I received this message from a person I have never met or communicated with. She had engaged in learning the tools to heal.

The key to healing mental and physical pain happen from learning two separate sets of skills. The first is separating identity from your necessary survival circuits, developing a “working relationship with them. The second is shifting your brain onto more enjoyable and functional circuits. You cannot experience play and joy will simultaneously fighting pain.

You also cannot heal your body, including your brain. It already knows how to heal, and the healing stories are nothing short of miraculous. But life itself is a miracle. Our conscious brain gets in the way and blocks healing. You only must believe your body can heal, let go, and allow it to occur. Her email is typical of what happens, and the healing is deep and transformative.

Not fixing yourself

One of the most difficult challenges is letting go of trying to fix yourself to rid yourself of the mental and physical pain. Why wouldn’t you? You are trapped in miserable place without an apparent way out. It is bad enough enduring the pain, but when you get angry about it, you have now doubled down, and your brain is really on fire. Dr. John Sarno, a famous physiatrist and author used the term “rage”.¹

Good Studio/AdobeStock

However, trying to solve the pain places your attention on it and reinforces it. But when you try not to think about your pain or distract yourself, the thought suppression inflames your brain even more. Either way, you are trapped. Specifically considering self-esteem, which is an endless set of judgments, trying not to be judgmental is impossible. Positive thinking is another form of suppression. Even reading self-help books is another way of staying focused on the problem. Even with my books, there is a tipping point where I recommend people stop reading them and focus on practicing and implementing the tools they have learned.

“Phantom Brain Pain”

There is the additional problem of thinking that something is being missed, and these thoughts become independent sets of circuits. They really are not responsive to reason, and the ongoing pursuit of reassurance only reinforces them. Along with all RUTs (repetitive unpleasant thoughts), I call this phenomenon, “phantom brain pain.” In my mind, the same issues are in play as phantom limb pain, where the suffering is intense, and you cannot even touch the absent limb to calm yourself. How can this happen. The known “source” of pain is completely gone, and the patient still feels the limb and the pain. So, where does this pain exist?

The key to healing lies in separating from your racing necessary survival circuits, developing a “working relationship with them, and dynamically shifting your brain into more enjoyable and functional circuits – and letting go. You cannot experience play and joy while simultaneously fighting pain.

“I give up”

I vividly recall feeling like I was in the midst of a major battle with unpleasant thoughts. The mental pain was a much bigger problem than my physical symptoms. I was never bothered during surgery with them in that I was so focused on what I was doing. For a long time, I was also fine in clinic while I was connecting with my patients. Towards the end of my ordeal, even being at work did not help, and I was pummelled every two or three minutes with ever-increasing intense, intrusive, and vivid thoughts. Meanwhile, I was trying everything possible to deal with them, including working with a psychiatrist. Nothing helped and in fact, it all seemed make things worse. It was around this period where I came close to committing suicide.

One evening, I had read yet another self-help book and I had a flash of a vision that I was standing in front of a repeating circus mirror. I can still see it. It was about six feet high, and it was in a tent. I was looking at endless images of myself. At that time, I was doing what felt like hand-to-hand combat with my thoughts. I would have a disturbing thought, and then counter it with a “good” thought. I was wearing down quickly. I could see that there was no rational solution to these RUTs. I said to myself, “I can’t do this anymore and I quit.” I felt my identity was stripped down to nothing and felt there was little left of what I thought was me.

I honestly gave up and was not sure what I was going to do next. Instead of feeling despondent, I felt a strange sense of freedom, and it turned out that “giving up” the fight was the right answer. It was after that moment, things began to change for the better. I had much to learn, but at least I had inadvertently created some “space” in my brain to allow healing to begin.

Hope

This is a link to a collection of patients’ success stories that I call, “Stories of Hope.” Essentially everyone who is trapped in the Abyss of chronic pain is in a very dark place. Knowing you are not alone is important.

ipopba.AdobeStock

It is impossible to let go of “fixing” without the tools to accomplish it and also learning how to feel safe. You can’t force it and as per her email, you just have to keep moving forward, and it will happen when you are ready. I also wish for you that it happens sooner than later, but persistence is the key. You will learn to regulate your stress physiology and become much better at nurturing joy and creativity. Your behaviors become automatic, your skills will increase and improve, and you can let go and live your life.

