Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Giving MY Pain Purpose

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Giving MY Pain Purpose · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

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This is your Pain Game podcast where we talk about the game of living in
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and with chronic pain and trauma, getting to the heart of how to heal.
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I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan
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on discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, ballistic practitioners, loved ones,
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and anybody that is interested in having their voice heard in the chronic pain and
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trauma world that we live in. Well, guys, today marks my one
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year anniversary of this podcast. Whoo. Fifty two weeks ago today I launched
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the first episode of the Pain Game podcast. When I concepted this show idea,
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it was about four years ago or so. I started drafting ideas,
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names for the show, branding exercises my approach, but needed to find my
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voice and purpose in a very sad and dark place in my life where I
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was stuck and I'm still stuck with a devastating diagnosis while in excruciating pain right
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so here I am trying like, oh, let's start this new adventure.
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Oh my gosh. And at first when I was concepting, I was basically
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just going to complain about living in chronic pain. Yeah, that sounds like
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a great idea. That does nobody any good, and I would have failed
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epically, at least in my opinion. So when I decided to go about
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my show with it being centered on purpose and from a place of wanting to
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heal myself from not only physical pain, but a life riddled with trauma,
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massive amounts of abuse, sadness, addiction, workoholism, divorce, and and
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my purpose began to kind of show itself. And the purpose has ended up
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being my pain. And it sounds like a sort of fairy tale, like
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your purpose and you're feeling all great, but then it's pain and you're like,
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wait, what, But it's true. That's kind that's kind of my
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jams, kind of my kind of tail, like a sort of fairy tale.
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So fifty two weeks straight here of the Pain Game podcast has made a
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monumental shift and change in the way I see, feel, think, and
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approach my life. And my life has been so crazy, guys. I
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mean, and anybody that knows me, even in the slightest, I mean,
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even if you've been listening to this show knows this to be true.
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My life is nuts. I'm crazy. I'm a little crazy, guys.
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It has been complicated, dark, traumatizing, scary, but it has also
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been unbounded and amazing and fun and fabulous and adventurous and fulfilling. And through
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all of these ups and downs and ebbs and flows that I've been through,
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they led me to this show, right, And during this time, I
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feel like I for sure I cried at least a thousand oceans worth of tea
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years to get where I am, and I might cry three thousand more,
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but you know those tears are filled with purpose now and not despair and not
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sadness. I was so sad, guys, so so sad. So for
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those who might be listening to the show for the first time today, welcome
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and thank you for being here. You can get your soda and your popcorn
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and your snacks on the right. For my group, ev ips, you
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are the reason that I wake up and rock this place. And for the
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casual here and their listeners, keep on listening. There's always a spot for
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you around here, right, and my guests also feel that way. When
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I look back to when I started to think about the Pain Game podcast project,
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I thought my pain level was off the charts. My god, I
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wish my pain level was what it was four years ago that was like nothing,
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What a sissy. I wish I felt as good as I did four
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years ago when it comes to my physical pain. But honestly, you know,
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when I get honest with myself, at that point in my life,
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I didn't really think that much of myself, Like I didn't have self esteem.
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I was in self sabotage mode, you know. And there are a
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lot of things that happened, so not all of this is because of pain
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and crps that attributed to this self sabotage, but that mode lasted for a
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few years. You know. I thought I would just rather die than be
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alive in this kind of pain. And I won't lie that. There aren't
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days now that I think, gosh, you know, Heaven would be fucking
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great right now because Earth is blowing. This is it, This is it,
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This is what I get. Right. But as I reflect on the
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past year and what I've learned about myself and my place in this world,
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I feel like I've piled ten years of learning into one and I owe so
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much of that to this show and my listeners, ends family, and of
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course my number one squeeze and cheerleader, my sweetie. You know, each
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and every day, I wake up only wanting to be here behind the mic,
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making mischief, being depraved with my salty language and my crazy stories and
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antics, and meeting such incredible people. That's what I wake up for.
