Pain assessment & information
We camouflage our true being before others to protect ourselves against criticism or rejection. This protection comes at a steep price. When we are not truly known by the other people in our lives, we are misunderstood. When we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the "lonely crowd." Worse, when we succeed in hiding our being from others, we tend to lose touch with our real selves. This loss of self contributes to illness in its myriad forms.
- Sidney Jourard
For many years my work split fairly evenly between helping people with psychological difficulties and helping people with pain problems. Quite a few people were troubled with both. In the last several years I have done much less work with pain, although I still see some people for overall pain management. This has been partly because I was trying to keep up-to-date with too many fields, so stepping back from pain work made sense. It has also been partly because the flourishing of research into happiness & wellbeing has fascinated me and taken up time. Here are a collection of pain-associated assessment and information sheets that I accumulated over the years. They are obviously relevant for work with pain, and some (e.g. one year symptom diary) can be adapted for work with stress & psychological difficulties.