Ep 12. Now What? 4 Tips to Begin Healing Chronic Pain & Symptoms Through the Mindbody Connection

In this episode, I take you one step further, using what you already know from the previous episodes on mindbody connection, and giving practical steps and insights to get you started on the healing journey to alleviate chronic pain. 

Drawing from my personal healing journey, I share what I would do differently if I started over, emphasizing the importance of assessing if your symptoms are neuroplastic (and getting comfortable with this mindbody approach), taking control of your healing, actively regulating your nervous system (as an alternative to stress reduction), and truly listening to your body and starting to gain insights and patterns. 

Avoid navigating all the overwhelming information online and find effective and clear paths to mindbody healing on this channel. Whether you're new to this concept or looking for advanced techniques, these tips are designed to help you heal faster and more confidently.

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 00:00 Now what? Using the Mindbody Connection to heal
 00:05 Reflecting on My Chronic Pain Journey 
 01:49 Assessing for Neuroplastic Symptoms
 05:51 Taking Control of Your Healing
 07:57 Healing Your Nervous System
 10:39 Listening to Your Body's Signals
 14:19 Conclusion and Final Recommendations

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RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Assessment for Neuroplastic Symptoms:  
- www.symptomatic.me has a Practitioner Directory (currently with only Physicians & Therapists) to find someone in your area who is well-versed in making this assessment.  They also have a List of common symptoms & a 12 Question Quiz to help you understand if it's Neuroplastic (mindbody)
- www.migraineoasis.com has a List of common symptoms & Assessment Criteria (compiled from multiple sources)

Nervous System Regulation:
- Body Scan Meditation on Migraine Oasis Podcast or YouTube Channel (9 min)
- Google "Nervous System Regulation Techniques" and you will find plenty to choose from!
- look in this space for future Series on this topic

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Thanks for listening - I hope you found this helpful.
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Education and techniques discussed in this Podcast originate from many sources, countless hours of research, training, and self-healing unless otherwise noted.

Music credit: MomotMusic, Kyrylo Momot
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Disclaimer: Information provided by Migraine Oasis & Karen Ash is for general informational & educational purposes only & is not a substitute for medical advice, psychotherapy, or counselling. Utilizing any of the education, strategies, or techniques in the podcast is done at your own risk. Consult with a physician before engaging in any suggested movements. If in immediate danger, call a local emergency number or go to the nearest emergency room.

