As a therapist who is passionate about helping others, who loves to learn and who loves to wake up happy because he is living his passion, it is an extremely rewarding for me to get the results that I do with my clients.
I am a self confessed geek. I love to read about the human body, the mind, movement and all things health and wellness. It is so easy for me to get lost in a world of learning as there is a never ending source of information at our fingertips 🙂
In reality, this is all just information that can potentially be used to help another person. I think its extremely important to develop as much as you possibly can when you work as a therapist and to apply this development in practice with all who use your services.
A trend that I have observed recently has really got me thinking. I am lucky enough to have opportunities to treat many people and to teach many therapists and trainers during my involvement on both the P-DTR® and Anatomy in Motion (AiM) seminars.
Something I have noticed (and I have been guilty of this myself) is that most people become almost obsessed with pain. From a patient perspective, this is understandable, as pain may be the single most difficult thing to move past in order to enjoy life. It may sometimes dominate every waking moment and make life a real challenge.
From a therapists perspective, pain is the number one complaint that we are hired to help deal with. The trend I have observed regularly is that all parties involved become so focused on pain, that they neglect the rest of the person. In extreme cases, it has been apparent that in some therapeutic contexts, the therapists barely register the person infront of them, and are microscopically focussed on the symptoms and pain infront of them. Does that sound like it will end well? Not to me!
Pain science tells us that the therapeutic context and relationship between therapist and patient is extremely important in helping to facilitate change for another person. To me, that means building up a trusting relationship with each person that I work with, helping them to understand the “hows” and potentially the “whys” about their body and their symptoms.
We are all people before we have pain, and we must remember that pain, like people, is multifactorial. There are many factors and qualities that make up both and by building up a trusting relationship with the person first, it is my belief that this will lead to much more potential to sort the pain out!
#PeopleBeforePain #TherapeuticAlliance #Pain #Therapist #PainAndMovementSpecialist