References

1. Sarno, John. Mind Over Back Pain. Warner Books, New York, NY.

The post How healing happens first appeared on Back in Control.

The post How healing happens appeared first on Back in Control.

• Mental and physical pain are processed in similar regions of the brain.
• Our inability to escape from RUT’s relentlessly drives flight or fight physiology, and people may become ill.
• There is a healing sequence to solve them – separation of identity, thought diversion, lowering anger, moving into creativity, and dissolving your ego.
• It is a dynamic process with all of these happening daily. Eventually, as it becomes automatic, and you are free to live your life.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is manifested by extreme anxiety that is driven by Repetitive Unpleasant Thoughts (RUT’s). Most people associate it disruptive compulsive behaviors such as hand washing, climbing up and down stairs, following a rigid daily regime, and the list is endless. However, there is also a form of OCD called, “internal OCD” where a person has an unpleasant thought and “counteracts” it with a pleasant thought. Either form has no endpoint and is considered a diagnosis to be managed and not solved. That is simply not true.

RUT’s are universal

Essentially every human being has some level of RUT’s. At what point do they become severe enough to be considered OCD? Why not discard the diagnosis and consider the process on a spectrum of human consciousness. The classic definition of OCD is when the thoughts/behaviors interfere with your capacity to carry out activities necessary to live a functional life.

What about enjoying your life? With internal OCD, there are no outward manifestations, but your quality of life might range from unremarkable to miserable. There also many “acceptable” behaviors such as working hard, overexercising, “passionate pursuit” of a hobby or vocation. All of these can be just fine, but what is driving them?

As I have talked to patients carefully over the 40 years, I gradually learned that mental pain is a much bigger problem than physical pain. I would ask patients that if could get rid of their physical pain with surgery and they would still have their ongoing anxiety versus resolving their anxiety and living with the pain, the majority of people wanted to get rid of the mental pain.

Related behaviors

There are also come cousins of OCD. Consider them in the context of behaviors to cope with the unpleasant sensations created by anxiety (threat physiology). They include:

• Hair pulling
• Nail biting
• Eating disorders
• Excessive attention to physical appearance
• Hoarder’s syndrome
• Skin picking
• Cutting
• Extreme convictions regarding religion, politics, or any social issue
  • Imposing these “ideals” on others is the next step because control lowers inflammation. The more power the more control.

Any addiction is an attempt to mask anxiety.

Avoiding anxiety (threat physiology) drives most human behavior

Avoiding anxiety is the driving force keeping all living creatures alive. It is the result of stresses and challenges, not the cause. Amongst the many stressors in our lives, the inability to escape from our thoughts is a major one, maybe the worst. Although we cannot control our thoughts, many activities create sense of control. Suppressing RUT’s just makes them-worse.

“Worrying” seems normal to many people. But is not particularly enjoyable. Why do we spend so much time worrying about so many things, many of which we have no control over? One reason is that it provides a feeling of control. Somehow, worrying enough will help solve the problem. What it does is that it keeps your brain and body fired up and you have less energy to effectively deal with challenges.

Or maybe you have an “anxiety disorder.” Everyone has anxiety, so why would we call it a disorder and why would you personalize these intentionally unpleasant sensations that evolved to keep you alive. It is what you have, not who you are.

What about those who don’t have any of these behaviors. Even many well-adjusted people living normal enjoyable lives can experience a level of RUT’s that interfere with their quality of life. Actually, when life is relatively calm, these repetitive thought patterns can significantly increase. Then as one pursues pleasurable activities to distract themselves, it doesn’t work and is actually highly inflammatory. The data shows that a hedonistic lifestyle creates aggressive inflammatory cells called “warrior monocytes.” In addition to attacking viruses and bacteria, they also go after your own tissues. The other factors that stimulate their formation is social isolation and CHRONIC stress.¹ Your body knows how to effectively deal with acute stress, but it needs a break to rest and regenerate.

Degrees of OCD

Obsessive thought patterns are inherent in human cognitive consciousness. There are degrees of intensity, and they vary day-to-day depending on the level of your stressors and the state of your nervous system – calm or hyperactive. Again, even if your life is relatively calm, they can also be problematic.