Transcript

0:51

I've been talking in this series about the mind body connection, but now what do you do with that information? I have a couple of tips that if I was to start all over again with my chronic pain journey, or my journey out of chronic pain, I should say, what would I have done first? How would I have done this differently? Because I went down a thousand rabbit holes on the internet and books and courses, listening to podcasts and information overload. It was partially helpful. I mean, I took bits of every little piece that I took in. But at the same time, it really was confusing. I was starting to make all the connections of, Oh, when this person says it in that way, they actually mean this, how the other person says it. People have different words for it. I've done a podcast on that where there's so many different words for mind, body healing. It can get overwhelming and it can get confusing. And the more effort you put into your healing, it actually is counterproductive. So once you can try to find information with more of a curiosity instead of a sense of urgency, the better. So I'm trying to think back of what I did at the beginning. What caused me bumps in the road or down a path that I had to then circle back. This is why I'm always trying to break things down and to say this is my recommendation, and if it was me again, or what I do with my clients. I try to systematically have a plan and to explain it in a way of if you're here, there's path A path B and what you can do from there. If you're to a point now that you're thinking, yeah, I think my symptoms are probably mind, body and nature. Now what do I do? My first recommendation would be to assess if you have neuroplastic symptoms. How you would do that. One would be finding a doctor who's actually versed in this. So there's a list of practitioners on symptomatic. me, and that has a directory of therapists, of physicians that are mind body informed and they know what neuroplastic symptoms are. They know what this third category of pain is, and they are very likely to be able to diagnose you in the right way. If you don't want to go that route and you already have seen on either my website MigraineOasis. com or on symptomatic. me, again, there's a list of symptoms, And the symptoms that I mentioned in part two of this understanding mind body connection, migraine being one of them, as long as these are not with a tumor related or some structural problem related to a disease or a sinus infection or some other secondary reason why the migraine would be coming. I would say, fairly certainly that they are neuroplastic in nature. You can go ahead and do assessments. You can see other doctors, but there's nobody that's able to tell you why a migraine has come. There's just no consensus on this. So my recommendation, and I am not a doctor, and that's a disclaimer I've got all over my website and here, and I just want to make sure that you are making your own decisions, obviously. But my recommendation would be you're currently being treated, follow that plan and do this on the side. I think your doctor would be thrilled that you're doing some of this work. It's helping in the long run in your overall health and wellness anyway. Highly recommend discussing it with the doctor, but just know that you could be met with some skepticism, because they may not be aware of that term Neuroplastic symptoms they might not be really convinced that this is going to help you. So just know going into that that if you're already skeptical that your physician may not instill too much confidence in this. So keep that In your awareness, and I would say to do what feels right for you if you want to do this alongside your current treatment plan, because like I said, it's nothing invasive. It's nothing that's going to hurt you. It's all things that could potentially just help your overall well being. The other way to have an assessment is to go on to symptomatic. me and they have a 12 question quiz, and then they'll send you information after that. These questions are based on the majority of people that they've seen in practice that have neuroplastic symptoms or have been able to be helped by this treatment. Again on MigraineOasis. com, you can find questions which I've taken from a mix of several different resources. One being symptomatic. me and their 12 question quiz, one being Alan Gordon's The Way Out, his book, and they have a set of criteria as well, as well as some other books and resources I've read. So I've come up with my own and I have that on MigraineOasis. com. So that would be the first thing, just getting a little bit more comfortable that your symptom could be neuroplastic in nature, could be mind body symptom related because the more confident that you are, the better and faster that you'll heal actually. This is a big part of it. If you have a lot of doubt and if you have a lot of skepticism that this is going to be able to help you, and of course you're going to be at first, that's not a problem. I was skeptical for the first, I think, two years, and I was already feeling better, so I'm not sure why it took me so long, but it's quite natural, I think, because it just goes counterintuitive to what we've been taught all these years, that pain is equal to something physically wrong in your body. This is a very different approach. So the skepticism though, as soon as you can wrap your head around it and feel confident that, yeah, I'm going to go with this direction and I'm going to try to find out as much as I can. It just alleviates so many different blocks for you and you're able to heal faster. Recommendation two would be to take back control of your healing. As I mentioned in part one of this understanding mindbody symptoms, the mind and the body have been split apart at some point in our history. You go to a psychiatrist, if there's a mental health challenge, you go to a different specialist for each body part if you have something wrong with the physical body, and many physicians have a piece of the puzzle of your story. You are the only one that knows fully what you're feeling, what your symptoms are, what your full life story is, what your stressors are, what your childhood experience was like, what your personality type is, all these different things that are either adding tension or releasing tension or the things that are impacting your environment and your holistic health. So my recommendation would again be talk to your doctor, tell them that you want to explore this mindbody healing, that you've heard about this neuroplastic type of pain, and you're wondering if this has anything to do with what you're experiencing, and that you're going to be exploring this on the side. Have that open conversation, but know that YOU have the power. YOU are in charge of your own health. Nobody else is going to be monitoring this for you or putting all the pieces together, you have the full picture. So take back control of that and know that you do have the power. You do have everything that you need inside. And yes, we need to rely on doctors sometimes. Yes, we need to have medication. You're not going to know how to fix a broken ankle, or you're not going to know how to do certain things if there's