moving beyond pain

10/04/2024

Finally, a recovery-oriented approach to chronic pain conditions is coming into the mainstream 🙌

If you’re a therapist who wants to know how to work with chronic pain issues in a more supportive and transformative way, then this training will be a great resource!

NICABM is at the forefront of delivering online psychotherapy continuing education courses.

03/03/2023

Guilty as charged 😆

I’ve found Internal Family Systems such a great therapeutic approach for myself, and for supporting clients to explore what’s happening in their minds and bodies.

Have you heard if it? Experienced it? I’m interested to hear your thoughts!

12/11/2022

“The pain is not the problem, it's the solution. It's the solution the brain has come up with to alert us to a problem.”

I really enjoyed this chat between Dr Rangan Chatterjee and one of my mindbody medicine mentors, Dr Howard Schubiner, on treating chronic pain.

Listen to this episode from Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee on Spotify. Headaches, migraine, back, neck or joint pain, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), fibromyalgia – they’re just some of the common causes of chronic pain, which is estimated to affect between a third to half of a...

05/10/2022

I’d have to agree. These are the big four ‘pain fertilisers’ I’ve encountered - in myself and in the people I serve. Which ones do you relate to?

Constantly being on high alert is a great strategy if you're trying to avoid lions in the Serengeti. But for many of us living in the modern world, excess fear is a burden that makes our lives harder and our pain worse. Where does all this fear come from?

There are many different factors that can put us in a state of high alert. One I'd like to talk about specifically, are habits.

There are a few habits I see again and again in my patients that trigger fear and aggravate neuroplastic pain: worrying, putting pressure on yourself, self-criticism, and people pleasing.

🚨 Worrying, whether it's about your job, your schedule, or your dental hygiene, can increase feelings of danger and put your brain on high alert.

🚨 Putting pressure on yourself, whether it's to get an A on a test, losing five pounds before your wedding, or meditating for 20 minutes a day, can increase feelings of danger and put your brain on high alert.

🚨 Self-criticism, whether it's thinking you're not a great painter, beating yourself up for every little mistake, or feeling like your life is a failure, can increase feelings of danger and put your brain on high alert.

🚨 People pleasing, whether it's saying yes to things you want to say no to, not setting boundaries with loved ones, or putting other's needs above your own, can increase feelings of danger and put your brain on high alert.

Many of these habits form in our younger years as coping mechanisms. Habits are hard to break, but you CAN break them...all thanks to a wonderful thing called neuroplasticty.

07/09/2022

Reminder to self, many of my clients and anyone else who is busy ‘working hard on themselves’!

Your life is not an unending self-improvement project, but a mystery coming into form. https://mattlicataphd.com/

24/08/2022

Have you found ‘your people’ on the road to chronic pain recovery?

The journey with chronic pain and illness can be incredibly lonely. Maybe you have a friend or two who can listen a bit, or a therapist who understands, but even those things are not enough sometimes.

We need to be around people who just get it. Not only does this provide camraderie, but it can also catalyse shifts and changes that just didn’t seem possible on our own.

If you’re looking for a well-supported group setting in which to explore healing your chronic pain and fatigue, I recommend this upcoming course with my dear colleague Rebecca Tolin.

Rebecca is definitely one of ‘my people’ in this space. Rebecca’s trustworthy wisdom and genuine compassion are born of her many years of lived experience with chronic pain and fatigue. She really knows this landscape from a deep place.

https://www.rebeccatolin.com/course

23/06/2022

Reading Dr John Sarno’s books changed my life and pain experience back in the 2000s. and while the science has evolved beyond his early theories, Dr Sarno’s wise insights have continued to change the lives of thousands of chronic pain sufferers. Thank you, Dr Sarno.

This free link will be available for 2 days to celebrate three things; the five year anniversary of the release of the film, Dr Sarno's birth (which happened…

10/05/2022

Happy ‘mindbody anniversary’ to my friend and colleague Phil de la Haye … what an amazing journey you have had, learning from, listening to and moving beyond your symptoms ♥️

It's my two year mindbody anniversary today!🎉
Two years ago I downloaded the Curable app, and soon after I discovered and embraced JournalSpeak, which became an integral part of my recovery.

This work turned the tide on my increasingly debilitating and scary physical symptoms of all over body pain, fatigue, headaches, muscle tension, nerve pain, tingling, muscle weakness (self-diagnosed fibromyalgia). But it wasn’t a quick fix. My progress felt slow, and it was often two steps forward one step back. I also had long periods where things would plateau and I’d struggle to stay positive.
But after about 20 months I finally got to a point where I felt free of chronic pain. That’s not to say that every day is pain free, symptoms still move through me when I’m stressed or unhappy about something. I think I will always be the kind of person who feels things in their body when there is too much for my heart to hold. But that’s okay. Because I understand how it works, and I’m not afraid of it anymore.

