Hi. I’m Sarah Jamieson.
I’ve lived with persistent pain since I was a kid. I became a yoga teacher specializing in therapeutic applications for persistent pain in 2010, and I’ve been working at a physician-led interdisciplinary pain clinic since 2013. Through this work, I witnessed the dire need for more mental health practitioners in the pain care field, so I went back to school to become one.
I will complete a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology through Adler University in December 2024. The research captured on this website was done for my Master’s thesis.
There are many stories I can tell about why I did this research, but for now, I will share two excerpts from the introduction to my thesis that speaks to why I did this research.
Why research recovery?
It is not by chance that I have done this narrative inquiry; I have a great deal of personal and professional experience with chronic pain, and I already hold stories about what personal recovery can look like. This section shares some of these stories as part of the process of developing my capacity to recognize when my own stories and biases are impacting how I have heard the stories of the research participants.
I began working at a physician-led pain clinic in 2013. My personal history with pain led me to the practice of yoga, and the pain relief I found through the practice led me to become a yoga teacher with the hopes of helping others find similar relief. When I started at the clinic, I was leading group medical visit sessions, overseen by a physician, on yoga-related topics (e.g., movement, mindfulness, meditation). In addition to becoming a yoga teacher, I had training in pain management, and I mistakenly thought that the people I was working with would be most interested in what I knew about yoga and pain. What I quickly realized, however, is that many of the people coming through my programs at the clinic were primarily interested in what I had experienced. They were less interested in information and more interested in connection; my experiences with pain supported them in feeling seen and understood in their experiences with pain.
I vividly remember a moment when two women walked up to me after a session and asked, “Are you recovered?” The question stopped me in my tracks. I had no answer. Was I recovered? What does it mean to be recovered? I was working as an educator at this pain clinic because I had undoubtedly found myself in a better place with respect to persistent pain, but my life was structured around managing pain. The foods I did and did not eat, and the activities I did and did not do, were all rooted in finding more ease in my body. I did not think much about how pain management influenced my behaviours because they had become habits, but I was persistently working hard to have less pain. Does that count as recovered?
I have been working with people living with persistent pain for over a decade, and I have seen people make phenomenal and life-changing improvements. Particularly in people who have dealt with more complex widespread pain for years, however, recovery or learning to live well with pain rarely seems to be a simple and straight-forward path from being in pain to being pain-free. Yet the idea of becoming pain-free persists as a cultural recovery narrative among the general population. Rooted in a belief that these narratives can be harmful and limiting, I am interested in bringing to light the more complex and nuanced stories of people who have suffered with persistent pain and found their way to a life with greater ease. I am also interested in understanding the recovery experience through a relational lens that acknowledges the social contexts of recovery. I believe people suffering with persistent pain will be supported by shining a light on stories of healing that feel relatable and accessible—and, with this research project, I am shining that light.