The concept of self-efficacy expectation shows high relevance for interdisciplinary multimodal pain therapy (IMST) aimed at activity and self-regulation due to its theoretical embedding and empirical correlations to the experience of pain. Several issues limit this potential: At the level of the construct definition, there are ambiguities and overlaps with other concepts. A pain-specific transfer to IMST has not yet been performed. With the help of existing instruments, only a small part of what an IMST can achieve in terms of increasing pain-specific competence seems to be detectable. In perspective, a clarification of terms by including patients and the conception of a questionnaire based on this is indicated.