Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Guest Host Series Christina P. Kantzavelos interviews Howard Schubiner

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Guest Host Series Christina P. Kantzavelos interviews Howard Schubiner · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists Podcast. My name is Gamiferson.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
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Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
0:15
Speaker 2: Hello.
0:15
Speaker 3: Everyone, This is Christina Consalvolo's guest host for the Trauma
0:19
Speaker 3: Therapist Podcast, and I am so excited. I'm one of
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Speaker 3: the biggest fans of doctor Schubner's work, doctor Howard Schubner,
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Speaker 3: and he is here with us today.
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Speaker 2: Hello, thank you so much for being here.
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Speaker 4: So kind, Christina, thank you so much. You probably saying
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Speaker 4: that to all the guests, but that ad never.
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Speaker 2: I am. I mean to be fair.
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Speaker 3: I am very excited for everyone I bring on, but
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Speaker 3: I wouldn't I wouldn't get to say that I'm their biggest,
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Speaker 3: their biggest fan. I've been following your work for quite
0:49
Speaker 3: a long time, even in my own my own journey
0:52
Speaker 3: with with chronic pain and chronic illness, and it's been
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Speaker 3: extraordinarily helpful and supportive and now gets to be for
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Speaker 3: the lovely folks patients clients I work with today.
1:06
Speaker 4: Oh awesome, good good, Well let's talk.
1:09
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, So for you know, something you mainly focus
1:15
Speaker 3: on is chronic pain, right, And I think for the
1:19
Speaker 3: majority of people, when they are feeling physical pain, they're
1:24
Speaker 3: more likely or apt to go see a doctor, a surgeon,
1:29
Speaker 3: a physical therapist, an osteopath, so on and so forth.
1:33
Speaker 3: So their first idea isn't necessarily hmm, what could this
1:37
Speaker 3: have to do with emotionally psychologically? What does my trauma
1:42
Speaker 3: have to do with this?
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Speaker 2: So could you.
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Speaker 3: Share with the audience what pain and mental health have
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Speaker 3: to do with each other?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you can't understand pain unless you understand
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Speaker 4: the brain. And I've said that a million times, and
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Speaker 4: I had no idea. I was a doctor for eighteen years,
2:04
Speaker 4: I was a medical school faculty, I was a full professor.
2:07
Speaker 4: I had no idea that the brain is what creates pain.
2:14
Speaker 4: That statement is revolutionary and it's based on the neuroscience
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Speaker 4: of predictive processing. We don't see with our eyes. Our
2:23
Speaker 4: life comes in our eyes that gets transmitted to electrical
2:27
Speaker 4: impulses that go to the visual cortex. The visual cortex
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Speaker 4: creates what we see. You can see in your sleep
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Speaker 4: when you dream. Obviously, we don't hear with our ears.
2:37
Speaker 4: Sound waves come in, but it gets transformed to electrical impulses,
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Speaker 4: et cetera. And we don't feel with our body. When
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Speaker 4: you touch a hot stove, it's not your finger causing pain.
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Speaker 4: So this is and if you haven't read you know
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Speaker 4: Lisa Feldman Barrett's book, Andy Clark, or a Neil Seth
2:58
Speaker 4: or David Robson or Laurence Egoman. I mean, there's these
3:02
Speaker 4: great writers on the neuroscience of the brain and how
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Speaker 4: our brain creates what we experiencing, what we experiencing, what
3:10
Speaker 4: we experience. And so if the simple fact that you
3:15
Speaker 4: can have an injury and have no pain is mind blowing,
3:19
Speaker 4: and it happens not all the time, but it's been
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Speaker 4: shown to happen many times. You can have an injury
3:24
Speaker 4: and have no pain. That means the brain's in control
3:26
Speaker 4: of pain. You can have pain in the absence of injury.
3:30
Speaker 4: That means the brain can create pain and stress and
3:34
Speaker 4: emotions cause the same parts of the brain to light
3:37
Speaker 4: up as does a physical injury. And this is the
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Speaker 4: salience network or the danger alarm mechanism in the brain colloquially,
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Speaker 4: and so when we have a physical injury, the brain
3:49
Speaker 4: can turn on pain when we have an emotional injury,
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Speaker 4: the brain can turn on pain, and that pain is
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Speaker 4: the same. It's all real, it's not in people's heads.
4:00
Speaker 4: It's not fake, it's not imaginary. It's not their fault.
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Speaker 4: And the main message, as you just pointed out at
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Speaker 4: the top, is we shouldn't assume. We should just investigate.
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Speaker 4: We shouldn't assume when you have pain, you shouldn't assume
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Speaker 4: that there's something wrong with the body. You shouldn't assume
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Speaker 4: that it's neuroplastic or bring generated pain, and without damaging
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Speaker 4: the body, you should investigate and sort it out. That's
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Speaker 4: the whole thing right there. I mean, that's mind blowing.
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Speaker 4: And it's not just pain, right Yeah. We treat anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD,
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Speaker 4: chronic fatigue syndrome, tinatus, dizziness, the whole range of things
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Speaker 4: that can be not always but can be biomedically structurally based,
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Speaker 4: or can be what I would call neuroplastic.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes it's both right, and one exacerbates the.
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Speaker 4: Other, so it can be a hybrid, it can be both.
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Speaker 4: But I got to tell you, I've been doing this
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Speaker 4: for twenty three years now. When I started, I had
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Speaker 4: no idea how much of pain, or the other syndromes
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Speaker 4: might be grain generated, might be purely neuroplastic over the years.
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Speaker 4: Oh my god, Oh my god. But every person deserves
5:25
Speaker 4: a very specific, careful, detailed investigation, medical medical workup to
5:33
Speaker 4: make sure. I mean, if you have anxiety, you know,
5:35
Speaker 4: maybe you have hyperthybridism. You know, if you have depression,
5:38
Speaker 4: maybe you have a low testosterol level. You know. I mean,
5:41
Speaker 4: there's obviously medical conditions that can cause any painful or
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Speaker 4: fatigue or you know, any syndromes. But I got to
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Speaker 4: tell you when it's chronic, and people have had this
5:55
Speaker 4: for months or years or decades, and they've been investigat
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Speaker 4: and most of the people we see have not seen
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Speaker 4: two doctors. They've seen twenty two. They haven't seen two
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Speaker 4: physical therapists, they've seen twelve. They haven't you know, they've
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Speaker 4: seen actupuncturers and massage therapists and reiki practitioners and alternative practitioners.
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Speaker 4: So you know, it's just mind blowing. It's mind blowing
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Speaker 4: how common this is. It's part of being human. It's
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Speaker 4: the human condition. And you know you've had you know,
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Speaker 4: I don't know if we get in to your history,
6:34
Speaker 4: but we can talk about mine. You know, when I
6:39
Speaker 4: was in my thirties and forties, I had neck pain,
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Speaker 4: neck pain, neck paint, and it would come and go,
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Speaker 4: and it would be really debilitated, and then it would
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Speaker 4: be gone, and I couldn't figure it out and my
6:48
Speaker 4: MRI shall bulgey diss and degenerative discs. And the doctors
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Speaker 4: told me I was old, it was my neck was weak,
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Speaker 4: that I would be in pain the rest of my life.
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Speaker 4: And they didn't tell tell me three things. They didn't
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Speaker 4: tell me that the brain can generate pain in the
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Speaker 4: absence of physical injury. They didn't tell me that. They
7:08
Speaker 4: didn't ask me about what was going on in my
7:10
Speaker 4: life at the time that might be triggering an alarm
7:14
Speaker 4: mechanism in the brain. Nobody asked me that. And they
7:17
Speaker 4: didn't tell me that in thirty and forty year olds,
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Speaker 4: fifty to sixty percent of thirty and forty year olds
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Speaker 4: have abnormalities like degenerative discs and bulging discs on the
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Speaker 4: room arih with no pain. They didn't tell me that.
