Background: Owing to the complexity of the pain experience, it is important to understand how persons with chronic pain manage their condition, in order to provide an indication of how occupational therapists can enable participation in meaningful everyday activities during pain rehabilitation.
Aim: The aim of this study was to explore how persons with chronic pain reason about their use and choice of strategies to manage activities of everyday life.
Materials and methods: A qualitative approach was used to capture experiences of strategies employed to manage activities while living with chronic pain. Eight persons agreed to participate.
Results: An overall theme, 'adjusting to life with chronic pain', encompasses the underlying meaning and the relations between the categories: finding new ways to perform activities, reaching for a reasonable balance of activities and using activities to achieve other purposes.
Conclusion and significance: Persons with chronic pain use various strategies as means to enable performance in activities of everyday life despite living with pain, which supports the conception that occupational therapists should focus on activities and strategies rather than the pain condition during pain rehabilitation.
Keywords: Chronic pain; occupational therapy; qualitative method; rehabilitation.