Picturing oneself over time: a multi‐modal interpretative phenomenological analysis of pain management trajectories

Background Chronic pain (CP) can be a disabling condition with impacts that affect the sense of identity of those who live with it. This article idiographically describes the longitudinal evolution of the sense of self of participants following their referral to a pain management service and participation in a pain management programme (PMP). Methods Participants were interviewed three times: before they attended a PMP, and 1 and 6 months after the PMP. Data included the drawings of themselves that participants created at each interview and the transcripts of the interviews guided by the drawings, analysed longitudinally using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results This paper describes in detail the cases of four participants: two who experienced a positive albeit troubled trajectory following their PMP and two who did not experience any positive change. The results provide a nuanced account of how the impacts of CP on identity can evolve, with different people engaging with different aspects of a PMP and some people not engaging at all, and how pain self‐management strategies enable those that do engage to cope in times of difficulty. Conclusions Participant responses to PMP participation are idiosyncratic and interviews with drawings of self analysed longitudinally can help illustrate processes of change. Significance Not enough is understood about why some people get limited benefits from pain services. This idiographic longitudinal study illustrates how the impact of CP on identity can evolve when people are introduced to pain self‐management, with some embracing change and others resisting it. For clinicians, this study describes four detailed CP individual paths, showing the interaction between contextual and idiosyncratic aspects. This is also the first study to use multiple drawings of self to explore the impacts of illness on identity longitudinally. In a person‐centred approach to treatment, the drawings of self could also be adopted as a tool in clinician‐patient conversations to gain a deeper understanding of the impacts of living with CP.