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Speaker 4: That's a deficiency of good and my humble opinion, that's
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Speaker 4: a deficiency of good medical practice that is not happening
7:43
Speaker 4: even though twenty years.
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Speaker 3: Later, one hundred percent, and you know, I'm curious what
7:51
Speaker 3: led you to this path to then heal and work
7:56
Speaker 3: on yourself and then help others do the same. And
7:59
Speaker 3: then I'm happy to share what my path has looked
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Speaker 3: like and how I actually came across you.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I had no idea that that I
8:07
Speaker 4: I you know, that that was in my thirties and forties.
8:11
Speaker 4: And then when I got to be you know, in
8:14
Speaker 4: my late forties, I realized that my job was stressful
8:20
Speaker 4: and I and my blood pressure started to go on,
8:24
Speaker 4: and I knew the neck pain was there, but I
8:27
Speaker 4: didn't link the neck pain to my life or to stress.
8:30
Speaker 4: I didn't. I didn't have that awareness at the time.
8:33
Speaker 4: But I but I saw my blood pressure was I
8:36
Speaker 4: and I said, and I linked that to stress. And
8:39
Speaker 4: so I started. I took a mindfulness meditation course from
8:43
Speaker 4: John Kevitson and Saki Centarelli, and it was mind blowing
8:46
Speaker 4: and a mind opening and amazing and that changed my life.
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Speaker 4: My blood pressure went down, my neck pain went away.
8:54
Speaker 4: I started teaching mindfulness. And as I started teaching mindful
9:00
Speaker 4: this that kind of moved me in a direction of
9:02
Speaker 4: the mind and the body. And then I left my
9:07
Speaker 4: job went to a different hospital, and my boss there said,
9:12
Speaker 4: you should read a book by doctor John Sarno, who
9:15
Speaker 4: I'd never heard of. Was a cult figure to millions,
9:20
Speaker 4: thousands of millions, who would help, you know, thousands or
9:26
Speaker 4: hundred thousands of people, you know, rid themselves of chronic
9:30
Speaker 4: back being and other other ailments. But I never heard him.
9:33
Speaker 4: So I read his book. But I was intrigued, you know,
9:36
Speaker 4: And I called him up and I said, can I
9:38
Speaker 4: come see what you're doing? And he said, sure, how
9:41
Speaker 4: come come on to New York. So I visited him
9:44
Speaker 4: just for a few days. I saw what he did.
9:46
Speaker 4: I came back to my hospital and I said, hey,
9:48
Speaker 4: I want to start a clinic and see if this
9:50
Speaker 4: work is is reproducible. I mean, I was a I
9:54
Speaker 4: was a full professor at the time. I had done
9:56
Speaker 4: research and I ate trials. I had way to literature.
10:01
Speaker 4: I'd been a teacher, a lecturer, you know, for eighteen years.
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Speaker 4: So I took those skills and I started to apply
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Speaker 4: them to this field. And then I started reading voraciously
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Speaker 4: about the brain and predictive processing in neuroscience and the
10:17
Speaker 4: psychology of trauma, and the medical part of these disorders,
10:24
Speaker 4: ir at above, fibromyelja, you know, tension, migraine, headaches, public paint,
10:28
Speaker 4: et cetera. And then over time branching out to see
10:32
Speaker 4: that these people with anxiety and depression and chronic fatigue
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Speaker 4: have the same histories, have the same stories, they respond
10:40
Speaker 4: to these treatments in the same way. And I mean,
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Speaker 4: it's just I can't speak to how profound the difference
10:50
Speaker 4: has been, not only in my medical practice, not only
10:53
Speaker 4: in the people that we see who tell me you
10:57
Speaker 4: saved my life when I didn't do anything. I mean,
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Speaker 4: I just gave them information and I just helped them
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Speaker 4: deal with you know, life and trauma and some of
11:10
Speaker 4: the treatments that we'll talk about. But they're the ones
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Speaker 4: who saved their save their own life.
11:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're you provided the tools.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's just those.
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Speaker 2: Tools did not exist.
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Speaker 3: And I feel I feel similarly, and I'm curious, like
11:28
Speaker 3: with the pain that you you did have, how are
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Speaker 3: you now my.
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Speaker 4: Next? Fine? But that doesn't mean I'm pain free or
11:39
Speaker 4: you know that means. What what is true is that
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Speaker 4: I'm human mind in a body. I have a brain
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Speaker 4: and a body, and you know, as life happens, you know,
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Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we'll talk about it. I guess.
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Speaker 4: You know. I have a new book coming out in
11:55
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks, and I'm really excited about it,
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Speaker 4: and then I'm also scared to death about it. And I've
12:00
Speaker 4: developed some new symptoms in the last month or so,
12:03
Speaker 4: and I think, oh, but the symptoms, you know, I
12:08
Speaker 4: can evaluate them, make sure it's not a medical problem,
12:11
Speaker 4: and I can look at them and say use them
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Speaker 4: as a guy. There's a message. Our brain is trying
12:17
Speaker 4: to protect us. When you walk down the street, your
12:19
Speaker 4: brain is looking at each person, friend or folk. Our
12:22
Speaker 4: brain is always in the survival mode of trying to
12:25
Speaker 4: alert us to danger. And people who've had traumatic experiences
12:29
Speaker 4: in their life are more sensitized to certain types of danger.
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Speaker 4: I've seen people who are sensitized. They open a cold door,
12:40
Speaker 4: you know, the refrigerator section or freezer section of a
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Speaker 4: grocery store, and start getting symptoms which was linked back
12:46
Speaker 4: to something in their childhood that had to do with
12:50
Speaker 4: their mom and cold. You know, I mean, this is
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Speaker 4: how we are. Everyone has their own stories, their own histories,
12:59
Speaker 4: and their brain remembers their life and their emotions and
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Speaker 4: their trauma and it can come out later in life.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, our brains are just trying to protect us.
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Speaker 3: That reptilian brain of ours, right, the limbic system.
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Speaker 2: All it cares about is getting us to safety.
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Speaker 3: It does not care about our happiness, or our well
13:22
Speaker 3: being or our joy. It just wants us to be safe,
13:25
Speaker 3: even at the expense of those things. And I feel
13:28
Speaker 3: it to be the snowball effect, especially for those of
13:31
Speaker 3: us with chronic pain, with various chronic illnesses, with sensitivities,
13:36
Speaker 3: the sensitivities become more and more profound, our brain starts
13:41
Speaker 3: to really track them all over. I mean, I couldn't
13:44
Speaker 3: walk through the grocery store, especially the cleaning section of
13:48
Speaker 3: the grocery store, without having a horrific migraine or needing
13:52
Speaker 3: perhaps to use my inhaler or even my EpiPen. It
13:57
Speaker 3: was just getting worse and worse and worse. It's so
14:02
Speaker 3: it's so interesting. But the thing to remember is we
14:05
Speaker 3: we can heal. We can heal that.
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Speaker 4: One of the first people I saw, one of the
14:11
Speaker 4: first women I saw, was a woman with seventeen years
14:13
Speaker 4: of headache, headache every day. She'd been to three major
14:20
Speaker 4: headache clinics who did all the medications, all the injections.
14:23
Speaker 4: No one could help her. But what could I do? Well?
