David Pike is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and an EMDR Consultant-in-training. After many years’ experience in Adult Mental Health he specialised in Health Psychology, spending 11 years as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a major Pain Clinic. He developed and ran Pain Management Programmes as well as being involved in the assessment of all Pain Patients (not just those requiring Psychology input) and provided individual therapy. Subsequent developments in EMDR have transformed his understanding of how psychological trauma contributes to the experience of pain and the treatment of Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), an excruciating condition for which there is little medical help. He currently runs EducarePartners, an independent Psychological Consultancy specialising in the assessment and treatment of psychological trauma after physical injury.

Elizabeth Doggart is an EMDR Consultant, BABCP Accredited Supervisor and UKCP Registered Cognitive Therapist. She is an Associate Director for Trauma Studies at the Centre for Stress Management (UK). She works with both adults and children who have experienced trauma. Amongst her client population are those who present with pain issues, often as a result of road traffic accidents or industrial accidents. She utilises EMDR to help with the management of chronic pain and the problems such as Depression, Anxiety and low moods associated with it.

The Workshop

Intractable pain is a life changing experience. What starts as something we are all familiar with, Acute Pain, can then go beyond our reasonable expectations of recovery to become a living nightmare. Emotional issues associated with pain can include bereavement for a lost life, anxiety over an uncertain future, low self-esteem, depression, loss of social support and disrupted communication patterns. Quite apart from the sensation of pain and the problems of the disability that stems from it.

This workshop will cover the distinct sets of beliefs that distinguish Acute from Chronic Pain which form a psycho-educational backdrop to any therapeuti approach and which can help clients make sense of what is happening to them.

New developments in EMDR and allied techniques which can relieve pain if there is a traumatic basis for it, and sooth pain significantly if it is organic in origin, will be discussed, with case materials. It is intended to provide tools to restore hope and self-management , whether or not the pain itself can actually be eliminated and ensure that therapists can protect themselves from the ‘heart-sink’ that chronic pain can sometimes induce in those that try to help.