Can you influence pain with your thoughts?
28 February 2017
We are researching how thought strategies can help with pain. The individual pain experience depends crucially on thoughts, emotions and behaviour. Pain research is identifying the factors in thoughts, feelings and behaviours that make some people develop chronic pain, while others heal. In this study, we are investigating the role of thoughts. The goal is to improve treatment for pain conditions through finding a simple, use-anywhere thought strategy that can help alleviate pain.
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Ethical approval
All information and data provided will remain strictly confidential and all reports will be anonymised. This research has been approved by the Department of Psychology Ethics Committee (Ref. 16-214).
About the researcher
My name is Dr Nina Kreddig, and I have been working as a medical psychologist in pain research for nine years. Originally from the Ruhr-University of Bochum in Germany, I am currently at the University of Bath for 6 months, with a grant fellowship by the German Research Foundation.
In my mind, the fascinating thing about pain is that the individual pain experience is so crucially dependent on thoughts, feelings and behaviours of a person. So much so, that chronic pain is said to be largely independent of any physical harm. Consequently, there is a large open field of research, with countless possibilities for us to find new ways to help people with pain!
