Stories about bodies: a narrative study on self-understanding and chronic pain

To explore experiences from a process of change for women with chronic pain.

A group-based treatment programme was intended to increase the awareness of how attitudes, habits and bodily practices are established, developed, and can be transformed, and thereby probably reduce pain. A single case story from this treatment programme is presented. A semi-structured interview was conducted with all participants about their experiences after completion of the programme. All eight women reported that they had benefited from participation. From these interviews a single case was chosen to represent the study's findings. A narrative analysis was conducted, focusing this patient's story from a phenomenological understanding of the body.

The patient's story illuminates how events and experiences can be connected, and how she interprets her contemporary situation in the light of previous experiences. In this way, she alters her understanding and develops a new approach to her situation. Her story demonstrated how symptoms can be understood as the result of stressful habits that the body has developed as a reaction to demands from the surroundings.

Reflection on how the body functions may lead to a new realization of how phenomena are interconnected, thus making changes possible.