Welcome to the module Gaining Insight, Hope and Purpose. I'm Dr. Robin Whitebird. I'm a research investigator at the Health Partners Institute for Education and Research, where I study complementary therapies, mental health research, chronic disease, and aging. I'm also a research associate at the University of Minnesota academic health center, center for spirituality and healing. This module has four parts. Restoring wellbeing, where we'll focus on hope and purpose and healing from chronic pain. The perils of perception, where we'll talk about stress and the effects of stress on the mind, body and emotions. Coming back to yourself, where we'll address the efficacy of mindfulness, meditation and compassion. And experiential exercises, where we have a chance to experience mindfulness meditation, breathing and relaxation exercises. By the end of this module, we hope you'll be able to articulate the importance of hope and purpose in the healing process. Describe how stress affects the mind, body, and emotions. Explain how compassion and mindfulness can help in managing chronic pain. And perform simple breathing and relaxation exercises, such as a mindfulness meditation. So let's begin, welcome to part one, Restoring Wellbeing. Across this course you've been presented with a variety of methods to help people with chronic pain manage their pain and hopefully restore their wellbeing. You've talked about the physical, psychological, emotional and social health or in total, sum total their wellbeing. Somehow we've summed together our overall wellbeing, into a composite. As a part of that composite, is also the role of spirit. And under that role we're going to talk a bit now about hope and purpose. This module has four objectives, defining hope, providing an overview of the Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions. Talking about Hope Theory, and also identifying the role of hope in the management of chronic pain. [BLANK_AUDIO]. So, what is hope, and why is it important for our wellbeing? For us individually, for the patients that we treat, and for healing and recovery from chronic pain. Hope is associated with our spiritual sense of ourselves. It's also considered a positive emotion like joy and contentment and happiness. Hope is also being studied as a part of an emerging field that's looking at positive emotions and the role of positive emotions in our life. And then the importance for our own health and our wellbeing. This is the field that studies really what makes us well and how to improve our happiness, rather than focusing on disease, what's wrong with us and illness. Let's start by defining hope. So what is hope? We talk about it a lot, often we don't think about it and define it. Hope is related to trust and reliance. It's a desire, expectation, or belief in the fulfillment or success. It's wanting something to happen, or to be true. We hope for the future. It's also believing that something that something good can happen in our future, even in the face of uncertainty and at times, despair. Unlike other positive emotions such as happiness and contentment that occur when we're feeling good, and safe, and satisfied, hope comes when there's uncertainty, difficulty, or even despair. It provides us with a sense of possibility that things can change for the better. That there's something for us in our future, and an alternative response to the challenge that we are facing in our life. For many people who suffer from chronic pain, hope is all that rests between them. And depression, anxiety, and sometimes even despair. Hope comes, and becomes a focus in our life, often when things are not going well, and our circumstances are dire, or even difficult. Hope arises in response to moments in life when we are challenged by fear and sometimes by despair. It can open up other possibilities for our future. It can help us see the big picture. Focusing on what we want for our future, and what we hope is possible. Sometimes hope is what sustains us. To believe in a better future, where healing is possible. It energizes us to make action towards making that future a possibility. For self healing, hope can be a positive internal force that can energize us to solve our problems and take action on our own behalf. Activating ourselves in hope. It's an important component in activating hope in the people we serve as patients, can also be a powerful tool to encourage them towards action and motivation and personal movement to healing and chronic pain. Dr Barbara Frederickson is a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. And she has studied and written extensively about positive emotions including hope. She has developed a theory that she calls the Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions. Such as hope, joy, contentment, or happiness. What she believes is that over time, positive emotions broaden and expand people's awareness, the broaden part of her theory. And that these moments of awareness, accumulate over time, and compound to increase people's resources for wellness and well being. That's the build component. In essence, positive emotions, can encourage creativity. Resilience and relationships with others. And supportive living that enhances wellbeing. Look at the pictures on the Powerpoint behind me. Which of those emotional states do you think is likely to enhance creativity, resilience, and build emotions and behavioral, positive behavioral repertoires? This is in comparative with negative emotions, such as anger or negativity, which can narrow our range of experience and possibilities and certainly lead to the stress response. Something we're going to talk about more in the next part. Experiments at her positive emotion and psychophysiology laboratory at the University of North Carolina are providing empirical evidence that supports this theory. Positive emotions, like hope, accumulate over time, and can help improve and restore our resilience and our wellbeing. There's also another theory called the Hope Theory that is relevant here. It was developed by the late Dr. Charles Snyder who was also a leader in the field of hope. He developed his theory through observations and interactions with people. He defined hope as the sum of the mental willpower and waypower that you have for your underlying goals. His theory had three components, fundamental concepts, regarding hope. That people who are very hopeful have the ability to envision a broader range of goals. And that hopeful people also have greater will power and energy to pursue those goals. People who are very hopeful can also generate greater varieties of ways in which to reach their goals and purpose, which he called waypower. Let me give you an example of a story of using hope in the treatment and purpose of chronic pain. I'd the opportunity of talking with a patient recently who had been under treatment for chronic pain. He had had four abdominal surgeries, quickly one right after the other, that had left him in significant and severe pain. His tissues had been damaged, his muscles had been damaged, and he was really struggling. At first for his chronic pain team, they focused on medications and relieving pain and helping him just live from day to day. As his treatment went on, they focused on exercises and helping him to enhance and restore his wellness. Getting him active again, helping him move around again. What they really didn't focus on was what his goals were for the future, what he was hoping for the future, what his future possibilities were. As he went on, he became more challenged, more depressed, and more anxious. It took some time for his team to realize that he needed hope in a future and a goal that really helped to motivate him. In order to help him manage his chronic pain. He had wanted to go back to school following his surgery but had been stopped, because of all of the problems that he was having with pain, his inability to manage the pain across the day. Using that goal of going back to school, helping him envision a hopeful future. Was a critical component of his care and his healing process, and it's one of the main components that help him manage his chronic pain across the day. He still lives with chronic pain on a day to day basis, but he's very focused on his school, on his passions in school, and on building his future. And rather than focusing on pain on a daily basis, he focuses on his hopes for building his future. So what do we take away from all this? Hope is essential for restoring our wellbeing. Asking about hope. And clarifying hope is an important part of treatment goals. It's very wrapped up in our establishment of our future hope and our goals. Hope can also be a very big motivating factor for patients. Encouraging a focus on positive emotions, via the Broad and Build Theory, that those emotions accumulate and help restore our well being over time, can also be very helpful in managing chronic pain. And last, I think encouraging a hopeful attitude regarding managing chronic pain that people will have a better future and a brighter future and that pain management is possible, is a critical component of building hope and purpose. Alright, let's go on to the next part. [BLANK_AUDIO]
