Tag Archives: multidisciplinary

Talking through the pain

By Laurie Meyers January 30, 2018

By the time the 43-year-old man, a victim of an industrial accident, limped into American Counseling Association member David Engstrom’s office, he’d been experiencing lower back pain for 10 years and taking OxyContin for six. The client, whose pain was written in the grimace on his face as he sat down, was a referral from a local orthopedic surgeon, who was concerned about the man’s rapidly increasing tolerance to the drug.

“He often took twice the prescribed dose, and the effect on his pain was diminishing,” says Engstrom, a health psychologist who works in integrated care centers.

The man’s story is, unfortunately, not unusual. According to the National Institutes of Health, 8 out of 10 adults will experience lower back pain at some point in their lives. As the more than 76 million baby boomers continue to age, many of them will increasingly face the aches and pains that come with chronic health issues. And as professional counselors are aware, mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and addiction can also cause or heighten physical pain.

Those who suffer from chronic pain are often in desperate need of some succor, but in many cases, prescription drug treatments or surgery may be ineffective or undesirable. Fortunately, professional counselors can often help provide some relief.

Treating chronic pain

At first, the client had only one question for Engstrom: “I’m not crazy, so why am I here?”

Although the man’s physician did not think that the pain was all in the man’s head, it is not uncommon for sufferers of chronic pain to encounter skepticism about what they are experiencing. “It was important … to defuse the idea that I might think he was imagining his pain,” Engstrom says. “So I [told him] that I accepted that his pain was real and that all pain is experienced from both body and mind. I told him that we would be a team and work on this together.”

Engstrom and the client worked together for five months. As they followed the treatment plan, the man’s physician slowly eased him off of the OxyContin.

Engstrom began by teaching the client relaxation exercises such as progressive muscle relaxation. “When in pain, the natural inclination of the body is to contract muscles,” Engstrom explains. “In the long term, this reduces blood flow to the painful area and slows the healing process. Contracted muscles can be a direct source of pain.”

Engstrom also began using biofeedback to promote further relaxation. In biofeedback sessions, sensors are attached to the body and connected to a monitoring device that measures bodily functions such as breathing, perspiration, skin temperature, blood pressure, muscle tension and heartbeat.

“When you relax, clear your mind and breathe deeply, your breathing slows and your heart rate dips correspondingly,” Engstrom explains. “As the signals change on the monitors, you begin to learn how to consciously control body functions that are normally unconscious. For many clients, this sense of control can be a powerful, liberating experience.”

As Engstrom’s client learned to control his responses, he began reporting a decrease in pain following the relaxation exercises.

Engstrom also used cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) methods, including asking the man to keep a daily journal recording his pain level at different times of the day, along with his activity and mood. Through the journal, the man started recognizing that his pain level wasn’t constant. Instead, it varied and was influenced by what he was doing and thinking at the time.

Engstrom highly recommends CBT for pain treatment because it helps provide pain relief in several ways. “First, it changes the way people view their pain,” he says. “CBT can change the thoughts, emotions and behaviors related to pain, improve coping strategies and put the discomfort in a better context. You recognize that the pain interferes less with your quality of life and, therefore, you can function better.”

In this case, the client was trapped by thoughts that “the pain will never go away” and “I’ll end up a cripple,” Engstrom says. He and the client worked on CBT exercises for several months, keeping track of and questioning the validity of such negative future thoughts. They also practiced substituting more helpful thoughts, including “I will take each day as it comes” and “I will focus on doing the best I can today.”

Chronic pain often engenders a sense of helplessness among those who experience it, Engstrom says, so CBT also helps by producing a problem-solving mindset. When clients take action, they typically feel more in control of their pain, he says.

CBT also fosters new coping skills, giving clients tools that they can use in other parts of their lives. “The tactics a client learns for pain control can help with other problems they may encounter in the future, such as depression, anxiety or stress,” Engstrom says.

Because clients can engage in CBT exercises on their own, it also fosters a sense of autonomy. Engstrom often gives clients worksheets or book chapters to review at home, allowing them to practice controlling their pain independently.

Engstrom notes that CBT can also change the physical response in the brain that makes pain worse. “Pain causes stress, and stress affects pain-control chemicals in the brain, such as norepinephrine and serotonin,” he explains. “By reducing arousal that impacts these chemicals, the body’s natural pain-relief responses may become more powerful.”

Although Engstrom acknowledges that he could not completely banish the discomfort his client felt, he was able to lessen both the sensation and perception of the man’s pain and give him tools to better manage it.

Taking away pain’s power

Mindfulness is another powerful tool for lessening the perception of pain, says licensed professional counselor (LPC) Russ Curtis, co-leader of ACA’s Interest Network for Integrated Care.

