Emotion regulation and metacognitive beliefs regarding pain management in patients with chronic headache

The present study aims at investigating people with chronic headaches as well as use of Emotion Regulation Strategies and metacognitive beliefs to determine the role of each factor in relieving the pain. The population of this study consisted of 100 people, residing in Tehran, who had diagnosed for chronic headaches by a specialist and were selected by convenience sampling method. Then, the subjects were asked to fill in three questionnaires: Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), Metacognitive Belief questionnaires, McGill pain questionnaire. The result showed that all cognitive-emotion regulation factors are significantly related to pain management strategies. Positive factors associated with cognitive-emotion regulation (acceptance, positive re-focus, focus on planning, positive assessment and perspective taking) and negative factors associated with cognitive-emotion regulation (self-blaming, rumination, considering as catastrophic, and blaming other) have respectively significant negative and positive relationship with pain management method. Negative metacognitive factors (uncontrollability and the need to control) are positively associated with pain variable while positive metacognitive factors, self-awareness cognitive variable, were negatively related to pain variable. According to stepwise regression analysis, among cognitive emotion regulation and metacognitive belief variables, rumination has more predictive potential. The obtained results support the view that suggests the effect of cognitive emotion regulation and metacognitive belief components on pain management.