This content is designed for the participants of the GGC Pain Management Programme.

Hello, it’s Anna here. This session is about values. We are going to be thinking about what matters to us. You might think this is a strange question to be asking at a Pain Management Programme. It is certainly a big question. At the beginning of each group we spend quite a bit of time thinking about what matters to you, who you are, what you want your life to be about. For lots of us, this is not an easy or straight forward process but we have found over many years of running these groups, that it really helps people to go on to set goals that make a difference to their lives.

Many of you will feel that you have changed from the person you were before developing this pain problem. Even if you feel you are the same person deep down, it’s likely that you will have changed in other ways. Often it is the things that we do that define us as individuals. For example, if you ask someone to tell you a bit about themselves, they will often say what they do for a job, what hobbies they have, what role they play in a family, etc. All of these things are about the stuff that they do. Obviously, having pain will have meant a big change in the things you are able to do, so in some senses it will have changed who you are, or certainly how you see yourself.

Many of you will be doing less than you did previously because of the restrictions that pain imposes on you. Many of you will also have given up on specific activities, such as sports or socialising. Sometimes this is ok if they weren’t that important to you, but other times you are likely to have felt sad at having to give some of these things up. Have a think about the kinds of things that you’ve had to stop and how this has made you feel about yourself. Has it affected how you and others see you? Does this make you sad or angry? Or maybe it is a relief and even makes you happy?

You’ve been fighting a battle with your pain. Over time this battle has started to consume your life. The time you’ve spent searching for solutions to your pain has likely left you exhausted, stressed-out, and, worst of all, still in pain.

You are probably so tired of the pain and so caught up in getting rid of it that you’ve forgotten why you wanted to get rid if it in the first place – take a moment to think about this question.

What would you be doing just now if you didn’t have pain?

Take a moment to stop and ask yourself this question: If I had no pain, what would I do with my life?
This may sound a bit radical, but what if you could learn to do those things with you pain? What if you could carry your pain with you while you live the life you want to live – this a large part of the focus of the PMP.

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I want to share a metaphor, or a story with you, and see if this helps to emphasise why it is worth spending time thinking about this issue.

Imagine you are throwing a party, you send out invites and tell everyone to bring people along. Pretty soon the party is busy and everyone is having fun. Everyone you expected to be here has arrived. The door bell rings and you open it. It’s your Uncle Joe. You heart sinks. Uncle Joe is loud, rude and he has questionable personal hygiene. You really didn’t want him here. He comes in and starts being mean to some of your guests and telling jokes people find offensive and rude. You ask him to leave and show him out. You get back to enjoying the party. Then the doorbell rings again and Uncle Joe is back, he runs in, makes a bee line for a group of friends and starts yelling and being horrible. You tell him it’s time he went and show him out again. But this time you don’t go back to the party, you decide to wait by the door, incase Uncle Joe tries to come back. While you are waiting by the door though, you’re missing out on the party. You don’t get to enjoy the food and drink and you miss spending time with your friends.

So, you decide to leave the door and accept that Uncle Joe may well come back but you are going to respond differently this time. You want to get on with enjoying the party. So, when Uncle Joe does come back in, you don’t ignore him but you don’t try to control him either. You notice that one or two people even seem to connect with Uncle Joe and understand his weird sense of humour. Now that you are not fighting to make him behave or to leave, you notice Uncle Joe is a little less difficult.

This is a good metaphor for what can happen in out own lives when we decide to stop fighting the things we cannot change, whether that is pain, low mood, fatigue, or other symptoms, and decide instead to focus our attention on the things that matter. This might be relationships with other people, or helping someone, or working hard at something, or learning something new. Whatever it is that matters to us, as individuals.

If you are not spending all your time fighting with pain, what do you want to be doing? What do you want life to be focussed on? Where do you want to be heading? The answers to these questions show your values.
Values are what bring meaning to life, they are the basis of how to choose to love your life, what you focus on. They define the direction you want your life to go in. Values are lifelong paths that vitalise your life by giving it direction and meaning. You live your values all your life, they never end.

I often share the (rather embarrassing) example from my own life. I quite like being organised and as a child this showed in the games I played – I organised my teddies, played libraries, all those sorts of fun things! As an adult, I don’t do this (I promise!) but I do like to be organised, I write lists, I make plans. My value in there is being organised, that has always been there, but the way it plays out in my life has changed over time.

Your values might be about:

Concern for the environment – people who hold this value may engage in good environmental practices such as recycling and conserving energy. They may join a charity and take part in fundraising events etc.

Or your values might include

Creativity – people who hold this value may work in jobs which allow them to be imaginative and express themselves such as music or acting. They may take up art as a leisure pursuit or evening class etc.

Maybe personal independence is important to you – people who have this as a value might run their own business. Or they may enrol in diy and car maintenance classes to allow them to do things for themselves.

Or maybe Health and Wellbeing is a key value for you – people who have this value may engage in activities which improve their health and physical appearance, such as healthy eating and regular exercise.

There are lots of different things that we might have as values.

Please spend some time before the next session, doing task 1 of the values worksheet. This task gets us to think about the habits and patterns we may be in that are in fact not helpful for our lives. Maybe things that you do to cope with your pain that in fact don’t help that much in the long term and maybe even pull you away from what matters, causing you to miss out.

This task also asks us to think about what matters to us. Spend some time thinking about this. If you are struggling, or want to spend some more time thinking about this, you could download a free and simple app which asks you to sort through a range of qualities, things such as being adventurous, caring, creative, hard working. It gets you to rate how important they are. It only takes 5 minutes but can help to identify your top values in some way. It is called Values Card Sort and it has an image of a tree with roots – this might help you find it in your usual app store.

We will soon be asking you to set a goal to work on through the remainder of the programme. Hopefully spending time thinking about what really matters to you will help you to identify a goal that will improve your life and help you feel you are living a life that matters to you.

End of video script

Return to preparation for session 2