Healing Through Affective Self-Awareness in Fibromyalgia: a Randomized Controlled Trial

Overview

The investigators are studying whether a brief three-session mind-body workshop helps people with fibromyalgia. The investigators hypothesize that this workshop will significantly improve pain and other symptoms, compared to usual care.

The affective self-awareness approach presumes that many chronic pain states, such as fibromyalgia (FM), can be effectively treated by encouraging self-awareness of emotional tension. While anecdotally effective in selected patients, this approach has thus far not been tested in a randomized controlled trial. Our purpose is to determine whether an affective self-awareness approach significantly improves pain, tenderness, and other FM symptoms in a random sample of FM patients; and to determine what psychosocial factors predict a favorable response. Comparisons: changes in ratings of pain, tenderness, and other symptoms between two arms of the study: * three weekly 2-hour small-group meetings supplemented with daily writing and meditative exercises to enhance affective self-awareness * usual care

Conditions

Interventions

Eligibility

Locations (1)

Outcomes