There are many reasons for pain, including arthritis, disc disease, nerves being pinched, tumors, muscle over use, muscle under use, poor posture …. The list can go on and on. There are physical therapies, medications and surgery for diseases causing pain. But what if these don’t work – for example about 50% of back surgeries are unsuccessful in managing pain. 95% of the time, we don’t know what exactly is causing the pain, which is why back injections can work initially, but then often stop working later on.
Childhood trauma changes our inflammation. When we have had an event or events that make us feel unsafe, the thymus gland changes our immune system to recognize even ourselves as foreign, or dangerous – this is one reason or multiple sclerosis depending on their genes.
As we age, we assume we will get much worse pain, but in my experience, there are very many patients with severe osteoarthritis on their X-rays, including myself, who don’t have pain.
If you have osteoarthritis, it’s often the inflammation that causes the pain. There are ways to lower inflammation but the work, especially the first month, is very difficult.
Alarm makes inflammation. Alarm can be from threat – like if you have severe pain or anxiety – maybe you are worried about the future. Changing the alarm brain is very hard work.
If your alarm response is a Freeze limbic response, this makes moving difficult – moving to change is much harder than if you have a flight or fight response. To lower freeze response – lower alarm, you have to do something. Making changes is hard when you are frozen which may be why the inflammation stays high.
The brain needs to be rewired to lower inflammation. This brain rewiring takes hundreds of exercises in the beginning in a single day to change the wiring – look at the white pathway on the neuroplasticity brain (blue brain video) and watch this video OFTEN to imagine your brain pathway changing to yellow as you do the 2 step program.
In my practice, my consult patients do very well – they believe I know what I’m doing (which is helpful – believing it makes a huge difference). I wish I knew more. I could then help more people.
One of the biggest barriers in healing is shame and blame of yourself or others. Look out for thoughts of ‘should’ve’ ‘could’ve’ any ‘not good enoughs’ of yourself or others. There is no shame if you are not healing. But the Limbic system doesn’t believe this. Every ‘bad’ thing or ‘negative’ thought feeds the white pathway (see blue brain on the link above). Imagination can help. The white pathway is your Goliath. You are David with a catapult. Seek help spiritually if you can. We need others and something greater than ourselves to heal.
Take care
Judy
Leave a Reply