (the patient) 6 years ago
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