Tania Suzuki
Biopsychosocial Therapy
New Dialogues with Pain
If you work with clients in persistent pain in their body you might find this useful:
Persistent pain has been increasingly burdening our modern society. Did you know that 1 in 4 people have it?
The good news is that the more people learn about their pain, and the more they feel supported in their learning, the less pain they have. Based on more than 25 years of studies and practice in somatic techniques, kinesiology, psychology and pain science, I’m confident to say that all pains are biopsychosocial.
The modern Pain Science is finally confirming that pain is about nervous system protection, not about issues in the tissues in the body.
Pain is a protector that sometimes can become over protective, to the point that tissue based therapies don't resolve it. In this context, I have been finding experiential/ relational psychotherapies (such as AEDP and IFS) to be very important contributions in persistent pain treatment, due to their focus on nervous system integration and the focus on creating a safety and creative experience - all the way to creating new neuropathways.
However, when treating people in pain, it is also very important that some cognitions and understandings about pain can be deconstructed in your client’s nervous systems, since our culture still looks at pain from a biomedical standpoint, and heavily bombards us (and our clients) with reductionist messages, stating that if we hurt, we need fixing...
Recognizing how difficult it may be for physicians and psychotherapists to address these unhelpful beliefs alone in their private office, I offer an on-line educational program to co-assist, or preface, the psycho therapeutic work with clients who live with persistent physical pain, for whom treatment targeting the tissues has not been effective.
In addition, this workshop might help those in pain who are confused, and not yet seeing the point of working on their emotional experience for the sake of addressing their physical pain, to become more open to doing deeper psychotherapeutic work.
I also have been offering this to groups of clinicians (PTs, Ots, KINs, MDs, etc...) and they have been finding it very helpful to support their clients.
Topics visited with the group
The 8 sessions integrate theoretical and practical interventions. They cover:
- Understanding pain as a protective function of the nervous system- beyond issues in the tissues
- Understanding neuroplasticity and what happens to the body maps in the brain during pain- and how they change all the time, based on repetition and focus
- 7 dimensions of agency- finding what you can have control over
- Mindfulness - the benefits and caveats of distraction and focused attention in persistent pain - learning the language of the body
- Experiencing body awareness and learning the language of the nervous system - then describing your experience- Eutony somatic practice
- Physical activity - what if moving hurts? - a titrated approach to (re)gaining function
- Practicing relaxation and breathing - visiting the bridge between the uncontrollable to the controllable - gaining control by letting go - breathing awareness and breathing techniques
- Looking at emotions and relationships - aloneness, anxiety, trauma, internal family systems and the change triangle
This video by Lorimer Moseley shows some of the premises in my approach
https://www.tamethebeast.org/#tame-the-beast
More information about the 8 weeks Pain Education series
here <https://www.taniasuzuki.com/post/2019/08/31/pain-and-the-brain>
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