The Narrative Format
Relevant Background Data The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for Chronic Pain group consists of eleven group members, but only eight attended the first class. There were seven males and one female. The age and socio demographic status vary based on the individual Veteran.
Worker’s Purpose The purpose of this interaction was to display my practice skills as I interacted with the group. Also, this is a group that I will be co-facilitating for the next 12 weeks.
Interview
This was the first group session and I took the responsibility of going over the class plan, guidelines, introductions, and distributing a pretest of the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire. The Veterans were informed that the purpose of this class is to help with their acceptance of thoughts and feeling that go along with chronic pain, while helping them live a life that is rich and meaningful. The Veterans seemed to understand the purpose of the class, until Sherry stated “Would all of you get up and leave the class, if I told you that I cannot promise you that your pain will go away?” Some of the Veterans looked confused and others looked disappointed.
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I am aware that the Veterans have tried several different options in order to relieve the pain such as pain shots, acupuncture, taking hot showers, isolating, and abusing substances. Therefore, I can relate to concept of “If I just try one more thing, maybe this will be the solution to all my problems.” Unfortunately, it does not work out that way and Sherry did a great job explaining it to the Veterans. Also, she iterated that ACT can allow them to live a meaningful life, if they were willing to accept the chronic pain by controlling their thoughts and