Pain Management Support Group

At BUMCH, chronic pain is treated with medication, with physical and occupational therapy, with therapeutic recreation and with spiritual support.

We have also formed a pain management support group, where residents learn ways that they can manage pain through understanding themselves better. Attendance is voluntary and the membership changes according to need.

Dr. Keith Gonsor, our psychologist

Every Monday morning at 11:30 a group of about ten BUMCH residents meet with Dr. Keith Gonsor, our psychologist, to talk about their pain and how to get some control over it. The support group is a place where the residents can resolve some of the many issues that are involved in the experience of pain. Most important, they learn that they have power to reduce their own pain.

There are three important factors which contribute to pain: tension, focus, and attitude. We ourselves have remedies for all three. For example, to reduce tension, we can seek ways to relax, not forgetting to breathe deeply. Anger can be a source of tension, so we try to understand our anger better.

We can re-focus attention away from pain toward something more pleasant and distracting, such as enjoying the fellowship of friends or family.

Finally, we can change our attitude: Believing that we’re helpless makes pain much worse. In the support group we can gain the sense that there are things we can do to reduce our pain. It helps to know that we are not alone in what we’re going through, that a lot of it makes sense, and that there are tools we can work with to fix the situations that cause pain.

An important tool for feeling less helpless is learning to communicate better: for example, how to ask for what we want in an effective way. By sharing experiences with one another and with Dr. Gonsor’s guidance, members in the group increase their ability to communicate.