Making significant changes in our lives can be our Mount Everest to climb. Before motivation for change comes small steps. Action leads to Motivation and Smart Acts lead to Change.
Knowledge is important, but my medical knowledge didn’t help me see how I was living my life. It didn’t help me access the subconscious forces that kept me in an unhealthy place. I had an awakening to dysfunction in my family and myself when I was in medical school. At 22 years of age, I thought I was ready for change, but it took me almost forty years before I realized I was as stuck as mainstream medicine is in its old ways. As I learned to manage my own pain, I learned tools from patients and mentors that helped me and many of my patients become the healthiest versions of themselves.
Stuckness is a freeze response. Our survival brain in a state of survival. The survival modes in our body and brain sabotage our journey to recovery. To get unstuck, we need to find a place of safety. This is especially hard in a hostile world where we face economic hardships. Threat is evident on every news cast. We need therefore to seek our strength and safety within ourselves, which is especially hard when we’re living with chronic pain. Chronic pain threatens our safety.
Making space in your brain and your body for change starts with taking energy away from the alarm center of the brain. The brain uses 30% of our energy and when we’re in a state of alarm, that energy goes to the Limbic System, leaving little energy for thinking and planning. Lowering Alarm in the Limbic System can improve fatigue, brain fog, and chronic pain. Try the Two-Step Program.
Our thoughts arise from our past experiences. They are automatic. Our thoughts are habits. Only when we learn to distance ourselves from the thoughts can we begin to change these automatic thought patterns.
Because the pain message rings from the brain, if we change how stressed the pain makes us, we can change the level of pain. Chronic pain causes stress, and physical and emotional stress causes pain. If we learn to lower stress, the pain message will ring softly, and can even stop. I have seen this happen with patients who were on the list for back surgery. Within two months, they were out hiking, surgery no longer necessary. Of course this program needs to followed alongside of your usual healthcare. Please be aware of Red Flags.
Here is a video explaining how changes in Limbic Alarm can change the brain.
Practice the Two Step Program, using ventral vagal breath and mindfulness exercises and stretch the fascia with exercises. It may take time, but your body will respond.
Good Luck
Judy