Commentary on Furnes B and Dysvik E (2012) Therapeutic writing and chronic pain: Experiences of therapeutic writing in a cognitive behavioural programme for people with chronic pain: Journal of clinical nursing 21, 3372-3381

摘要

Writing is a mysterious thing. It poses a unique problem set. There are awful barren days and agonising troughs when nothing flows. Where despite careful marshalling of evidence or anecdote, the words and necessary vigour, muscle and rhythm of prose refuse to find its way to sensible assembly on a blank page. A painful aching exercise at times even excruciating. It is hard to resist the speculation that there are few amongst us who would volunteer for the personal hardship of writing and that recruiting people to conduct some writing tasks would be an exercise in futility. This must be especially true of those who as a result of established illness may already feel at the end of their rope with chronic pain. The last thing they expect to receive is homework writing tasks. However, new evidence reported in a qualitative paper by Furnes and Dysvik (2012) defies such speculations and provides interesting ideas on writing tasks and its relationship to individuals' experiences of pain. Based on a study of the perspectives of the experiences of therapeutic writing in a cognitive behavioural programme for people with chronic pain, the authors found that for the majority of participants, the very task of writing was instrumental in providing pain relief.