WEPAINT · CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT
An arts-based programme for witnessing what pain has changed and creating what comes next.
WePainT is a psychologically informed, online group wellbeing programme developed for adults living with persistent or recurring pain. It attends to the wider lived experience of pain, including what may be difficult to explain or share and what someone may have explained many times without feeling fully heard.
Across eight sessions, the programme follows a familiar rhythm each week: time to arrive, a brief warm-up, guided creative activity, individual reflection, optional witnessed group sharing and time to close. Together, these elements offer different ways to approach experiences that can be difficult to hold or put into words.
Developed through my postgraduate research, its design draws on biopsychosocial and narrative understandings of persistent pain, self-efficacy theory, and arts-based and relational practice.
WHO IT IS FOR
For adults whose lives have been shaped by persistent pain.
You may experience pain as a primary difficulty or alongside a long-term health condition. The programme is concerned with how pain is lived – its effects on identity, relationships, roles, meaning and everyday choice -not with ranking or proving its severity.
A diagnostic label may matter clinically, but it does not describe the whole person. WePainT begins with your lived experience: what pain has changed, what has been protected, what has been lost and what still matters.
WePainT is not an art class. You may draw, collage, write, use symbols or make abstract marks. Creative work is a way of exploring experience, and artistic skill is neither expected nor assessed.
Participation is intended for adults aged 18 and over. Before joining any future pilot, participants will have an individual conversation about suitability, accessibility and any support needs. WePainT does not provide medical assessment or advice and is not a substitute for care from a healthcare professional.
WHAT PAIN CAN REACH
Pain affects more than the place where it hurts.
Persistent pain can affect the body, emotional life, identity, relationships, everyday participation, meaning and expectations for the future.
Not everyone will recognise themselves in every area. These are not categories to fit into, but parts of experience that may deserve attention and that we can explore as part of the programme.
IDENTITY
Which parts of your identity or valued roles has pain altered, crowded out or left intact?
LOSS AND CHANGE
What adjustments have carried emotional costs that other people may not see?
EVERYDAY LIFE AND PARTICIPATION
How has pain changed work, rest, care, creativity or the ordinary choices of daily life?
THE BODY
How do you relate to a body that may feel unpredictable, demanding or changed?
RELATIONSHIPS
How has pain affected feeling seen, supported, independent or close to others?
MEANING AND THE FUTURE
How has pain affected what feels meaningful, hopeful or possible?
WHY IT IS CALLED WEPAINT
Each letter names the focus of one session.
WePainT is both the programme’s name and its structure. The seven themes build on one another across the first seven sessions.
SESSION 01
W
WITNESSING
Having your experience received.
The programme begins with acknowledgement rather than change. You are invited to make some aspect of living with pain visible, without comparison or pressure to explain everything.
SESSION 02
E
EXPRESSION
Giving form to what may be difficult to say.
Creative activity offers another way to externalise feelings, sensations or experiences that ordinary conversation may not fully hold.
SESSION 03
P
PERSPECTIVE
Looking again from another angle.
You return to what has emerged and explore whether distance, context or a different viewpoint changes what becomes visible.
SESSION 04
A
AGENCY
Recognising where choice still exists.
The focus is not control over pain, but the decisions, responses and actions that remain possible within real limits.
SESSION 05
I
IDENTITY
Making room for more than pain.
You explore qualities, roles and parts of yourself that pain may have altered or crowded out—and those it has not erased.
SESSION 06
N
NAVIGATION
Living with changing capacity.
Attention widens to relationships, practical life and what helps you make room for meaning, connection or enjoyment.
SESSION 07
T
TRNASFORMATION
Bringing the work together.
The preceding sessions are gathered into an account of what has shifted or become clearer. Transformation does not mean cure or a completed recovery story.
A final eighth session, Integration & Continuation, brings the seven themes together, provides deliberate closure and helps participants identify what they want to carry forward.
HELP SHAPE WEPAINT
Lived experience should shape the programme before it launches.
WePainT is not currently open for booking. I am inviting adults with lived experience of persistent or recurring pain to complete a short development survey.
Your feedback will help me assess whether the proposed language, structure, accessibility and format feel meaningful and workable to people living with persistent or recurring pain.
Completing the survey is not an application for the programme and creates no obligation to participate later.