OCD, the extreme manifestation of this situation is considered a diagnosis to be managed and can’t be solved. However, medicine has not consistently addressed the body’s physiology. When you are in a flight-or-fight state, your brain also becomes inflamed and these thoughts will fly out like clay pigeons at a shooting range, except there are trillions of them. The medical profession has also not acknowledged the seriousness of the effects of less intense RUT’s on people’s sense of well-being and health. They still drive threat physiology. They are often referred to as a “monkey mind” or he/ she is just having a nervous breakdown. These thinking patterns are a problem and our inability to escape them is even more problematic.

Solution principles

There are four aspects of solving RUT’s and each of them will be discussed in detail in future posts. They all happen simultaneously and indefinitely. Eventually, as your brain evolves away from them, you no longer have to “work at dealing with them. They are:

• Diverting, not controlling, them – mindfulness, expressive writing, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
• “Turning down the heat” – when you are trapped by anything, your threat state fires up even more, and you are angry. Anxiety is activated and anger is hyper-activated threat physiology.
• Nurturing creativity and joy. This is where the real healing occurs as you move away from these spinning circuits.
• Dissolution of your ego – we work hard to attain enough self-esteem to feel better about ourselves. However, most of it is based on cognitive distortions that drive RUT’s even more. Without an ego to defend, these racing thoughts will abate – often dramatically.

This set of approaches evolved from my own 15-year ordeal with severe “internal OCD.” Not only do I not experience these vivid, almost visual thoughts, I don’t seem to have the random distracting thoughts I had before I became ill. There is also a vast amount of research looking at the mechanisms of why and how they occur, and now there is lot of neuroscience data supporting these ideas. The challenge is to present them in a manner so you can pursue your own healing journey. No one else can do it for you.

As your brain heals, your body heals. As your body heals, your brain will heal. The reality is that they are just part of one unit – you.

Recap

Our inability to escape our unpleasant thoughts is inflammatory. Since half of your brain has inflammatory receptors, it also fires up. The diagnosis of OCD is considered to be relatively uncommon, except many people suffer from RUT’s that interfere with the quality of their life. Obsessive thought patterns are considered to be unsolvable and just managed. However, medicine is not generally addressing the physiology. There are four aspects of dealing with OCD that will lower the intensity of these thoughts:thought diversion, lowering anger, moving into the creative part of your brain, and allowing your ego to dissolve. They are solvable.

 Questions and considerations

1. What percentage of your waking hours are you occupied with racing thoughts?
2. Do you find yourself avoiding thinking about certain things? Do you notice how often they keep popping up?
3. Are you aware how common they are and how many people are bothered by them?
4. The medical world doesn’t consider OCD a problem that can be solved and the lesser issue of RUT’s is not often addressed. By using all of the approaches presented, they are not only solvable, but you can move into a wonderful life
5. RUT’s are a function of the mechanics of the mind. Talk therapy alone is ineffective and it can be likened to having a conversation with the engine of your car.
6. It is important to understand that these “stories” and thoughts become embedded in our brains as concretely as any physical object. The problem is that since this is your frame of reference, how can you really see the problem? They become normalized.

 References

1. Cole SW, et al. Social regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes. Genome Biology (2007); 8:R189. doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-9-r189

The post Four Aspects of Solving RUT’s first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Four Aspects of Solving RUT’s appeared first on Back in Control.

• Our view of the world and our place in it is programmed in from the moment we are born.
• It becomes reinforced with age. Our relationship with food is a core example.
• Like many aspects of our life, we mentally punish ourselves if we don’t stick to our ideal of a healthy diet.
• Use your relationship to food as a way of looking at how you relate to life. Choose joy!

Our view of the world and of ourselves is programmed by our entire life experience from the time of birth until this present moment. Most of it originates from the messaging that society, parents, relatives, friends, and colleagues feed to us about who we should or not be or doing. We end up being the product of everyone else’s perceptions. “Should thinking”  is a cognitive distortion. We are our programming and not particularly connected to the core of who we are.

Your “life lens”

Neuroscience research on consciousness has also shown that thoughts and concepts become as concretely embedded in our brains as any object such as a car or a house.¹ The summation of all this input becomes our unique “life lens” that is continually being reinforced. If your new data agrees with your views, they are reinforced. If it contradicts your life concepts, you’ll reject it, and it has been shown to strengthen the position even more. The marketing term for this phenomenon is, “reactance.”² You may have noticed that facts rarely change anyone’s mind. The only option is if you choose to be become aware of your life lens and change it. Unfortunately, change creates anxiety, and we resist it.