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That's what gets me out of bed, giving my pain purpose, my pain
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purpose. And by giving my pain purpose, I'm also giving others pain their
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purpose, and that makes my heart full. I mean, I could sit
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around here feeling sorry for myself, you know, I always say the line
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like eating bonbons and watching Netflix all day. I don't even if bonbons exist
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anymore, quite frankly, but we all know what they are, their little
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ice cream covered in chocolate, in their heaven. I could sit here eating
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bonbons, feeling sorry for myself and getting hung up on all of my failures,
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be let down over and over again by Western medicine and pain doctors and
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an and be let down by people that I have chosen to forgive in my
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life within this past year and some change and have let go of because I
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didn't need them anymore in my life, because I am fighting for a cure
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for a disease that has none and leaves me in physical pain twenty four hours
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a day. Those guys that I don't need in my life anymore. Those
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people, those things, those clients, the stuff whatever, all in my
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rear view mirror. Right. So I've shifted my mindset to give this pain
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of mine purpose, my sort of fairy tale of mine, and it's now
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started to not be just a sort of fairy tale. Now it's starting to
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actually be a fairy tale and one that I will tell. And I am
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just getting started, right. Oh gosh. So, in this reflection,
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putting this episode together was really weird and wonky because I'm not a scripted person
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on this show at all. And some of this has been because I've needed
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to get some words out and some stuff out that I needed to be very
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succinct. But over my entire life, I have chosen to be silent about
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one hundred percent of the trauma that has happened in my life. And now
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I'm one hundred percent vocal and one hundred percent vulnerable and one hundred percent honest.
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That and of itself, has led me to a healthier place. I
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have a healthier mindset and a view of the world and my place in it
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that I've never been able to experience, and that's because of this show and
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the people that have been a part of it and then have helped me do
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this. It's amazing. It's a place where I have established boundaries, like
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I finally stick up for my damn self. The people that would be like,
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what, you don't have self esteem, you don't stick up for yourself.
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Oh my gosh, guys, I'm a big fake. I am a
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faker. And I haven't really said that out loud, and I don't necessarily
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care for it all that much. But yeah, I've lied. I've pretended.
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I've tried to fit into every square hole a round peg, which is
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completely counterintuitive, right. I've morphed myself into a person that I never really
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was, based on who I was around, the circumstances I was in,
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and who may or may not be uncomfortable around me, or my demeanor and
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my salty language or whatever. I've been walking around on eggshells for forty five
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years and I'm not doing it anymore. And that is a big win.
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I mean a big win because I've been a fraud to myself. I've lived
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a life with a shit ton of fantastic memories. I've lived a wild and
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crazy existence, but I've also lived a very lonely and sad existence in the
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midst of all of this person that I created that was outside of myself to
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please others. I mean, there's a picture of me at peoplepleaser dot com.
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It's just me. It's my face. I'm just there. And through
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this process, this crazy lady here, I find myself asking why have I
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crucified myself for all of these years to find myself here with scars that are
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fully visible to me both inside and out. Why did I always feel like
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every finger in the room was pointing at me? Why did I always feel
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the need to please everyone but me? That's tough, that's a tough thing
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to swallow. You know, we've uncovered a lot of that why Why did?
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Why? Do? Why? This? Why that? On this show
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over the past year and some change, and we'll continue to uncover it as
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that we continue to give our lives purpose together. And what it comes down
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to is this, I needed to make up my mind to love me as
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much as others did. And that was a really strange awakening for me because
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I'm like, Okay, I love myself. I think I'm kind of cute,
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you know, like I dig myself or whatever. I've never been a
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cocky person. I may have come across that way that I have all of
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this confidence. I haven't at all all a big fraud. I'm calling fraud
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to the stand. Yes, your honor, that's me. You know.
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I needed to make up my mind to love me, and I finally do.
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And those that don't fit into this new version of me, this Lindsay
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four point out, I mean, it's probably should be a one hundred point
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out because let's be real, I've been through like a hundred lives. Right.