14:27
Speaker 4: I could talk to her. I can listen. Not only
14:31
Speaker 4: is not only validate that her pain is real, not
14:34
Speaker 4: only validate that she's not crazy, not only validate her suffering,
14:39
Speaker 4: but also validate her life and see her as a
14:41
Speaker 4: person within her context. And her story was amazingly straightforward.
14:48
Speaker 4: Her parents were fine, except that her dad was unpredictable.
14:52
Speaker 4: Sometimes he'd come home and.
14:53
Speaker 5: Be in a rage and begin screaming, grabbing people, shaking
14:57
Speaker 5: people like horrible and scared the heck out of this
14:59
Speaker 5: little girl. Right, but she grew up. She described her
15:04
Speaker 5: childhood as fine if you would ask her. And she
15:09
Speaker 5: got headaches in her thirties. And the day she got
15:12
Speaker 5: headaches was the day she got a new pair of glasses.
15:16
Speaker 5: And that was just a trigger for her brain to
15:18
Speaker 5: give her a warning signal, because when I asked her,
15:21
Speaker 5: what was going on in your life at that time,
15:23
Speaker 5: she said she had a new boss who was unpredictable,
15:27
Speaker 5: just as she was kind and happy and fine most
15:31
Speaker 5: of the time, but he would go into these rages
15:33
Speaker 5: for no reason. He would debase people the little.
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Speaker 4: People yell at people, and that scared her danger signal
15:40
Speaker 4: in her brain and triggered a message, a warning that
15:45
Speaker 4: something was wrong, but it wasn't in English, it was
15:48
Speaker 4: in pain. And then the pain syst Then the neural
15:53
Speaker 4: circuits for pain became entrenched and reinforced, because every time
15:58
Speaker 4: she got the pain, she was recoil and fear it
16:01
Speaker 4: and be angry with it and focus on it, and
16:05
Speaker 4: it started to consume her, and those neuro circuits became
16:09
Speaker 4: more and more reinforced on autopilot, and people developed these
16:13
Speaker 4: conditioned responses that are very profound, like you're talking about
16:17
Speaker 4: we were talking about with coal as a conditioned response.
16:21
Speaker 4: And so when she understood that that was the cause
16:25
Speaker 4: of her pain, and then it wasn't the damage in
16:29
Speaker 4: her brain or head or whatever, and she could look
16:32
Speaker 4: at the sensations differently, appraise them differently, as as basically
16:40
Speaker 4: not dangerous is not as harmless in a sense, I mean,
16:43
Speaker 4: they're incredibly uncomfortable, but the damage we're broken. She could
16:48
Speaker 4: start to rewire the neuro circuits in her brain, and
16:51
Speaker 4: then she could do the emotional work. I think her
16:55
Speaker 4: emotions long held underline emotions of anger and maybe guilt
17:00
Speaker 4: and sadness and lacks passion that people need to do
17:06
Speaker 4: in terms of trauma work. And her you know, in
17:10
Speaker 4: a couple of months she was paying free. It was amazing.
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Speaker 2: Well, I love I love stories like that.
17:18
Speaker 3: It's so important for those who are especially in the
17:21
Speaker 3: thick of it, to hear stories of that kind with success,
17:26
Speaker 3: because right, so often and I think this goes for
17:29
Speaker 3: you to you kind of touched upon this. The folks
17:32
Speaker 3: I see, they've already seen sometimes fifty plus doctors practitioners
17:39
Speaker 3: for their various various symptoms and without relief. Right, they're
17:45
Speaker 3: not asking about the environmental factors. What kind of relationship
17:50
Speaker 3: are you in? Is it healthy?
17:52
Speaker 2: How does you know? Is there respect in the home?
17:55
Speaker 2: Are you?
17:56
Speaker 3: What kind of stress is literally on your shoulders, on
17:59
Speaker 3: your net, on your body, in your body? What kind
18:03
Speaker 3: of work do you do? I mean, the environment is
18:06
Speaker 3: such an important piece because it can also on top
18:11
Speaker 3: of the stress, trigger something from the past and then
18:16
Speaker 3: we see it layer onto itselfs aren't addressing this.
18:22
Speaker 4: People who've been hurt, people who've been criticized, people who've
18:26
Speaker 4: been betrayed, abandoned, etc.
18:28
Speaker 1: Etc.
18:29
Speaker 4: Etc. Whether it's you know, aces or non aces. It's
18:33
Speaker 4: all part of what our brain remembers. You know. They
18:37
Speaker 4: learned to adapt to that. They learned to be perfectionistic.
18:40
Speaker 4: They learned to not rock the boat. They learn to
18:42
Speaker 4: put themselves less sometimes, they learn to not stand up
18:45
Speaker 4: for themselves, not be counted. They learn to never get angry.
18:48
Speaker 4: They learn to, you know, always say yes and never
18:53
Speaker 4: say no. I saw a woman the other day who
18:56
Speaker 4: was at a publc pain and she had endometriosis on
19:03
Speaker 4: her on her mri or belly, and so she was
19:08
Speaker 4: offered surgery, but they didn't tell her that some people,
19:12
Speaker 4: some women would have endometriosis without pain. Not all. Some
19:16
Speaker 4: people need surgery for endometriosis, but it can be there
19:21
Speaker 4: and not cause any pain. So how would you know, right,
19:24
Speaker 4: How would you know? Well, you investigate, you look at
19:27
Speaker 4: what's going on in your life. And so one day
19:30
Speaker 4: she had this big rise, so she was in that
19:34
Speaker 4: middle zone, not knowing. One day she had lunch with
19:38
Speaker 4: a friend and afterwards her pain shot up really high,
19:41
Speaker 4: and she's like, oh my god, did I eat something?
19:43
Speaker 4: You know what happened? And then she thought about it
19:46
Speaker 4: for a second and she said, you know, my friend
19:48
Speaker 4: asked me to do something, and I said yes, because
19:51
Speaker 4: I always say yes and I never say no. But
19:55
Speaker 4: in this particular instance, I had this urge to say no.
19:58
Speaker 4: I really wanted to say no, but I didn't. And
20:03
Speaker 4: for the first time in her life, she picked up
20:05
Speaker 4: the phone and she was trembling, but she called her
20:07
Speaker 4: friend and said, I can't do that. I'm sorry, and
20:10
Speaker 4: she felt a little bit of pride and she felt
20:12
Speaker 4: a little bit of exhilaration and her pain went away.
20:15
Speaker 4: It disappeared on the spot, and that was her click
20:19
Speaker 4: moment to know she didn't need surgery. She needed to
20:23
Speaker 4: change how she related to herself, how she valued herself,
20:28
Speaker 4: how she stands up for herself. Wasn't she wasn't being
20:31
Speaker 4: authentic in her true self with her own husband. Yeah right,
20:38
Speaker 4: But she learned she had a therapist who helped her,
20:42
Speaker 4: and she learned to do that and their relationship got
20:44
Speaker 4: better and she felt better about herself. And that was
20:49
Speaker 4: a catalyst in her for turning the pain off, because
20:54
Speaker 4: the pain was a message from her brain looking up
20:58
Speaker 4: for her, trying to pretend help.
21:00
Speaker 2: Stop abandoning yourself.
21:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mean this work is so poignant. Yeah,
21:08
Speaker 4: you know, it's so poignant. And women have higher rates
21:11
Speaker 4: of pain, anxiety, depression, and fatigue. Women have higher rates,
21:14
Speaker 4: and women have higher rates of trauma, emotional assault, sexual assault,
21:19
Speaker 4: online bullying, caring for adults, carrying elders, caring for children,
21:24
Speaker 4: workplace harassment, and they have all these other things. And
21:27
Speaker 4: it's not to say that, you know, women and men
21:30
Speaker 4: aren't different. It's not to say that hormonal influences might
21:33
Speaker 4: play a role, immune systems might play a role. But
21:36
Speaker 4: we see people get better without changing their hormones, without
21:39
Speaker 4: changing their immune system. And I think if we can
21:44
Speaker 4: really see people as and obviously men get these things too,
21:48
Speaker 4: I get them right, But it's a human condition that
21:53
Speaker 4: we have a brain, and it's human condition. I have
21:56
Speaker 4: stress and trauma in our lives, and it's a human condition.
