Presenting at the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine Conference

In June, I’ll be presenting my personal chronic-pain healing story to an academic audience. The theme of the conference is “HEALTH: A multifaceted psychosomatic concept.”

It’s possible that a truer description of health has never been written.

My oral presentation, “When chronic pain researcher becomes chronic pain patient: An autoethnographic case study of disabling widespread pain and its resolution” will be a part of the conference dedicated to “the experience of pain”.

In this presentation, I answer:

• What happens when I, an experienced chronic pain researcher, developed disabling, widespread, chronic pain?
  
• What treatments did I seek, and how did I ultimately heal?
  
• How useful is the biopsychosocial model in the real world?
  
• Is multidisciplinary treatment necessary?
  

For an academic audience, I have written this presentation as a rigorously researched autoethnographic case study in which I use journal entries, calendar notes, emails, physician referrals, therapist notes, and text messages as evidence to tell my story of being a chronic pain researcher-turned-patient.

Possibly the most important part of the presentation is my discussion of the social phenomena that played important roles in my healing. I demonstrate how models for understanding, and clinical guidelines for treating, chronic pain are inadequate, and how minimizing contact with medical doctors may have been the best thing to do—even in Germany, where the concept of psychosomatic illness is relatively widespread.

I compare my own journey to the literature on chronic pain–patients’ experiences and ultimately merge my own experience with that literature to suggest how clinicians can change their behaviors to positively impact their patients’ chronic pain.

Ultimately, my experience healing from disabling widespread pain illustrates how misguided most clinical practice guidelines for chronic pain treatment are and how the biopsychosocial model needs to be understood differently to truly help patients heal.

This personal experience cemented my dedication to teaching clinicians how to communicate with chronic pain patients so they minimize nocebo effects and instead become a part of the active healing process with and for their patients.

My hope is that clinicians will attend this important session. At conferences, it’s rare to get the perspective of patients, thus I feel an affinity to the EAPM for even being open to including my case study (as well as others) in the program.

However, I know that conference programs are typically so packed with great sessions, it’s impossible to see every session you want to see.

Click the image to register for the conference today!

If you can attend the conference in June, I would love for you to hear my presentation. If not, you can always request that I speak with your own team of healthcare professionals. Simply request a workshop or training here.