Dr. Alexander Coherence Therapy for chronic pain

[Dr James Alexander]

In my on-going search for psychotherapeutic approaches which are most helpful in dealing with chronic pain, i have recently come across Coherence Therapy. From my investigations, i can see that it is entirely compatible with the TMS approach to dealing with chronic pain (and other chronic health issues), and would prove a useful intervention for people who it seems a purely informational approach is not sufficient. I know that many/most people can recover from TMS by simply processing accurate information, however there remains a portion of people who continue to suffer, despite good information. Such people could well benefit from face-to-face therapy: we know that brief psychoanalytic therapy works; EMDR works (especially when pain is related to psychological trauma events); and i would now add to this list Coherence Therapy.

if you want to know more about it, go to
www.drjamesalexander-psychologist.com
and click on 'About the Book'- then look to the left where you will see 'Coherence Therapy' under Addendums to the book. You will find links there to podcast interviews with its originator, as well as links to their website where you will be able to request contact details of Coherence Therapy practitioners in your part of the world.

 

[Forest]

This was a great article and I enjoyed reading about Coherence Therapy sounds like a very interesting therapuetic approach. It sounds like it can address some of the key issues people with TMS face. One passage in your review of it really stood out to me.

In order to get better, we need to become aware of the unconscious emotional truths, and begin to see how the symptoms are actually in the service of these truths- in order to protect us from a perceived threat. Obviously, chronic pain is a very good protective strategy in that it will dominate our awareness and prevent us from becoming aware of painful emotional truths- these are the threats to our conscious equilibrium. As long as we fail to see how the symptom (pain) is serving us, and in fact is more important to have than not to have, the symptom will last.

I have always felt that the key to healing is understanding how our emotional truths were developed. Our pain exists to prevent us from understanding we are out of balance and that we have painful emotional truths. There is a tendency to view these truths as complicated, but, in my opinion, they can be rather simple. Identifying them may not require years of psychotherapy, but knowing which questions to ask oursleves such as the one you wrote:

What would be the bad thing, the dangerous thing, the scary thing, the difficulty you would have to face if you let go of the ......(eg. pain)...?​

The answers to these questions are, most likley, not overly complicated. However they are extremely challenging for us to answer because they require us to admit that there is a bad, dangerous, scary, or difficult thing in our lives. This is extremely threatening to our idea of self and our ego, which is why our unconscious creates symptoms in the first place.

 

[Dr James Alexander]

thanks for the feedback Forest. I agree entirely- it doesnt need to take years of therapy to work out, and the answers to the pertinent questions are usually not overly complicated. My own experience of getting better from TMS (and the experiences of the many people who have overcome it just by reading books) demonstrates clearly that a purely informational approach can work with this- in fact, the reality is that there is no such thing as a purely cognitive approach. As i quoted Ecker and Hulley, even cognitive changes entail multiple levels of meanings (some of which will be conscious and others unconscious) as well as a range of emotions- its a myth that cognitions exist on their own, without an emotional content. I would suggest that Coherence Therapy is amongst the useful psychological approaches which make sense for people who are not getting better with a purely informational approach.

apparently, people can find practitioners in their area by emailing:- info@coherencepsychology.org