How an Understanding of Our Ability to Adhere to Verbal Rules Can Increase Insight Into (Mal)adaptive Functioning in Chronic Pain

Research on chronic pain has traditionally focused on how direct pain experiences lead to maladaptive thoughts, feelings, and actions that set the stage for, and maintain, pain-related disability. Yet the capacity for language (and more specifically verbal instructions or rules) to put people into indirect contact with pain has never been systematically investigated. In this article, we introduce a novel theoretical perspective on verbal...