21:58
Speaker 4: I have reactions to those. And if we really honor
22:02
Speaker 4: people in their whole life and see them not only
22:06
Speaker 4: validating their their pain and their suffering, but validating their
22:09
Speaker 4: life and their histories, you know, it's it's just beautiful,
22:16
Speaker 4: beautiful work to put all that together.
22:19
Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
22:19
Speaker 3: I believe authenticity is the antithesis of disease in the body.
22:24
Speaker 3: When you're able to take that mask off and to
22:26
Speaker 3: truly be yourself, to speak your truth, which is scary.
22:30
Speaker 3: If you grew up in a household where that was
22:31
Speaker 3: not okay, that was not accepted you, you had to people, please,
22:36
Speaker 3: in order to survive, you had to become the perfectionist.
22:39
Speaker 4: You know.
22:40
Speaker 2: This is this is.
22:41
Speaker 3: What allowed to create safety for you and your body
22:45
Speaker 3: in the home. And if we don't track that, it
22:48
Speaker 3: continues on until often sadly, one day, or maybe not
22:52
Speaker 3: so sadly, honestly, the body finally goes no, I can't anymore.
22:56
Speaker 2: Please please stop like it's.
22:58
Speaker 3: Hurting me, it's hurting you, it's hurting me, and we
23:02
Speaker 3: get curious, and you know, I know for myself, it
23:06
Speaker 3: took me getting to this point of unhealthiness, if you will,
23:10
Speaker 3: and such discomfort in the body, in the mind, and
23:13
Speaker 3: the spirit to become healthy again.
23:16
Speaker 2: And I'm very grateful for my.
23:19
Speaker 3: Pain and for the chronic illnesses I've had because of that.
23:26
Speaker 2: There was a lot of alchemy that happened.
23:28
Speaker 3: And when I you know, I struggled with pain from
23:31
Speaker 3: a really young age. I was finally diagnosed with scoliosis,
23:35
Speaker 3: I had migraines, hypothyroid I mean, if I gave you.
23:39
Speaker 2: The list, you'd just go whoa whoa to it.
23:43
Speaker 3: From a very very very young age, you know, extreame ibs,
23:47
Speaker 3: so on and so forth.
23:48
Speaker 2: And I just was I was in pain.
23:52
Speaker 3: I was seeing every chiropractor, every acupuncturist in my area
23:55
Speaker 3: and without true resolve maybe for a moment temper, but
24:01
Speaker 3: not really. And eventually I needed to get shoulder surgery.
24:04
Speaker 3: And I came across Sarno's work and it just blew
24:09
Speaker 3: my mind. I think the one that stuck out to
24:12
Speaker 3: me was with the cadavers that they would see that
24:14
Speaker 3: would have like such, you know, have actually be injured
24:17
Speaker 3: right in their in their backs are their spines. And
24:21
Speaker 3: they made note that this person never complained about like
24:23
Speaker 3: there wasn't there wasn't a complaint about about pain, and
24:28
Speaker 3: yet they had injury to the body. So when I
24:31
Speaker 3: under like truly understood that, it's it was starting in
24:35
Speaker 3: my brain that in and of itself, and this sounds
24:39
Speaker 3: like such an exaggeration, but it's not reduced my pain
24:42
Speaker 3: to about eighty percent when that clicked, that that part clicked. However,
24:48
Speaker 3: Sarno's work didn't quite give me the information.
24:52
Speaker 2: On how to, Okay, what do I do with this?
24:55
Speaker 3: How do I I understand it intellectually get it, but
24:58
Speaker 3: how do I do this work? And it when I
25:00
Speaker 3: came across your book by a physical therapist who had
25:04
Speaker 3: recommended it to me, Oh, if you like Sarma, wait
25:06
Speaker 3: until she's and read Schubner's work. And yeah, I came
25:12
Speaker 3: across Healar Your Pain and I completed the workbook and
25:16
Speaker 3: you know, these were questions that no doctor and no
25:20
Speaker 3: therapist frankly or psychologist I had worked with at that point,
25:25
Speaker 3: had ever asked. You know, these are questions they had
25:27
Speaker 3: not asked me. It was all CBT, which is what
25:32
Speaker 3: it is. It's what we're all most of us are
25:34
Speaker 3: trained in. But CBT does not is not trauma, for
25:38
Speaker 3: it does not get to the root of disease.
25:41
Speaker 2: And to be able to understand what and how.
25:46
Speaker 3: Like how my past had affected me to this to
25:49
Speaker 3: this point and how what I was experiencing was essentially
25:52
Speaker 3: a reflection of what I had experienced throughout my life.
25:55
Speaker 3: I mean, it was again my just mind blowing and
26:00
Speaker 3: it freed me. And now you have your new book
26:05
Speaker 3: coming out and I'm so thrilled. And I mentioned this
26:07
Speaker 3: before we started. I mean, I pretty much have everyone
26:10
Speaker 3: I work with get your work book, especially those with
26:15
Speaker 3: chronic pain. I recommend it to everyone, but especially those
26:17
Speaker 3: with chronic paint because they get to work on it
26:21
Speaker 3: and bring it back to me in sessions and we
26:24
Speaker 3: can explore further and go in deeper. I call it
26:27
Speaker 3: irrigation work. First we do the neural retraining to get
26:31
Speaker 3: them out of fight or flight. That's an important piece,
26:34
Speaker 3: and then we go we start getting in deeper to irrigate.
26:37
Speaker 3: But I'm curious, what, like, tell us about your new book.
26:42
Speaker 3: How is it different from your previous Yeah, your previous work.
26:48
Speaker 4: Well, it's different. It's the same because it has the
26:51
Speaker 4: same name. And this is very confusing, but it's called
26:54
Speaker 4: Unlearning Your Pain. That's because the publishers wanted that. This
26:57
Speaker 4: is the first book that I've written by a major publisher,
27:00
Speaker 4: So it's that's why it's you know, so it's really
27:02
Speaker 4: more for more general, more for the public. It's not
27:05
Speaker 4: a workbook, which actually people seem to appreciate. So I'm
27:09
Speaker 4: going to have the old book is called the unlearnar
27:11
Speaker 4: Pain Workbook now and the new book is called unlearnar Pain.
27:14
Speaker 4: The Science of recovering from chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety, and depression.
27:18
Speaker 4: And so it's much broader as a whole lot of
27:21
Speaker 4: sections on the brain, predictive processing and how the brain works.
27:29
Speaker 4: Placebo no CBO facts. It's really deep into that. There's
27:33
Speaker 4: all these sections on all the medical, the medical parts
27:36
Speaker 4: of it, back pain, anxiety, depression, myths about anxiety and depression,
27:41
Speaker 4: and antidepressants and you know the fact that antidepressants are
27:46
Speaker 4: no more effective than placebo. I mean, that's that's in there.
27:49
Speaker 4: The fact that there's the back pain studies with the
27:52
Speaker 4: MRI that I talked about Elier, that's all in there.
