Every participant will maximally receive 15 individual sessions of somatocognitive physiotherapy

Somatocognitive physiotherapy (SCT) is a multimodal physical therapy approach that has been developed in an attempt at alleviating the burden of longstanding pain. The main foci of SCT include: (1) bodily exercises and techniques increasing body awareness, ability to relax and control muscle tension in different situations; (2) education about the vulvodynia and factors influencing pain experience; (3) coping with emotions and thoughts related to bodily experiences; and (4) structured homework assignments promoting application of the learned techniques in daily situation and gradual exposure to activities associated with pain. An important goal of SCT is to facilitate integration of new bodily habits into the patient's daily activities. The most important learning process thus occurs in the space between the treatment sessions. The therapeutic techniques are to be rehearsed in everyday situations.

Number of eligible patients and number of recruited participants per week

The follow-up rate is measured by the percentage of participants who were followed up successfully until the 8 months follow-up

Adherence is defined as the number of participants who fully complete the battery of self-report questionnaires, 14-day diary, biweekly forms about the received treatment and perform Tampon tests.

Participants perform Tampon test 3 times in course of 14 days (day1, 7 and 14) at each of the 3 time points (baseline, post-treatment, 8 months after baseline), 9 scores in total. Numerical rating scale (0-10) will be used to score pain intensity. Intra-individual score variance will be estimated as difference between the min and max score at each time point for every participant. Lower variability is better.

If participant is pulled out of the study because somatocognitive therapy is deemed as a non-appropriate treatment (e.g. participant is instead referred to psychological counselling), such event is recorded as adverse.

All participants are asked in individual qualitative interviews if they experience a Tampon test as a relevant instrument for assessing pain sensitivity experienced during intercourse.

Participants will be asked in qualitative interviews about their experiences with somatocogntitve therapy intervention. Global Rating of Change scale will be used to provide quantitative estimation of participants' satisfaction with the treatment effect directly after treatment and at 8 months follow-up. The scale ranges from 1 to 6. Score of 1 means that treatment helped a lot and the score of 6 means that the treatment made the condition much worse.