Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) is a treatment method developed by Dr Howard Schubiner and Dr Mark Lumley that I often use in addition to Pain Reprocessing Therapy.  It focuses on emotional experiences that can turn on—or turn off—your brain’s danger signal of pain. Many people with chronic pain/symptoms have had stressful, sometimes traumatic, experiences in their lives. These experiences and the emotions involved can add to the brain’s sense of danger or threat, triggering or worsening pain.  Using techniques that bring about the awareness and expression of avoided emotions, EAET can help resolve internal emotional conflict that may be impacting the pain experience.  This experiential method is used in session (virtually) and, when appropriate, strategies for expressing these emotions in real-life relationships are explored.

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A lot of research is currently being done on EAET.  One notable randomized clinical trial compared the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy in treating chronic pain in older veterans.  Of the patients that received EAET, 63% experienced clinically significant (more than 30%) post-treatment pain reduction, while only 17% of participants felt such a reduction in the CBT treatment group.  You can read the full study here.​

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Contact me to learn more.