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If you don't fit into this new version of Lindsay, you're lost in
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my rearview mirror. Babe. That's it. It's nice knowing you. Sorry,
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love you mean it, Pack your bags and get the hell out of
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here, because I'm not interested in any of that anymore. And over the
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past fifty two weeks, I have had the absolute privilege to interview amazingly strong
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women and men who have fought battles that they almost lost, who have moved
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from blood awe. Oh that's not bad, Lindsay, that's not bad.
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Moving from blada awe. I might need to buy that domain. Because people
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that know me very closely, I am a domain named Junkie. But anyways,
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I cannot name all of these people here today, but there are a
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few that have made an extra special little spot in my heart over the past
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fifty two weeks. I'm going to start with Angie Webber from episode sixteen.
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The episode is called Breaking Generational Cycles. Girl I Love are now weekly Talk
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Shit Tuesday on Zoom. I have learned better ways to break unhealthy cycles in
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households with ear without children, and I've also learned to love you in jeans.
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We are not strengthening their suffering muscle. And if they don't have a
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strengthened suffering muscle when they are a teenager or when they are in their early
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adulthood, if they get rejection from a romantic partner or they get a rejection
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from a job, they're not going to know how to deal with it.
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If your parent isn't around to fix that, they might go into some drastic
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behaviors. They might think that that's the end of it, that they don't
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want to go on anymore. I mean, there's so many things that get
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wrapped into it. So even though we're trained to do it from a loving
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please, we need to let our kids fail and we need to teach them
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the tools they can use in order to recover from that Amnica. Episode seventeen,
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You, divine and messy human you. Not only are you now a
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soul sister, one that will forever be part of the fabric of my being,
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I have also watched you grow and change and continue to be a fucking
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rock star. For you, your kids, you're sweetie, your clients,
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and for me and this show. That idea of people pleasing automatically puts other
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people superior to yourself, and you are never going to reach that highest ever
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because it's impossible. You can never make somebody else happy, you can never
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make somebody else you know like you. And nobody ever got a chance to
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know the real me because I was always showing them the person I thought they
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wanted me to pay. Then we moved to episode twenty three. Lauren Fauville,
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Okay, girl, it's called tap into emotional freedom, your spirit and
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energy. I can only strive to be as beautiful of a spirit as you.
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So thank you for allowing me to be vulnerable with you and for letting
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me be depraved and make you laugh at it. Tapped up a room my
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suite, the definition of emotion is energy in motion. This idea that our
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emotions need to be felt, they want to be felt. I think that's
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an important thing to acknowledge because a lot of the time, when we're talking
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about emotions that are uncomfortable, like fadness, frustration, anchor, we tend
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to push that stuff down and we distract ourselves with something else so that we
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don't have to feel those uncomfortable emotions. Right, And that can work in
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the short term, Right, maybe you throw yourself into your work, or
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you throw yourself onto your couch and your too much or drinking too much,
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whatever it is, to not feel those things. But when we take the
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time to really acknowledge how we're feeling, then that emotion can begin to move
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through us and it doesn't continually feel like we're running from the emotion, but
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we're moving through it and we're moving forward, and we can progress in that
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way. You got to feel it to heal it, baby Adam Slater from
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episode twenty five, The Hypocrisy of Doctors and Devices. This came from the
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Netflix documentary. There was attorney on that documentary called The Bleeding Edge. In
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regards to the medical device industry, I just wanted to thank you man for
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being a champion of women and for fighting for our bodies, our rights,
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and for helping to curb the enthusiasm that is our medical device industry. So
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thanks man for being a part of the show and this journey. It's almost
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like a woman's body is something to be operated on, to be experimented on,
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to be a source of money, because every procedure generates money. And
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I think until the medical profession takes a step back and acknowledges where this is
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done, I don't know if the problem is going to really is fitz Kohler
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from episode twenty six, living life Noisy and at full volume fits my girl.
