The Impact of Somatic Psychoeducation on People with Chronic Pain: An Uncontrolled, Mixed Methods Interventional Pilot Study

Abstract

Chronic pain is a complex, whole-being experience reflective of a multidimensional matrix of psychoemotional, neurodynamic, and physiological elements. Management of chronic pain has been confounded by its relationship with opioid misuse, leading to interest in nonpharmacological approaches to pain management. This uncontrolled, interventional mixed methods pilot study examined the impact of a program of somatic psychoeducation on participants’ pain experience. Adults with chronic pain participated in five, 90-minute, online, individual sessions of pain-related, somatic psychoeducation. The program offered participants scalable mind-body practices, interactive narrative discussion, and neuroscientifically informed pain education. The convergent, mixed methods design reflected a depth psychological perspective that held subjective participant experience as the ground from which more objective construct measures emerged, and valued integration of qualitative and quantitative data to inform conclusions. Program survey measures included interoceptive awareness, body dissociation, pain experience, pain catastrophizing, and prescription medication use. Collectively, participants evolved from preoccupation with psychoemotional suffering and symptom focused body awareness prior to program participation to a more compassionate self-perspective better able to support overall well-being after program participation. Somatic practice was most effectively adopted when it was scalable, based on personal preferences and integrated with day-to-day activities. Overall, interoceptive awareness improved, body dissociation remained low, measures of pain experience improved, pain catastrophizing decreased, and prescription pain medication use decreased. The small sample size precluded calculation of statistical significance and comparative or correlative analysis. An integrative program of somatic psychoeducation can positively impact patients’ chronic pain experience.