27:55
Speaker 4: You're a boubou, migraine, headaches, OCD, PTSD, chronic fatigue, pots, mecfs,
28:05
Speaker 4: you know, MCAST, mass sele activation syndrome, Ellers Danlos syndrome,
28:10
Speaker 4: all the merging conditions that people are being plagued with,
28:15
Speaker 4: and I just try to break those down. There's over
28:17
Speaker 4: eight hundred medical references and then there's a whole treatment
28:21
Speaker 4: section and so the bottom line is we're just trying
28:23
Speaker 4: to help people. You know, first look at medical the
28:28
Speaker 4: importance of a medical work up, parts of medical assessment,
28:31
Speaker 4: making sure there's no significance, severe biomedical cancer, fracture, infection,
28:37
Speaker 4: et cetera. Then understanding how the brain works, and then
28:43
Speaker 4: there's a section on pain, reprocessing therapy, emotional awareness and
28:47
Speaker 4: expression therapy, and helping people change what they need to
28:51
Speaker 4: do in their life. The three main therapeutic interventions, and
28:55
Speaker 4: we've studied all those and randomized controlled trials, so there's
28:59
Speaker 4: there's very you know, there's not a lot of trauma
29:02
Speaker 4: therapies that have been studied in randomized controlled trials, and
29:07
Speaker 4: there's very few therapies for pain. There's never been a
29:09
Speaker 4: study prior to our work. Is bragging a little bit,
29:13
Speaker 4: but there's never been a study that showed that one
29:15
Speaker 4: psychological intervention for pain was superior to another one. So
29:19
Speaker 4: CBT versus ACT versus mindfulness based therapies all have the
29:26
Speaker 4: same efficacy for pain, and the average reduction in the
29:31
Speaker 4: mean pain reduction on a ten point pain scale compared
29:34
Speaker 4: to treatment as usual as one half of one point,
29:38
Speaker 4: so it's not a large reduction and pain that we're expecting.
29:42
Speaker 4: And so we found with in our PRT trials and
29:45
Speaker 4: in our EAT trials showing that these modalities are superior
29:51
Speaker 4: in terms of pain reduction to CBT. So this is
29:55
Speaker 4: pretty remarkable to have therapies show superiority to another psychological
30:03
Speaker 4: therapy for pain. And so that's what we do. So
30:08
Speaker 4: we have prt EAT and you know, things to do
30:11
Speaker 4: in terms of changing your life that we were just
30:13
Speaker 4: talking about. The part is kind of what you were
30:17
Speaker 4: talking about before. It's what happened when you read doctor
30:20
Speaker 4: Sarno's book, Ye Parity, helping people to read to interrupt
30:27
Speaker 4: the pain fear, pain cycle, symptom, fear symptom cycle, whatever
30:32
Speaker 4: the symptom is, whether it's going to contigue, dizzyness, tenatus, whatever,
30:38
Speaker 4: And so what happens is the brain works in danger
30:41
Speaker 4: or safety modes. If the brain's in danger mode, it
30:44
Speaker 4: keeps getting reinforced. Every time you get the symptom your
30:47
Speaker 4: brain you're doing it with fear and focus on it
30:50
Speaker 4: and worry about it and frustration with it, and that
30:53
Speaker 4: reinforces those those neuro circuits. The brain is saying are
30:57
Speaker 4: you okay, and you're saying no, I'm not okay. The
31:00
Speaker 4: brain saying okay, I get it more symptoms. So it's
31:05
Speaker 4: living in that state of danger in relation to the symptoms.
31:08
Speaker 4: But when you shift the brain to a place of
31:11
Speaker 4: safety and relation to the symptoms. You're now training yourself
31:16
Speaker 4: to experience those symptoms with less fear and focus and
31:21
Speaker 4: frustration and worry. You're training yourself to experience those symptoms
31:26
Speaker 4: with curiosity like mindfulness. You're experiencing them with interest and
31:32
Speaker 4: wonder and less fear and more. You're trying to start
31:38
Speaker 4: to live your life by walking or sitting or looking
31:41
Speaker 4: at computer screens with empowerment and even joy if you can,
31:46
Speaker 4: and a smile to really train the neural circuits toward this.
31:52
Speaker 4: Seeing those is safe because urns that fire together wire together.
31:56
Speaker 4: So you're changing neurono pathways by doing that pain reprocessing work,
32:02
Speaker 4: and it's it's sometimes all that people need. It's sometimes
32:07
Speaker 4: dramatically effective. And people have known that for years when
32:11
Speaker 4: they read doctor Starr's books and they got better just
32:13
Speaker 4: by reading the dang book. Yeah, pain changing the brain
32:19
Speaker 4: and relation to the symptom.
32:22
Speaker 3: Well, I think that information too. I like to say,
32:24
Speaker 3: fear and curiosity cannot coexist. So bringing that curiosity piece
32:29
Speaker 3: with the tools with the information going wait a second,
32:32
Speaker 3: you know, perhaps this isn't just something something physical. Maybe
32:38
Speaker 3: there's there's more to this I've been to you know,
32:40
Speaker 3: so many doctors and they've ruled all of these things out.
32:46
Speaker 3: What else, Perhaps it is something else that's that's cropping up,
32:50
Speaker 3: and that that curiosity allows for freedom, It allows for
32:54
Speaker 3: space and expansion and for and for freedom, allows for that.
32:58
Speaker 2: I call it the sacred pause.
33:00
Speaker 3: That versus right away going to worst case scenario catastrophizing
33:05
Speaker 3: what could this be? Maybe I need to get to
33:07
Speaker 3: the er immediately, you know. That's that's where I used
33:09
Speaker 3: to go so often with my various chronic illnesses because
33:13
Speaker 3: they would be really scary at times. So that piece
33:18
Speaker 3: is really so so so vital, so important. But I
33:21
Speaker 3: think it leads to the next modality right.
33:25
Speaker 4: Exactly, because the PRT doesn't work for everybody.
33:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
33:29
Speaker 4: One number two. It requires you to see the sensations,
33:33
Speaker 4: the symptoms, whether it's anxiety, depression, fatigue, pain, to see
33:37
Speaker 4: them as neuroplastic so that you can be less concerned
33:41
Speaker 4: or worried about them in the sense because you know
33:44
Speaker 4: they're not actually structural. That's important part of PRT. The
33:49
Speaker 4: other therapy is Emotional awareness and expression Therapy eae T.
33:53
Speaker 4: Then Mark Lumley and I developed and Mark Lumley is
33:55
Speaker 4: a brilliant psychologist professor at Wayne State University in Detroit,
34:00
Speaker 4: where I'm from, and together we put this model together
34:06
Speaker 4: for a grant where we had an NIH funded study
34:09
Speaker 4: for fibromielgia and we were planning I'm having an emotional intervention,
34:15
Speaker 4: a trauma intervention based on journaling, therapeutic writing, expressive writing,
34:22
Speaker 4: which Mark had done research in before. But prior to
34:27
Speaker 4: the study getting off the ground, we became aware of
34:30
Speaker 4: intensive short term dynamic psychotherapy as taught by doctor Alan
34:35
Speaker 4: Avis at Dalhousie University in Nova Scote in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
34:40
Speaker 4: and we went to a seminar that he gave and
34:43
Speaker 4: we were blown away by that work, blown away by
34:48
Speaker 4: helping people access emotions, experience them, express them in powerful,
34:54
Speaker 4: safe and healthy ways. Anger, guilt, sadness, and people's recoveries
35:01
Speaker 4: were dramatic and profound. But ISTDP was it was kind
35:07
Speaker 4: of long, It took a lot of training. We didn't
35:11
Speaker 4: know everybody who did that in our area. We didn't
35:14
Speaker 4: have time to train people in it, and so Mark
35:17
Speaker 4: and I developed a kind of an offshoot of it,
35:20
Speaker 4: and we took principles from all sorts of other other therapies.