Mindfulness teaches the art of awareness without judgment, meaning that we are aware of our thoughts and feelings but can choose the ones we focus on, Curtis continues. He gives an example of how a client might learn to regard pain: “This is pain. Pain is a sensation. And sensations tend to ebb and flow and may eventually subside, even if just for a little while. I’ll breathe and get back to doing what is meaningful to me.”

Engstrom agrees. Unlike traditional painkillers, mindfulness is not intended to dull or eliminate the pain. Instead, when managing pain through the use of mindfulness-based practices, the goal is to change clients’ perception of the pain so that they suffer less, he explains.

“Suffering is not always related to pain,” Engstrom continues. “A big unsolved puzzle is how some clients can tolerate a great deal of pain without suffering, while others suffer with relatively smaller degrees of pain.”

According to Engstrom, the way that people experience pain is related not just to its intensity but also to other variables. Some of these variable include:

Emotional state: “I am angry that I am feeling this way.”
Beliefs about pain: “This pain means there’s something seriously wrong with me.”
Expectations: “These painkillers aren’t going to work.”
Environment: “I don’t have anyone to talk to about how I feel.”

By helping people separate the physical sensation of pain from its other less tangible factors, mindfulness can reduce the suffering associated with pain, even if it is not possible to lessen its severity, Engstrom says.

According to Engstrom, mindfulness may also improve the psychological experience of pain by:

Decreasing repetitive thinking and reactivity
Increasing a sense of acceptance of unpleasant sensations
Improving emotional flexibility
Reducing rumination and avoidant behaviors
Increasing a sense of acceptance of the present moment
Increasing the relaxation response and decreasing stress

Curtis, an associate professor of counseling at Western Carolina University in North Carolina, suggests acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as another technique to help guide clients’ focus away from their pain.

“ACT can help people revisit what their true values are, whether it’s being of service, having a great family life or creating art,” he notes. Encouraging clients to identify and pursue what is most important to them helps ensure that despite the pain they feel, they are still engaging in the things that give their lives meaning and not waiting for a cure before moving forward, Curtis explains.

Teamwork and support

In helping clients confront chronic pain, Curtis says, counselors should not forget their most effective weapon — the therapeutic relationship. Because living with chronic pain can be very isolating, simply sitting with clients and listening to their stories with empathy is very powerful, he says.

Counselors have the opportunity to provide the validation and support that clients with chronic pain may not be getting from the other people in their lives, says Christopher Yadron, an LPC and former private practitioner who specialized in pain management and substance abuse treatment. The sense of shame that often accompanies the experience of chronic pain can add to clients’ isolation, he says. According to Yadron, who is currently an administrator at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, clients with chronic pain often fear that others will question the legitimacy of their pain — for instance, whether it is truly “bad enough” for them to need extended time off from work or to miss social occasions.

Curtis says it is important for counselors to ensure that these clients understand that the therapeutic relationship is collaborative and equal. That means that rather than simply throwing out solutions, counselors need to truly listen to these clients. This includes asking them what other methods of pain relief they have tried — such as supplements, over-the-counter painkillers, physical therapy, yoga or swimming — and what worked best for them, Curtis says.

The U.S. health care system has led many people to believe that there is a pill or surgery for every ailment, Curtis observes. This makes the provision of psychoeducation essential for clients with chronic pain. “Let them know there’s no magic bullet,” he says. Instead, he advises that counselors help clients see that relief will be incremental and that it will be delivered via multiple techniques, usually in conjunction with a team of other health professionals such as physicians and physical therapists.

Curtis, Yadron and Engstrom all agree that counselors should work in conjunction with clients’ other health care providers when trying to address the issue of chronic pain. Ultimately, however, it may be up to the counselor to put the “whole picture” together.

A 60-something female client with severe depression was referred to Engstrom from a pain clinic, where she had been diagnosed and treated for fibromyalgia. After an assessment, Engstrom could see that the woman’s depression was related to continuing pain, combined with social isolation and poor sleep patterns. The woman was unemployed, lived alone and spent most of her day worrying about whether her pain would get any better. Some of her previous doctors had not believed that fibromyalgia was a real medical concern and thus simply had dismissed her as being lonely and depressed. Despite finally receiving treatment for her fibromyalgia, the woman was still in a lot of pain when she was referred to Engstrom.

Engstrom treated the woman’s depression with CBT and taught her to practice mindfulness through breathing exercises and being present. Addressing her mood and sleep problems played a crucial role in improving her pain (insomnia is common in fibromyalgia). By dismissing the woman’s fibromyalgia diagnosis, discounting the importance of mood and not even considering the quality of her sleep, multiple doctors had failed to treat her pain.