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Nobody has fought cancer like you have in my world, and words cannot
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describe how much I love I have for you, from the tips of my
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toes to the top of my head. Thank you for coming into my life
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and for getting me to finish lines because this one, how's me doing five
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ks in my wheelchair like a badass and meets me at the finish line and
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she is just freaking amazing. If you haven't listened to that episode, episode
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twenty six, you guys got to jump in on it. I have no
15:35
interest in giving this disease an extra badge of honor on my chest. It's
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already left scars, it's left my head bald, It's left all sorts of
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marks on fitz Kohler. I'm dinged up. That's fine, But I'm not
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wearing the raw breast cancer T shirt. There's like, oh, I'm the
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breast cancer warrior. Can. I know so many women and men love that
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step, and I'm happy it makes them feel stronger. For me, it
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makes me a weeker. It makes me feel victimized, and I just I
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say no. Mary Krafts from episode twenty seven, an unbounded, badass woman
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that you are. You know, who would have thought that we'd wind up
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up over a decade later making music or podcast sound together to help others.
16:18
You know, You've always been an inspiration to me from the moment thought I
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met you, and you will continue to inspire to inspire me each and every
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day. No matter what kind of mountain I climb, no matter where I
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am, the speed of the climb is not the important piece. It's the
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direction of the client. There's no such thing as flatlind. You're either working
16:41
up or you're working down and the speed that is not the important piece,
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it's the direction. Then we bump up to episode thirty two, is Shelley
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Loving your Relationship with Food? Shelley, your daily demonstration of a healthy relationship
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with food makes me eat now. And those have listened to the show know
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that I struggle with disordered eating and this one has made me eat more.
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So that's because of you. Obviously, there's a little element of me that's
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there, but is because of you that I have started to eat. So
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I wanted to thank you, and I also want more tattoos because of you
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as well, so it's kind of like a double hitter. I just want
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people to understand that food is, you know, it's the one relationship that
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we all have to have our entire life, from earth to death. We
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all have to eat. So it's the closest relationship we're ever going to have
17:34
with anybody or anything. So we've gotta love it. We have to take
17:38
care of it and nurture it like a marriage. Right, we can't not
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eat. Then we go to eight episode thirty six with Rachel Kalmar called gut
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Wrenching Pain, where we talk about our gut and our health within that which
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we talk about throughout multiple episodes throughout the first year of this show, how
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important our gut is. It's another little brain. But where do I begin
17:57
with you? Rachel? The universe brought us together to teach each other so
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many things, and you are now one of my closest friends, my business
18:06
partner, and get another crazy dog lady in my life, and I love
18:10
you for that. You can think of your stomach acid as your army.
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It's like your first line of defense against infection. They are your soldiers,
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like your internal soldiers, keeping you protected. And you knock those guys out,
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and you eat something contaminated of any sort, that's where your body can't
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then protect itself. Then we go to doctor Andrew Moore in episode forty eight.
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This isn't an amazing episode. You guys, your body has a message
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for you. Like dude Andrey and I. You and I we share so
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many things, from postconcussive to anxiety to chronic pain. And you show us
18:45
all how to be a rock star in this world, painful journey or not.
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You are a huge inspiration to me on the daily and I kind of
18:52
want to shave my head again every time I see you. Pretty much all
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of the women I see are doing all the right things on paper, or
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they're doing exactly what they've been hold and they're trying harder and harder and harder,
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and often don't need to try harder. Actually about finding where can you
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actually let go? Some like what if you didn't have to try so hard?
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Onto episode forty nine with JK Emezzi. He is nothing but amazing.
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Pornography addicts get rebooted. Not only JK, do you have the sexiest voice
19:29
on the planet for podcasting ever? Your story about pornography addiction was such an
19:34
eye opening conversation about our sexual tendencies, intimacy addiction as a whole, and
19:41
has opened up a space for others to be vulnerable but feel safe with you
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by their side. I could not be women as the concept of intimacy was
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completely missing. I had spent thousands of hours just being a spectator in other
19:57
people's lives, and I tell I tell my clients like, if you don't
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think you have a problem with pornography, just remember that you have watched more
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naked people having sex than every ancestor that came before you. You have seen
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more of them, and that was very difficult because in my mind everything was
20:15
a scene like it just he met the woman and for some reason she thought
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you were hot because you were the plumber of the pizza, gay whatever.
