Pain & Illness

Yet there is another part of the experience of pain and illness that therapy can support: how we live with what is happening in our bodies. Pain is physical, but our experience of pain can affect how we think, feel, behave and relate to other people.

It can change our sense of ourselves and our expectations of the future. We may become frightened of making things worse, angry that our body is no longer behaving as we expect, or exhausted by having to continually think about symptoms, appointments, medication and what we can or cannot do.

Gabor Mate says "You can’t cleave a physiology from a psychology. The one affects the other, both ways.” Jon Kabat-Zinn, whose work brought mindfulness into medical settings, describes "the physical sensation of pain is one part of the experience; our thoughts about it, and the meaning we give it, can add another layer of suffering".

There is a growing body of therapeutic thinking that pays attention to the body. Peter Levine's "Somatic Experiencing", for example, encourages people to notice bodily sensations rather than just talking about the story surrounding them. In his work, clients may be invited to notice where an emotion or difficult experience is felt physically.

Babette Rothschild similarly emphasises the importance of helping people notice and understand bodily sensations, particularly when working with overwhelming experiences. Her work is a reminder that talking does not have to mean leaving the body out of the conversation.

Physical symptoms require proper medical assessment and treatment but the feelings about this treatment, the uncertainty, loss or frustration and the sometimes complicated relationship we develop with our bodies might be supported therapeutically.