Engstrom points out that in this case and the case of his client with lower back pain, successful treatment hinged on cognitive and behavioral factors — manifestations of pain that medical professionals often overlook.

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Laurie Meyers is the senior writer for Counseling Today. Contact her at lmeyers@counseling.org.

Letters to the editor: ct@counseling.org

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Counseling interns get firsthand exposure to immigrant experience

By Bethany Bray September 26, 2016

An innovative partnership in North Carolina is pairing counseling graduate students from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with clients of a free medical clinic nearby. Many of these clients are recent immigrants.

According to those involved with the effort, the partnership provides the student interns with a chance to hone their counseling skills while also offering them a firsthand lesson in advocacy and social justice issues.

The Bethesda Health Center (BHC) provides free primary care, diabetes and hypertension management, and health education for low-income and uninsured residents of Charlotte and the surrounding county. The UNC Charlotte counseling interns offer mental health care alongside these physical health services.

The partnership provides much-needed care to minority populations who are, statistically, the least likely to seek or access mental health services, says Daniel Gutierrez, an assistant professor of counseling at UNC Charlotte, as well as a licensed professional counselor, licensed mental health counselor and member of the American Counseling Association.

It has also provided counseling students with some valuable learning that transcends the typical textbook lessons, says Katherine Wilkin, an ACA member and clinical mental health counseling student at UNC Charlotte. Wilkin, who was born in Venezuela, is able to offer counseling to BHC clients in Spanish and English.

The experience has opened Wilkin’s eyes to the cultural factors that often increase risks for mental health struggles, including the stress of navigating a language barrier and acculturation to a new location.

“My experience at Bethesda Health Clinic has enriched my training and has strengthened my passion for providing mental health services to the Hispanic population in their native language of Spanish,” Wilkin says. “… This program exposes counselors and students to a diverse population with unique issues. The [U.S.’s] growing Hispanic population calls for mental health professionals to be sensitive and aware of the cultural considerations when working with this population.”

UNC Charlotte’s work at BHC was highlighted recently by National Public Radio (NPR). CT Online reached out to Gutierrez for a Q+A to find out more.

CT: In your own words, how does this program meet a need?

DG: Latinos are the fastest-growing and largest minority in the U.S., and they experience mental health disorders at the same rate — some argue at higher rates — as the majority culture. Yet, when compared to the majority culture, they are the least likely to access mental health treatment. They, on average, receive a lower quality of care and end up presenting with more severe symptoms.

There is no doubt that there is a great need for effective and accessible mental health care for this population. However, there are numerous barriers that keep Latinos from accessing mental health treatment, such as language difficulties, a lack of appropriately trained mental health workers, stigma and an overall difficulty trusting providers.

On the other hand, counselor educators everywhere preach the importance of teaching our students to work with underserved and vulnerable populations, but we don’t always have the opportunity to give our students quality learning experiences doing this work. This program meets two needs: a) it creates access to appropriate mental health services for an underserved population; and b) it creates a diverse and dynamic learning experience for our students.

What have you learned from this program?

I don’t think you have enough room [in this article] to describe what I’ve learned. I learned how complicated it is to set up a program like this. I learned the importance of doing work with the community and not just in the community. This program has also reaffirmed my belief that understanding people is more important than understanding illness.

Talk about the logistics of how this program came together. What did it take to get started?

First off, the real credit goes to people like Wendy Mateo, the executive director of the Bethesda Health Center. Before all the publicity from NPR, and with limited resources and under some very challenging circumstances, Wendy was wholeheartedly serving the Latino community by providing medical care and chronic health management to the low-income and uninsured immigrant families in Charlotte. She does an amazing job and is an inspiration to helpers everywhere.

When we met with Wendy, she expressed that although they were making considerable strides in improving the physical health of Latinos in Charlotte, there was a great need for mental health services for their patients. We quickly realized that serving at a clinic that helps the underserved in Charlotte would be an amazing opportunity for our counseling students, and that our counseling students could provide the services that Bethesda truly needed. So, we brought together a team of faculty from different departments and began conversations about building counseling capacity at this free clinic.

We began by first evaluating the mental health needs for the current patients. We conducted chart reviews, spoke with staff at Bethesda and began to develop an understanding of what kind of mental health needs they were facing. We then had a series of meetings evaluating space needs; developing the right type of forms; discussing issues related to supervision, ethics, confidentiality, HIPPA compliance, how to manage interpreters; and examining the whole process for providing services.

