Relating to the Experience of Chronic Pain Through a Liberatory Lens

Unpack your unconcious beliefs about pain, understand how systems create and reinforce chronic pain, and learn how that impacts your work! What meaning do you unconsciously make of pain? How does that shape the way you work with clients who experience chronic pain, and the way you relate to loved ones? Pain is both the great equalizer and the great divider. No objective test can confirm or deny another person's pain, and our drive to make meaning of it can be so strong that we skip the first step of relating to those who experience it, which is believing them. On November 19th, from 10 AM to 4 PM, J Dawgert-Carlin, LMFT (they/them), and Nalini Calamur, LMFT (she/her), will present: Relating to the Experience of Chronic Pain Through a Liberatory Lens. The workshop introduces a new way of working with clients who live with chronic pain. J brings decades of teaching, research, and clinical practice, along with lived experience of chronic pain. Nalini brings deep experience working with families and couples affected by systems of oppression. Chronic pain is an oppressive and othering experience, and the most well-worn clinical approaches often miss the ways systems create it. Multiply marginalized groups report significantly more chronic pain, and repeated encounters with patronizing medical environments worsen it. We tend to focus on reframing pain, but as therapists we need to become more comfortable sitting with its meaninglessness and hopelessness, so that we do not impose our unconscious morality about pain onto the person experiencing it. Above all, we hope you leave with a deeper understanding of your own beliefs about pain and a more liberated approach to working with chronic pain when it shows up in your room.