Pain can steal roles, confidence, and connection. Tim and Bart explore how to spot identity loss and how to guide patients toward a values-led, reconstructed sense of self using language, movement, small wins, and co-created experiments.

• Why identity matters: chronic pain often causes biographical disruption—a break in the story of “who I am.”

• Neuro/psycho frame: predictive processing and the “model of me”—how ongoing threat can dominate self-inference.

• Clinician toolkit:

  • Narrative reframing (precision over catastrophising).

  • Values clarification (ACT-informed prompts that patients can actually answer).

  • Small wins & the Three Gifts practice to re-evidence competence and joy.

  • Co-creation & teams to expand the landscape of affordances.

• Vignettes: CRPS-style limb disownership language; makeup/hair example as “new me” exploration.

• Micro-experiments: safe, graded role re-entries across movement, connection, work, and creativity.

Resources Mentioned:

• Le Pub Scientifique Free Membership (includes Sleep Clinical Action Plan).

• Prior conversations with Lance McCracken, Laura Rathbone, Bronnie Lennox Thompson (in the Le Pub library).

Connect & Subscribe: Le Pub Scientifique—free membership for clinicians & people living with pain. Share the episode if it helped you or your patients.

#chronicpain #identity #ACT #physiotherapy #values #predictiveprocessing #CPPS #CRPS #narrativereframing #rehab