Springboard: Beginning to live life again

Springboard is a six week, 120 min once a week programme for people with pain. I developed this programme in the context of New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) community-based pain management services.

So, why use a group approach and what’s inside Springboard?

Pain can be such an isolating experience, and for many people, not only do friends and family not “get it” but neither do some of their health professionals! Living with pain, even for “just” a few months can lead to loneliness because most people don’t know what it is like to experience pain that doesn’t go away. Simply coming to a group where everyone else is in the same boat offers people a chance to be authentic about what it’s like. Connection with other people is so important – remember humans are a social species.

The second reason I love groups for this kind of work is that we get to share much more information and learning from one another than can be achieved in a one-to-one setting. As each person talks about their experience, others can relate “I’m the same”, or compare “I’m not like that”. Participants can share their wins and losses. They can contribute to help solve one and other’s problems. They can challenge one another in a way that health professionals who haven’t lived with pain can’t emulate.

If we look at Bandura’s social learning theory we can see that direct experience is the most powerful influence on self efficacy, and the second most powerful influence is vicarious learning. Being able to see how others approach the challenges of every day with pain gives participants a powerful learning tool.

What’s inside Springboard?

Springboard is based on ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and also draws on motivational interviewing as a therapeutic stance. Rather than focusing on changing pain, the focus in Springboard is on learning ways to live life again, even in the presence of pain. In other words, Springboard is about beginning to be yourself again.

One of the most profound losses when a person experiences pain that doesn’t follow the “typical” trajectory is a loss of previously implicit assumptions. The body becomes more significant with pain – movements are attended to, daily activities are bounded by far more awareness than normal, assumptions about what a person can expect from him or herself are challenged. In turn, this awareness brings a loss of sense of “self”. Self concept is an idea about “what I can expect to do, be competent at, and what others believe I can do” – and when pain is present, these expectations are violated.

Springboard aims to help people take stock of their lives, decide what matters, and begin to move towards valued actions in the presence of pain. Opening up more of life than just attempting to get rid of pain and “go back to normal”.

The thing is, “normal” has gone – whether pain ultimately resolves or not. Because each person who has gone through this weird experience of pain that doesn’t obey the rules will remember what it was like when they had their pain, and the old certainty and belief that the body will do whatever it’s asked to do will have likely eroded.

So Springboard asks the questions: if pain was less of a problem for you, what would you be doing? What matters to you? How can we work together to get more of that – and in doing so, enrich your life, and the lives of those you care about.

Each session begins with a review of the “missions” all participants undertake in their own contexts. These are values-based actions that participants choose for themselves, and that will build towards being and doing what matters in life. In other words, making life bigger.

As participants review their progress, and share their successes – and challenges – all the other participants contribute ideas to solve the problems, celebrate the successes, encourage setting new actions and learn from one another.

Each of the six sessions has a focus.

1. What do we know about pain? Sharing information each person has been given, and what sense they make of it. Generally working towards a common understanding of some of the mechanisms, some of the treatments people have tried, and getting perspective on how variable individual responses are to treatment. There is no single magic wand cure.
2. How can we organise activity levels? AKA the “pacing” or activity management session. We share the various trajectories people have been on – the deactivation process, the boom and bust process, the push through until you gasp approach, the gradual increase approach, and the consistency or quota approach. Rather than telling people which is “the best” we look at the good and the not-so-good about each, using participant’s own examples. That way we can help people weigh up their options for the various contexts in which they live.
3. Dealing with sticky thoughts and feelings. This is the “ACT” session – discussing cognitive defusion strategies, noticing, willingness, perspective taking, and finding wiggle room. Each session begins with a mindfulness “arrival” moment, so participants are familiar by this time with noticing that the mind likes to dictate. Participants begin to use “Choice point” as a creative way to notice what their mind is telling them, and choose an action to align with what matters to them in that context.
4. Sleep is always a hot topic! In this session we discuss all manner of sleep strategies, and how/why sleep is such a problem and so important for people with pain. Our solutions are diverse – everyone has something to contribute – and again, we look at the good and not-so-good of each option.
5. Who’s on your team? In this session, participants explore the many people they’ve interacted with because of their pain, all the people they’ve told their story to. We examine the various contributions these people make, and begin to look at how better to communicate in an authentic, respectful and “straight-up” way. Some participants bring family to this session as we build a list of who is on the team, and help the person with pain be the captain.
6. Flare-ups, set-backs and pre-planning. The final session is about when things go wrong. Identifying things that disrupt newly-developed skills and habits, whether these are pain flare-ups, pain settling (yet, it’s a thing that can trip people up!), holiday routines, returning to work, new assessments – all the things that life holds! Participants work on drawing up their own pain management plan (written down so it can be pinned on the fridge!), and on a set-back plan or “can cope” card.

The real grunt work of this programme lies in the home-based missions each participant does. It’s in doing new things, taking small steps in a different direction, stopping to notice before acting, defusing and giving a moment of space before choosing what to do – these actions are reviewed at the beginning of every session and really form the core of what Springboard offers.

Over the next six weeks I’m putting the facilitator training for Springboard online. This will make the training available for more people, both in New Zealand and elsewhere. Keep watching out because I’ll make an early bird announcement very soon!