Through journalling I came to understand how much emotional stuff I’d repressed, or not fully processed over the years. But journalling also made me take a long, hard look at my life and I had to recognise some hard truths about the path I was on at the time.

This work has taught me to be more aware of my emotions, more willing and able to FEEL them. It’s taught me to trust my own intuition and have better boundaries. It taught me to treat myself kindly, and gave me the incredible gift of self-compassion. It gave me the courage to change my life, end a toxic relationship and start a new career.

Other side benefits are that my mental health is better, my anxiety is way down, and I’m sleeping better than I have done in years.

 I know it’s a bit of a cliché, and if you’re near the start of your journey it might seem incomprehensible now… but this work is about so much more than getting out of pain.

This work will change your life in so many positive ways. But it’s not a quick fix for everyone. So if you’re feeling discouraged a few weeks or months in, and are afraid it’s not going to work for you: try and have faith in the process!

03/04/2022

Shift your body state, shift your mind. It’s not always that easy, but sometimes it is!

This week, I’ve let my usual supportive somatic practices fall by the wayside. I’ve been in a slump.

And fair enough, too. I’ve been in isolation. One family member has Covid, and according to the tests, the rest have some other opportunistic virus. We are calling it ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Covid’.

Even though I’ve been well myself and had lots of free time, I’ve barely left my bedroom. The house has been neglected. I’ve not had any energy or motivation to do anything. My body has been heavy and slow while my brain has been zippy and unfocused.

Folks, this is a trauma response called a freeze state. And it’s completely normal in challenging circumstances. When under threat, the nervous system often decides that constriction = safety. So it immobilises us physically and constricts us with agitated thought patterns.

It’s easy add fuel to the fire with self-critical thoughts when this happens (I’ve indulged in plenty myself this week: ‘you’re being lazy. You’re such a sook.’). A more helpful approach is to recognise my state as an intelligent nervous system response to what feels like a trapped, futile situation.

Exercises like the simple one I’m posting here are far more helpful for lifting us out of such states than critical or motivational self-talk.

Come on. Join me. Drop those shoulders, unclench that jaw, orient to your surroundings and see what shifts for you.

The body is the key to the mind. You first have to calm the body’s response to trauma, shifting it from danger/alert to relaxed/controlled. Only then can you begin to recognize and process the mental and emotional aspects of the trauma.
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25/03/2022

Are you in ‘brace mode’?

People with chronic pain grapple not only with their core symptom but also with the mental and physical tension that comes from being ever-vigilant.

Rather than helping avoid pain, which is the intention, this secondary tension just adds more fear into the nervous system and amps up the pain.

Lowering this vigilance and bracing is one important piece of the recovery puzzle.

We do this through:
👉🏼 accepting that pain doesn’t always equal damage - for neuroplastic conditions, it might hurt, but it’s not doing harm
👉🏼 learning to hang out with pain sensations without fear, little by little
👉🏼 letting ourselves notice neutral and pleasant sensations, too, and giving our brains a break from pain-spotting

If you’re in brace mode right now, see if you can give that final suggestion a try. What part of your body is feeling okay right now? What happens when you let your attention rest there for a while?

There are different situations that can put you in brace mode: maybe the pain isn’t there and you’re waiting for it to come back; or maybe the pain is pretty low and you’re eyeing it, waiting for it to ramp up; or maybe the pain is pretty bad, and you’re just locked onto it, watching it with your full attention, waiting to see what it’s going to do next.

Regardless of the situation, brace mode is always the same – you’re bracing, in a state of
hypervigilance, watching, waiting tensely, to see what the pain is going to do. Check this page next week to see another post on ways to get yourself out of brace mode.

24/02/2022

What is real 'self care'?

I used to think I was okay at self-care. It took me a while to realise I was actually swinging between patterns of 'self-punishment' and 'self-indulgence'. In turn, these came with a side serve of self-judgement and shame.

This kind of internal conflict adds a lot of stress to our minds and bodies – the complete opposite of what good self-care is supposed to do.

I notice many of my clients have similar tendencies. But over time, as they develop more genuine kindness towards themselves, true self-care behaviours emerge. And with these, pain and anxiety levels start to dissipate.

How is your own self-care going?

What does self-care look like for you?