Feeling and Body Investigators for Pediatric Abdominal Pain

"Investigator's ten session intervention trains children to be Feeling and Body Investigators. Half of the sessions will be done in clinic and half at home via web-camera to facilitate generalization. During the treatment child/caregiver dyads will 1) gather body clues (Learn), 2) investigate (Experience: perform interoceptive mystery missions to explore a body sensation), 3) organize body clues (Contextualize: recall other context that evoke similar sensations), and 4) go on increasingly daring missions (Challenge: decrease avoidance and safety behaviors).~If successful, young children with FAP who complete the FBI early intervention will learn to experience changes in the viscera as fun and fascinating, rather than scary, and will develop new capacities for pain management, adaptive functioning, and emotion regulation."

"1. identify strategies with unique patterns of neural circuit maturation associated with early visceral pain on the gut-brain axis:~2. adapt acceptance-based behavioral strategies used to address psychopathology in older children to younger children;~3. incorporate caregivers as role models and facilitators based on attachment research."