I think we were all very aware that starting this program had many moving parts and that it wasn’t going to be as easy as just putting two chairs in a corner and assigning clients to students. It was a long and complex process, if we were going to do this right. These clients are already underserved by the community and are statistically more likely to receive substandard quality of care. It was important that we gave them the best care we could and that our students were going to have a positive experience.

After establishing a format and structure for the services, we recruited two doctoral-level counseling students who were licensed professional counselors to begin seeing clients. We called this our pilot study. We evaluated the progress of these initial students and used this data to inform the placement of master’s students. That following semester, we began placing master’s counseling students in their internships and practicums at the site. Thus far, the clients and the students both consider this program a great success.

Based on your experience, what advice would you give to counselors who might want to get involved in something similar in their local area?

One of the key members of our team, Mark DeHaven, is known for saying, “Collaboration is good, but partnership is better.” Too often we try to collaborate with community sites because they are great places to get data or place students, and that has merit. However, when you partner with a community agency, you begin to share responsibility and work together toward common goals, and that’s a whole other wonderfully beautiful thing.

I invite those who want to start these kinds of programs to begin by building strong community partnerships. It is complicated and sometimes cumbersome to partner with community agencies, but it has to be less about you and your agenda, and more about the needs of the people you are serving.

It’s also important that you develop a strong team of like-minded people [who are] willing to not just talk the talk but also walk the walk. I am lucky to work along some great and passionate people from different departments. Our team consists of Edward Wierzalis, a fellow Department of Counseling faculty member and the UNCC counseling program clinical coordinator; Mark DeHaven, a distinguished professor in public health science; Roger Suclupe, a lecturer from social work; Amy Peterman, an associate professor and director of clinical training in the Health Psychology Department; and a counseling Ph.D. student, Carolina Benitez.

This team made this project come together. So, my second piece of advice for future counselors is to build a good team.

The NPR piece says this came about because you were “looking to get more involved in the community.” Can you elaborate? Why is that important to you?

Well, I think this is probably a pretty personal question. I think everyone on our team serves in the community for different reasons. For me, I am driven by the spiritual ideas of welcoming the stranger, reaching out to those deemed the least and doing justice. I was also mentored by people who continually stated that in a world with so many health disparities, economic disparities and so much need, counselor educators should strive to go beyond mere talk and do impactful work.

After the NPR story went national, the first words from my mentor’s mouth were, “Some people got help — and that is the important thing.” I hang that email by my desk at work because it keeps me focused. Those of us with counseling training are equipped to do good in this world. Doing nothing seems like a mistake to me.

What type of nontextbook lessons have you seen your students learning?

Probably what I’ve enjoyed the most about this process is the surprising reactions I’ve seen from students. Our program has an emphasis on multiculturalism and diversity, so the students are well-versed in textbook knowledge. However, the internship experience [at BHC] offered them a real quality experience working with a population that was culturally different from their own.

I have had students come to me during their experience and sit in my office with tears in their eyes, and say things like “I just didn’t know” and “I love working with these people.” I think it raised student awareness to some of the struggles Latino immigrants face, such as having to cope with the traumas they experienced before entering the U.S., the stress and anxiety of leaving loved ones behind, and trying to care for family with limited resources. They also expressed new levels of multicultural awareness and realized that there was much they had taken for granted, such as the ability to speak the same language as their clients.

At the end of the most recent semester, we had students describe their experiences, and most stated that what [they had] learned most form the program was “working with people who are culturally different from you,” “understanding that most Latinos are very different and come from different countries, even though they are all labeled as Latino” and “learning the challenges of working with translators and the importance of tuning into body language.” Students also stated that this site [BHC] provided them with experiences that many of the other sites could not.

What do you want counselors to know about this program and your experience with it?

I would want my colleagues across the country to know one thing: This is worth doing. Latinos and other racial ethnic minorities are not receiving services at the same rates as the majority population. There is a need for helping professionals willing to reach out to our communities.

This kind of work might be complicated to set up and require more energy than you want to expend, but it’s good work and it is worth doing. It’s a great experience for the students and the community. It’s not simple work; you will most likely make a lot of mistakes getting this kind of a program off the ground – I know we did – but it is so much better to dance and miss a few steps than to never dance at all.

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From NPR: “Students Fill a Gap in Mental Health Care for Immigrants”

Find out more about the Bethesda Health Center at caminocommunitycenter.org

Contact Daniel Gutierrez at DGutierrez@uncc.edu

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Bethany Bray is a staff writer for Counseling Today. Contact her at bbray@counseling.org

Follow Counseling Today on Twitter @ACA_CTonline and on Facebook at facebook.com/CounselingToday.

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.