a health crisis. But with a mind, body symptom, like we've been talking about. You do have the power to be able to heal yourself and to find the information that you need. There's tons of it out there. There's other things like coaches like I do that can help you along this journey if you want some support. In general, I would highly recommend that you start to feel this empowerment that you can and should be in the driver's seat of your health and your communication with the doctors. Recommendation number three would be to start actively healing your nervous system. If you have chronic pain and symptoms, typically your nervous system state is in this fight or flight. You are in a chronic stress state. This is typically one of the issues that the brain is on high alert. It's in overdrive. It's overthinking. It's getting messages that things are very broken within you. Things are problem, there's a lot of fear around the symptoms, of course, and the brain is essentially freaked out. It needs to be calmed. The way to do that is to regulate the nervous system. I think a lot of well intentioned physicians talk about stress. I just had this conversation today, actually, with somebody who mentioned that her doctor had said about her migraine, that she should maybe try to meditate or to manage her stress better because he knew she had a stressful job. The exact thing happened to me, my doctor had suggested that I actually leave my position and find another job, which wasn't this easy thing to do. So it sometimes feels dismissive, but this is actually the doctor's attempt of trying to talk to you about mindbody connection and mind body symptoms and the fact that the stress that you have, this mental overwhelm is showing up in your body. Physicians typically just don't have time in the normal appointment time to manage the symptoms, and then try to have these conversations with you. I a hundred percent had the same reaction when my physician was telling me to manage my stress. I had no time for that. Mindfulness. What the hell is that? Like, I just did not respect any of that stuff. If you can't look at the stress right now, or if that seems overwhelming, nervous system regulation is a great way to start because it takes not a lot of time and it's easy to do. When you really start to dig into this and you start looking at it in a way of managing your nervous system first and foremost, because the stress is creating the nervous system to get dysregulated and the dysregulated nervous system is causing a lot of danger signals to be sent to the brain. So focus on that. Yes, it could be meditation. If that's not your thing, there's 1000 other things that you can be doing. I'll have other series on nervous system regulation, but in the meantime, Google that find something that you can do, even deep breaths, there's really simple ways to do this. I have a body scan meditation that's like nine minutes on my YouTube channel and on the podcast. You could try that out too. It's helping you find the tension within your body, but it's also a really calming exercise, and that does a lot of wonders to regulate your nervous system. Anyway, there's a lot of good resources out there for you. And then recommendation four would be really trying to listen to your body and understand what it's trying to communicate with you. In a way of symptoms, In a way of little tinges of pain that come up, just really start to notice the patterns. Because if you've got chronic pain and symptoms, it's screaming at you at this point. It's whispered little things along the way. Mine was years of just little whispers of a stomachache here, a little headache there, a pain here, a frozen shoulder there. I just had all these little things coming up and then it was more migraine and more migraine and more migraine. So, if you're in chronic pain, it's the body's way of just screaming to say, please listen, we need to recalibrate something needs to be looked at here. The better that you can get at trying to understand what is happening around the time the pain comes. What's happened just now? What's coming up in the next few days? Is there something that you're worried about? Is there something that just happened that triggered an emotional response in you that you were irritated or you felt dismissed? All these different emotional themes. A lot of times the themes come up from childhood, the things that really upset you in life now are a lot of times repressed things that just feel similar to how you felt as a child being scolded or, ignored or not given enough attention or enough love or whatever the case may be. So look there and try to start looking at the patterns and understanding yourself a little bit more. I'm not talking about the external triggers for, say, migraine. A lot of times we think, and I did a whole episode on this, I'm not going to go into that on migraine triggers, but it's not the external things I'm talking about of the weather and the food that you ate and all these other things. I'm talking about internally, more so the emotions and the stress and what this is bringing up within your body and starting to look at it that way. And just. Yeah, getting in touch with the mind body connection a bit more. How are you managing the stress. I always say that it's not necessarily about the stress It's about how you manage the stress. A situation can happen and one person gets really dysregulated in their nervous system about it, gets really upset about it, and it causes a symptom to flare up. Another person, the same thing happens and they manage it in a way that they've learned how to maybe process their emotions around it a little bit differently than the other person. They have a resilience around their mindset of thinking this piece is out of my control, so I'm not going to get so upset about it. I'm going to manage the things within my control and they have a very different experience. Just know that it's more about how you manage the stress and the mindset around whether it's a really victim based thinking of this pain is just the worst thing ever. And, I'm going to ruin my entire day again, to switching these comments and these feelings within you to a less intense. I'm uncomfortable. I'm not happy about it, but this is going to pass. I've always been able to get through it, and more of an ease around the symptoms. It's essentially trying to calm this pain fear cycle and trying to Send safety messages to the brain that you are okay, everything's safe, this isn't dangerous, you're going to get through it. This also is listening to your body, seeing how that approach feels differently than the approach that you're taking right now. And just experiment, just kind of see how that goes. These would be the four things that I would start with. Assess if you have neuroplastic symptoms, take back control of your healing, start actively healing your nervous system, and trying to listen to your body and understand what it's trying to communicate with you. Understanding more and more how your symptoms are a cause of the mind speaking to the body and the body speaking to the mind and finding the nuances of what is underneath at the root cause. I hope that helps and I will see you in the next episode.