Talking therapies

Persistent pain can have a significant impact on your moods and your life at home or work.

It can be a miserable experience which leaves you feeling alone and low - so it can be helpful to talk about it.

Talking therapies involve discussing your issues with a psychologist or psychiatrist. These professionals are skilled at helping you understand the ways thoughts and mood affect pain.

They can help you learn strategies and skills to improve their quality of life and ability to deal with pain.

Talking therapies allow you to share the ways pain has changed you as a person, your moods and thought patterns. It can help to talk through your losses and experiences and allow you to self-manage your pain by starting to think more positively and proactively.

Talking therapies can be helpful with persistent pain or other long-term illnesses because health problems can affect the person, their moods and their life in so many difficult and distressing ways.

It helps to learn a range of skills to recognise how the way you think can cause unhelpful moods, for example becoming very angry. The therapy helps the person learn how to make changes to unhelpful thoughts or behaviours.

This means becoming less affected by unhelpful moods and having better, more pleasurable times, despite the pain.

The Sheffield IAPT service helps individuals cope better with long-term pain. You can access this service directly through the link provided.