The self in pain

Abstract

Chronic pain can be highly distressing, disabling and complex. The experience of living with chronic pain often leads to a fundamental struggle with one's sense of self and identity. In this article, we briefly review the wide range of conceptualisations of self in pain research. We then introduce a contextual behavioural conceptualisation of self, a more recent approach to self, and discuss its application and relevant evidence in chronic pain. We recommend that it is time to organize and integrate perspectives on self in relation to chronic pain so that research can proceed with less potential confusion or contradiction, and the contextual behaviour science approach can potentially provide a basis for this.

Keywords: Chronic pain; Contextual behavioural science; Psychological flexibility; Self-as-context; Sense of self.