35:24
Speaker 4: No therapy is you know, brand new under the sun.
35:28
Speaker 4: Ours is different. We give credit to all the people
35:30
Speaker 4: we took from assertiveness training, gestall psychodrama, all sorts of stuff, secret,
35:38
Speaker 4: all sorts of stuff. Mark knows all of it more
35:40
Speaker 4: than I do. But we put it together. We called
35:42
Speaker 4: it EAET Emotional Awareness and Expression therapy and in that
35:45
Speaker 4: fibromle just study, we showed that it was superior to
35:49
Speaker 4: to a very good model of CBT for pain and
35:54
Speaker 4: that has got us off and running, and we've been
35:56
Speaker 4: refining EAT for years since then. This is you know.
36:01
Speaker 4: I mean that paper was published in twenty seventeen, and
36:03
Speaker 4: we've got several other trials showing that with EAT. And
36:07
Speaker 4: the basis of EAT is so three years ago, I
36:16
Speaker 4: had been in my hospital for twenty years and they
36:19
Speaker 4: had a financial crisis and they had a meeting with
36:21
Speaker 4: me one day out of the blue saying, Howard, we
36:24
Speaker 4: love you, we love your work, but we can't afford you.
36:28
Speaker 4: You have one month to clear up. We're not renewing
36:31
Speaker 4: your contract. What doctor gets loses their job after twenty
36:37
Speaker 4: years in this hospital? What doctor? You know? And I
36:42
Speaker 4: was just like getting punched in the stomach with that right,
36:46
Speaker 4: and I started getting back pain and they said, don't
36:55
Speaker 4: take it personally. You know, it's not personal. We love you.
36:57
Speaker 4: It's like, great, well, you're kicking me to the curve.
37:00
Speaker 4: So I started getting back pain. So I started doing
37:02
Speaker 4: pain reprocessing therapy because I knew I had an injured
37:05
Speaker 4: in my back. So I started telling myself, I'm safe,
37:07
Speaker 4: I'm okay. I kept moving my back, I kept telling
37:10
Speaker 4: myself I was fine and trying to experience my back
37:13
Speaker 4: with joy. And that didn't work. And three weeks later,
37:16
Speaker 4: I'm still in bad back pain and I'm in my
37:18
Speaker 4: car and I'm telling people. I've been telling people, Hey,
37:22
Speaker 4: the hospital let me go, isn't that funny? And they say, oh, yeah,
37:24
Speaker 4: everyone loses jobs. It's no big deal. And I wasn't
37:28
Speaker 4: addressing any of the emotional component of it. So I'm
37:32
Speaker 4: in my car and I realized it's not funny. It's
37:35
Speaker 4: not effing funny, and I started swearing. I started accessing
37:40
Speaker 4: my anger, my deep anger. And if you hold anger in,
37:43
Speaker 4: it's toxic to you. It causes symptoms. If you let
37:47
Speaker 4: anger out in the real world and violence, you go
37:49
Speaker 4: to jail. It's not good for people. It's not good
37:52
Speaker 4: for relationships, it's not good on the internet. But expressing
37:58
Speaker 4: anger in a safe and healthy imaginary way is very
38:02
Speaker 4: of therapeutic. So I started screaming in my car alone,
38:07
Speaker 4: and I was screaming, yelling, swearing about the hospital, the doctors,
38:11
Speaker 4: the back pain industry, the insurance companies that don't pay
38:14
Speaker 4: people to talk to people, and how everything is incentivized
38:18
Speaker 4: for surgery and injections. And I was screaming and swearing,
38:21
Speaker 4: and I imagine blowing up the hospital with TNT like
38:24
Speaker 4: in a cartoon. You just let all that anger up
38:29
Speaker 4: and out, and then I could let it go. Do
38:34
Speaker 4: this kind of treatment going back to childhood. We do
38:37
Speaker 4: it like people like they do in ifs and other
38:40
Speaker 4: somatic experiencing other therapies. We do that to help people
38:43
Speaker 4: go back to their childhood and help their child express
38:49
Speaker 4: longstanding and deep anger, to get that up and out
38:53
Speaker 4: instead of keeping it down and in. And then I
38:57
Speaker 4: went to the hurt in the Sadness tea is about it.
39:01
Speaker 4: It's about anger. Is there is a healthy response to
39:04
Speaker 4: protect us. Sadness is there as a healthy response to
39:07
Speaker 4: help people connect, to connect to ourselves, to connect to others,
39:11
Speaker 4: and then I went to the sadness and the hurt
39:13
Speaker 4: of getting kicked aside, and I allowed myself to shed
39:17
Speaker 4: a tear. I allowed myself to feel the sadness, and
39:20
Speaker 4: I turned that sadness into compassion for myself, and I
39:24
Speaker 4: reminded me of other sadnesses that I'd had in my life.
39:28
Speaker 4: And when you turn sadness into compassion for yourself, you
39:32
Speaker 4: really care about yourself. Then I was able to say
39:35
Speaker 4: to the hospital, you know what I forgive you. You
39:37
Speaker 4: guys put up with me for twenty years. I never
39:39
Speaker 4: made any money, and in fact, them letting me go
39:43
Speaker 4: was the best thing that ever happened to me in retrospect,
39:45
Speaker 4: it turned out. But I was able to forgive them.
39:50
Speaker 4: And either you forgive people, or you pity them, or
39:54
Speaker 4: you just set boundaries and walk away, whatever is the
39:56
Speaker 4: appropriate response. But I was able to put kind of
39:59
Speaker 4: a closure to that, and the back pain disappeared on
40:02
Speaker 4: the spot. And so this type of emotion based therapy
40:10
Speaker 4: we've been shown, we've shown in randomized trials, works it's
40:13
Speaker 4: effective for people with trauma. We've treated people with there's
40:18
Speaker 4: one of the stories in my book is a story
40:20
Speaker 4: about a woman who had severe, severe back pain, and
40:25
Speaker 4: when she went back to her childhood, she was she
40:28
Speaker 4: had been sexually assaulted with her back against a ping
40:31
Speaker 4: pong table where the pain was. She had never that together,
40:36
Speaker 4: but in her in her read telling memory reconsolidation of
40:40
Speaker 4: that story, she was able to win this imagination, create
40:44
Speaker 4: new emotional memories by kicking the person off, by beating
40:48
Speaker 4: them up, by by doing whatever she wanted to them,
40:51
Speaker 4: by calling the police and getting them in jail and
40:53
Speaker 4: taking that little girl to safety and peace. He went
41:02
Speaker 4: away doing that exercise, the back being disappeared on the spot.
41:06
Speaker 4: So you know, it's amazing work really connecting uh trauma
41:13
Speaker 4: and effective trauma. And we're not the only trauma therapy,
41:16
Speaker 4: I don't claim that, but connecting effective trauma therapy to
41:20
Speaker 4: chronic pain, to anxiety, depression, to fatigue, all these things
41:28
Speaker 4: that are most most commonly in there all plastic.
41:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's all. It's all.
41:35
Speaker 3: I think that it is all connected, regardless, regardless. And
41:40
Speaker 3: you know, I tell people that inner child does not
41:43
Speaker 3: grow up.
41:44
Speaker 2: It's it's within us.
41:46
Speaker 3: Forever child with we're cadals. That's what I say. I mean,
41:52
Speaker 3: that's the best way I can. I can see it,
41:54
Speaker 3: and you know, our healed self. Often we've become the
41:57
Speaker 3: person our inner child wishes. Is they had right that
42:02
Speaker 3: could save them, that could take them away, that could
42:04
Speaker 3: that could call the police, that could run away with them,
42:07
Speaker 3: whatever it is.
