An Exploration of Resilience and Personal Narrative in Counselling Those Who Live with Chronic Pain

Abstract

Chronic pain is an invaluable teacher. But the journey to accept its teachings can be one of the most excruciating journeys of a person's life. One of the most wide-reaching, challenging health problems the world over, chronic pain torments millions of people, leaving them feeling hopeless and unheard and those trying to help equally at a loss to provide long-lasting meaningful health care. The field of counselling psychology has a significant role to play to help people live functioning, meaningful lives alongside chronic pain. Emerging understandings of both chronic pain and resilience as multicausal, dynamic, social, cultural, and personal processes of learning are central to understanding experiences of chronic pain. Specifically, a post-structural, phenomenological narrative psychotherapy approach has the potential to increase resilience and expand an integrated, embodied knowledge that a person living with chronic pain is on a personal journey of their own evolution.