20:23
And last, it was certainly not least Leslie Amazing Logan from episode fifty.
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Yes, her middle name is amazing because I gave it to her. The
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episode is called Perfectionism is painfully overrated. Girl. Just when I thought I
20:37
should color code more and organize other people's refrigerators, you show up in my
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life and on this show, and you have seriously tipped my scale and my
20:47
view on perfectionism so quickly it's mind boggling. And how much of that in
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my life that I've wasted so much time and energy on And it's held me
20:57
back from being the best version of myself. And every time I want to
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turn something like labels facing out, it hurts me to not do it.
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But every time I do it, I think of you. It is a
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darn shame when you are not able to be the most amazing version of yourself
21:15
for others, and you're actually keeping people from having the experience that they could
21:19
have from you and your experience with you. They're experience with you. It
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must be the thing that they need to learn their thing. And so,
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like my goodness, we're actually keeping people from possible opportunities because we're not taking
21:30
care of ourselves first. We're also not loving people fully. When we don't
21:33
take care of ourselves first, we're not loving ourselves. So it's possible of
21:36
others more than you love yourself, and so it just becomes a ripple effect
21:38
of everybody just being exhausted, burnt out, sick and tired and pain and
21:42
we wonder why the world's going to out. I wish I could have gone
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through every single one of my guests and throw shouts out, but I can't.
21:49
You guys will fall asleep and snore right. I do also want to
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think some of my friends that came on the show early on when I started
21:56
to help me kick this party off. Thank you for your vulnerability, your
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honesty, your love of yourself, others and me. I love you all
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more than words could ever say. So that is a wrap of a fricking
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year and a doozy year. It's been thank you to my producer Steve for
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all you have done for me and for our show. You are such an
22:17
amazing guy and loyal and I am grateful for you and all you do for
22:21
the show, for me and for our listeners. Last, but not least,
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of course, I have to throw a shout out to my sweetie.
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Without you, my purpose can only be livet fifty percent. You are my
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other half in all of this. Thank you for loving me through all of
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this journey, then over the past six years, now and forever. And
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I love you, babe. Thank you so much for everything that you do
22:45
every single day for me. We have some amazing episodes coming for you in
22:49
the wings, so get ready to rumball what's coming up. So we've got
22:55
the Emotional Chaos of Cancer, which is an episode that is like, you
22:57
have got to listen to this episode. We have another couple episodes that are
23:03
coming out about disordered eating and they're all a little different, which is interesting
23:07
because not everybody fits into the same bucket right when it comes to disordered eating.
23:11
So you're gonna want to hop in and listen to a couple of those
23:15
coming up. We've got another We've got Fighting the Monster within Addiction. We've
23:21
got Healing Ancient Trauma, which is really interesting topic because we talk about our
23:25
ancestry, and we talk about things that I've happened in our past before we
23:29
were even born. That's part of our DNA things that happened in our ancestry.
23:33
It's really interesting to talk about how you can heal from our ancestry and
23:37
the trauma that it's been brought into our own lives and our bods gamification.
23:44
We also have trafficking and abuse, which is nuts so crazy. Oh my
23:48
gosh, I can't wait for you to hear that we've got the power of
23:51
plants in Iowa, OSCA and so much more so, you are exclusively invited
23:56
to share this VIP pain journey together. Let's get to the heart of how
24:00
to heal with you by my side. Do you know somebody that is living
24:04
in and with chronic pain? If you do, send them our way here
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to the Pain Game Podcast, I would love to connect with them and hear
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their heartfelt stories of strength, wisdom, and awesomeness. Please follow the Pain
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give us a review. It certainly helps us find others that need to be
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listening to our stories and our message that we're putting out into this wonderful world
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that we live in. Visit us at the Pain Game podcast dot com and
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follow us on all the socials. Thanks for listening, my little VIPs.
24:45
Catch you on the other side.