42:08
Speaker 4: I think everyone needs to be their own mom or
42:12
Speaker 4: their own dad. Everyone needs to be their own loving
42:15
Speaker 4: parent to themselves, oftentimes the parent they didn't have or
42:19
Speaker 4: didn't quite have, et cetera. I saw a guy who
42:23
Speaker 4: was who you know, had He came up that he
42:27
Speaker 4: was angry at his mom for something, and so he
42:29
Speaker 4: started as we started this work, he started to get
42:32
Speaker 4: angry toward his mom, and his headache went from a
42:34
Speaker 4: five to a nine. His headache skyrock, Oh my head,
42:38
Speaker 4: my head, and he started pounding on his legs right. So,
42:42
Speaker 4: as he was beginning to touch this anger toward his mom,
42:46
Speaker 4: this tremendous guilt seeped in, and the guilt was causing
42:50
Speaker 4: him to beat up himself. That'sabolic, and his pain to
42:55
Speaker 4: go wild. And so I stopped and I said, you know,
42:59
Speaker 4: you can love somebody. You can love your mom and
43:01
Speaker 4: still have anger toward her. Every parent knows they can
43:04
Speaker 4: love their kids and be angry at them, I mean, right,
43:07
Speaker 4: And all we're doing is helping you to allow that
43:10
Speaker 4: anger to be expressed, not because you want to hate
43:13
Speaker 4: your mom, but because you want to love her. And
43:17
Speaker 4: if you can express that anger in a safe and
43:19
Speaker 4: healthy way and let it go and express it anytime
43:23
Speaker 4: you need to in a safe and healthy way and
43:25
Speaker 4: let it go, and then move toward caring feelings toward
43:29
Speaker 4: yourself and caring feelings towards your mom, your relationship will
43:33
Speaker 4: actually get better and maybe you'll be able to talk
43:37
Speaker 4: with her about things in a civil way and use
43:40
Speaker 4: healthy communication to deal with issues that come up instead
43:46
Speaker 4: of just being angry, you know, just trying to love
43:49
Speaker 4: her and being angry at her at the same time
43:51
Speaker 4: and having headaches. That's not working.
43:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
43:56
Speaker 3: And I think sometimes we have this idea that these
43:59
Speaker 3: two things cannot coexist.
44:01
Speaker 2: I can't be.
44:02
Speaker 3: Mad or angry or sad about towards this person and
44:06
Speaker 3: not love them at the same time. Actually one allows
44:09
Speaker 3: for the other. It's creating space for both. And our
44:13
Speaker 3: parents did the best that they could with the knowledge, information, wisdom,
44:17
Speaker 3: lived experience they had.
44:19
Speaker 2: And perhaps it was not enough for what we needed.
44:22
Speaker 2: Both things can be true.
44:24
Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. I saw a young guy the other day,
44:28
Speaker 4: and you know, his mom got sick when he was
44:32
Speaker 4: young and she was gone from him for quite a while,
44:34
Speaker 4: and he developed anxiety, anxiety, anxiety and OCD and then pain,
44:40
Speaker 4: and then he was bullied in school and then he
44:44
Speaker 4: and we decided he needed to be the tough guy.
44:46
Speaker 4: You know, he need to be the tough guy and
44:47
Speaker 4: do drugs. And so I said, well, you know, now
44:51
Speaker 4: he's in his twenties and like, well, who were your friends?
44:53
Speaker 4: He's all my friends. You know, they're not real friends,
44:55
Speaker 4: so all into cars and money and clothes, and that's
44:58
Speaker 4: not really me. My authentic self is different. And I
45:02
Speaker 4: asked him if he could like just speak to them,
45:04
Speaker 4: like just say, what would you say to them if
45:06
Speaker 4: you wanted to speak your authentic self? And he spoke
45:09
Speaker 4: to them. Isn't another I didn't know what he said
45:11
Speaker 4: because it's another language, but anyway, and I said, how
45:15
Speaker 4: did that feeling? He smiled, He said that felt great
45:17
Speaker 4: to express my authentic self. That felt great, and then
45:22
Speaker 4: he started to sob. He just sobbed and sobbed, all
45:28
Speaker 4: this pent up stuff coming out dating back to when
45:32
Speaker 4: his when his mom was gone from him for a while,
45:35
Speaker 4: when he was trying to be something he couldn't be,
45:38
Speaker 4: when he was trying to man up in this world
45:40
Speaker 4: that doesn't value connection and feeling and authenticity, all of
45:49
Speaker 4: that was just coming up and it was so moving.
45:55
Speaker 2: Good for him. I'm proud.
45:56
Speaker 3: I'm proud of him, and that the immense amount of
45:58
Speaker 3: grief so many of us hold, and the things we
46:00
Speaker 3: do to just avoid feeling it right because it feels scary.
46:05
Speaker 3: I don't want to open up Pandora's box. And what
46:08
Speaker 3: I want to say to those listening, you know, finding
46:10
Speaker 3: a person you feel safe and comfortable with and expressing
46:14
Speaker 3: your true self, your authentic self, and taking the mask off.
46:18
Speaker 3: I mean, can to have someone witness that within you
46:22
Speaker 3: and co create the space, the container for the emotions
46:26
Speaker 3: to be irrigated out that are in some ways holding
46:29
Speaker 3: you down, holding you back, can literally create miracles in
46:32
Speaker 3: your life.
46:34
Speaker 4: When you ask therapists what is the most important thing
46:37
Speaker 4: in the therapeutic arsenal that you do, what creates the
46:41
Speaker 4: most value, most people will say the therapeutic relationship, the alliance,
46:46
Speaker 4: which is true and studies have shown that is a
46:48
Speaker 4: very powerful effect on good outcome and therapy. No matter
46:52
Speaker 4: what type of therapy you're using, the therapeutic alliance is powerful,
46:57
Speaker 4: but in a large amount analysis, the one thing that's
47:02
Speaker 4: more powerful in creating successful outcome in a therapeutic relationship
47:07
Speaker 4: is expression of emotion in the therapeutic setting. Wow, that
47:12
Speaker 4: is amazing. And so, you know when I see folks
47:16
Speaker 4: and i'm you know, I mean, I'm a physician. I'm
47:20
Speaker 4: not trained as a therapist, but I've been doing this
47:22
Speaker 4: work for twenty three years now, and because I didn't
47:25
Speaker 4: have therapists to refer to do this work, I've had
47:28
Speaker 4: to learn a lot of this stuff anyway. And so
47:33
Speaker 4: people see me and they'll start talking and talking to
47:39
Speaker 4: they start to cry or tear up and they say,
47:41
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, and I say, if you don't cry, I'm
47:44
Speaker 4: not doing my job.
47:45
Speaker 2: You know, yes, I completely agree with that. Literally, we're
47:51
Speaker 2: not We're not doing your job.
47:53
Speaker 4: It's so so talking about stuff.
47:57
Speaker 3: This is this is you know, I don't call it
47:58
Speaker 3: a safe space. I called it a career age space
48:00
Speaker 3: because you are accessing some very vulnerable parts of yourself,
48:06
Speaker 3: you know, in front of in front of a person,
48:08
Speaker 3: and you know, thank you to all who are who
48:11
Speaker 3: are doing this work on both both sides of the couch,
48:14
Speaker 3: so to speak. You're changing you're changing lives then yourself
48:18
Speaker 3: and others. And and for those the book comes out
48:23
Speaker 3: the twenty six of which amazing. And for therapists who
48:29
Speaker 3: are you know, probably interested and curious, how do I
48:33
Speaker 3: How do I get into this work?
48:34
Speaker 2: How do I get trained? Where do I start? Where
48:37
Speaker 2: can they go?
48:38
Speaker 4: Well, we have a we have a nonprofit. It's called
48:41
Speaker 4: the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms. The website
48:46
Speaker 4: is Symptomatic not Me. So that's a great place to
48:50
Speaker 4: start because all resources are focused there. My website is
48:56
Speaker 4: Unlearned your Pain dot com. And I've got a section
48:58
Speaker 4: on training. So there's all different, not all, but a
49:01
Speaker 4: lot of the different trainings that are available in pain
49:05
Speaker 4: reprocessing therapy and emotional awareness and expression therapy and and
49:12
Speaker 4: everything kind of mind body that's in our world. And
49:16
Speaker 4: so I think those two places are great places to
49:18
Speaker 4: start to get all the books that people have written,
49:22
Speaker 4: are there, training programs, and it's all that We've been
49:27
Speaker 4: into a conference where people can come. It's the most
49:30
Speaker 4: fun conference you've ever been to. I guarantee it.
49:34
Speaker 2: I know I want. I've been wanting to go. If
49:36
Speaker 2: I miss I've missed it the last few years. One
49:38
Speaker 2: of these years I'll make it. I can't wait. Yeah.
49:42
Speaker 4: Anyway, So thank you so much, you know, Christina, it's
49:46
Speaker 4: really a pleasure talking with you and and kind of,
49:51
Speaker 4: you know, bringing this work that's been at the center
49:54
Speaker 4: of my career for a long time a little bit
49:57
Speaker 4: more into the open. I'm excited about it, this work. Obviously,
50:01
Speaker 4: I'm fearful of it because sometimes people misinterpreted is when
50:08
Speaker 4: you talk about mind body or neuroplasticity, they start to
50:12
Speaker 4: think you're saying it's all in my head. You're not
50:14
Speaker 4: validating me, you're not really seeing me. And I think
50:17
Speaker 4: what we're really doing is seeing the whole seeing yes, you,
50:20
Speaker 4: your symptoms, everything that you have, but also your whole
50:25
Speaker 4: life and who you are in your side insight, as
50:29
Speaker 4: a real person, who what kind of stresses and traumas
50:32
Speaker 4: if you have, and putting that all together into a
50:35
Speaker 4: way of a model and a therapeutic model that not
50:40
Speaker 4: only makes sense but has hope for reversibility.
50:45
Speaker 3: I completely agree, and it's such an integrated approach and
50:49
Speaker 3: I would argue the practitioners on again personal and professional level.
50:54
Speaker 3: Of practitioners who aren't asking you these questions, are not
50:58
Speaker 3: seeing you are not whole, like holy validating you. I
51:02
Speaker 3: would I would argue myself and and if you're listening
51:07
Speaker 3: you you deserve to go to a provider who sees,
51:10
Speaker 3: who sees all parts of yourself and helps you connect
51:14
Speaker 3: the dots past from the past, the present, in the
51:17
Speaker 3: in the future.
51:18
Speaker 2: You deserve to feel better.
51:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, we've run across a lot of therapists
51:22
Speaker 4: who felt they don't want to go into people's trauma.
51:25
Speaker 4: They think it might be to triggering, you know, they
51:27
Speaker 4: don't want to ask, they don't know, And in a sense,
51:31
Speaker 4: they're showing their own fear of dealing with deep and
51:35
Speaker 4: powerful emotions. And if we're afraid of dealing with deep
51:38
Speaker 4: and powerful emotions, that we're going to transmit that fear
51:41
Speaker 4: to our to our clients also being afraid. You know,
51:46
Speaker 4: PTSD is all sensations are generated in the brain. All
51:51
Speaker 4: sensations are generated in the brain. PTSD is generated in
51:55
Speaker 4: the brain, and that means that if it's generated in
51:59
Speaker 4: the brain, it's through neuro circuits. Neuro Circuits can change.
52:03
Speaker 4: Memories are always changing. We can change emotional memories. So
52:08
Speaker 4: there's hope for there's hope for people. And I think
52:10
Speaker 4: that's the message that we really want to leave people with.
52:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
52:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, And as a therapist or any kind of provider,
52:20
Speaker 3: the deeper you explore these things in yourself, the deeper
52:23
Speaker 3: your vessel and window of tolerance becomes to sit and
52:27
Speaker 3: be with other people's complex experiences, to hold the torch,
52:33
Speaker 3: so to speak, connect to them as they as they
52:36
Speaker 3: walk through, you know, because we must feel it to
52:40
Speaker 3: heal it, and the only way out is through.
52:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, and not be afraid of people's anger. People have
52:46
Speaker 4: deep anger. Yes, it's normal, it's a normal part. It's
52:50
Speaker 4: not normal to be anger in the world and create violence.
52:53
Speaker 4: But that doesn't happen with this treatment. What happens is
52:56
Speaker 4: the anger comes up and out in the safe and
52:59
Speaker 4: health the way ye so powerful degree.
53:03
Speaker 2: It's sacred. I call it sacred anger. That's that's how
53:07
Speaker 2: I call it.
53:08
Speaker 3: And we have this idea that the anger is not
53:12
Speaker 3: an ethical emotion because we tie it to violence so often.
53:17
Speaker 2: It doesn't need to be. You can express.
53:19
Speaker 3: It in a way that still allows it to leave
53:22
Speaker 3: the body. But without harming you or anyone else. We
53:26
Speaker 3: just haven't been given the tools or the resources to
53:29
Speaker 3: learn how to do it. So that's why most of
53:31
Speaker 3: us suggest packed it packed it inside. So I thank
53:36
Speaker 3: you so much for offering people the tools and the
53:39
Speaker 3: resources for that. And I mean, if there's anything, is
53:43
Speaker 3: there anything else you'd like to say as a closing
53:46
Speaker 3: statement to our audience, to anyone listening or watching.
53:51
Speaker 4: You know, to me, this work is all about compassion.
53:54
Speaker 4: It's all about compassion. If we don't have caring and
53:58
Speaker 4: kindness and compassion for our clients, if they don't know
54:02
Speaker 4: we love them, why would they listen to us? Why
54:05
Speaker 4: would they listen to us in the sense of understanding
54:08
Speaker 4: what they're if their symptoms are neuroplastic or not, if
54:11
Speaker 4: understand a new way of looking at the brain and
54:14
Speaker 4: predictive processing, if understanding these new emerging treatment tools and
54:21
Speaker 4: modeling that compassion for them is critical and helping them
54:25
Speaker 4: develop compassion for themselves, because people who have been hurt,
54:29
Speaker 4: have been betrayed, abandoned often have a hard time being
54:33
Speaker 4: compassionate for themselves, and sometimes that's the most important thing
54:37
Speaker 4: to begin working on in order so people can empower
54:43
Speaker 4: themselves in their lives, to speak their truth, to empower
54:46
Speaker 4: themselves in their lives, to act on their behalf and
54:49
Speaker 4: say no when they may know and act and have
54:53
Speaker 4: the compassion to take that back to their younger selves
54:58
Speaker 4: so that they can heal that on yourself as well.
55:01
Speaker 4: So to me, compassion is really a cornerstone of this work, I.
55:07
Speaker 3: Would willheartedly agree with that, and thank you so much
55:11
Speaker 3: for your time, for your wisdom, and shout out to
55:15
Speaker 3: Guy McPherson for allowing me to co host wonderful people
55:19
Speaker 3: like you and I hope everyone got something out of this.
55:23
Speaker 2: I know I sure did.
55:25
Speaker 4: Thanks so much, Christine, it's a pleasure.
55:28
Speaker 2: Thank you. Take care of everyone.