The mental construct of who we are and our place in the world is projected onto others in the form of judgements, with a good share of them being negative. We call this “self-esteem.”

Rigidity around food (and life)

We all must eat and each of us has our personal relationship with food. We develop belief systems based on our best summation of a lot of information. Then with time and repetition it often becomes an entrenched belief system. Here is where the trouble lies. If you have a certain fixed belief system in any domain of life, your brain spends a lot of energy correlating ongoing input with it. Our need to eat arises from our powerful unconscious brain and the drive is unending and powerful. Your rational brain is weak (a million times so) in comparison, and you’ll quickly experience “cognitive fatigue”³ trying to stick with a rigid diet. Why?

So, you have an “ideal” of what you should be eating every time you are exposed to food. If you act in accordance with your internal standards, you have control, and you are happy. What about when you “fail.” Consistent with many other aspects of our lives, we become self-critical. “I should be eating this way”, or “I shouldn’t have eaten this. You now feel badly. The more rigid and higher your “standards”, the more of your energy you’ll be expending, and you’ll fatigue. The brain consumes 20-25% of all of your body’s fuel.⁴ This ongoing sense of “failing” and mental self-criticism is a significant factor why many of us experience a “yo-yo” diet and it is challenging to maintain weight loss.

Then look at the other areas of your life that you are self-critical and remorseful. Your job, parenting, missed opportunities, skill level, accomplishments, and this list is infinite. We are generally programmed by “not being good enough.”

Food as an opportunity to choose joy

Your relationship to food is a wonderful opportunity to flip this paradigm. There are two parts. The first is to be kind to yourself regardless of your “performance.” Each of us can only do the best we can based on our skill sets and levels of stress. So, anytime you “fail” in meeting your standards of eating, always give yourself a break. Then the key to healing is awareness. It doesn’t matter whether you are being judgmental or trying not to be. Either energy reinforces judgment. Awareness allows you to create some distance between you and this reaction and eventually it will lower in intensity and maybe even almost disappear (it can’t ever completely resolve).

Then as you watch your relationship to food, you can choose to enjoy your meal regardless of what it consists of. It is somewhat perverse that the unhealthiest food is the most satisfying. What will happen, as you train your brain to stop reacting, is that you will have more energy to live your life in a more proactive enjoyable manner and actually eat better.

Eating and cognitive distortions

Consider why the alternative of negative reinforcement around eating beliefs detracts from your capacity to enjoy life. Many of the resultant thoughts around not eating right are cognitive distortions as described in David Burn’s book, Feeling Good.⁵ Since we have to deal with food daily, there is no end to them, and it is one of the ways your body’s physiology remains in a threat state. What are some of the distortions?

• “Should” thinking
• Labeling – “I am failure because I had a donut.
• Catastrophizing – viewing an event as having a major effect when in reality it has little effect on your life. For example, you may have chosen to have a vegan diet, but having an occasional hamburger is not going to affect your overall health.
• All or nothing thinking – seeing things in terms of absolutes.

These are distortions that exist in all aspects of our lives. The opportunity lies using food to highlight them and observe how they play out in other arenas. It is much different observing our judgmental nature than fighting it or trying to fix it. There is also no endpoint or logical conclusion to endless self-criticism. When do you get to truly live the life you want?

So, what is the alternative? Choose joy. Regardless of what you are eating or how much, choose joy. That also means making the choice to remain aware and watch the negative thought patterns march through. Eventually, as your focus continues to remain on nurturing joy, it will also work in nurturing you. Paradoxically, you may simply notice how much better you feel when you eat more healthfully, and it becomes easier to make better choices.

“Love yourself”

Here is one small story in how this can work. I have a close friend who has wanted to lose some weight for a while. He engaged in the usual dieting approaches such as counting calories, trying to eat more healthfully, avoiding junk food, and exercising more frequently. These are great things to do, but when he failed, he would mentally beat himself up. The outcome was the usual yo-yo weight loss with the end result being frustrated in addition to not losing weight. He made the decision to “love himself” regardless of his dietary patterns. He lost 15 pounds in 6 months and maintained it. This is just one story but consider how our general approach to food can detract from our capacity to enjoy life.

I am not saying that a healthy diet isn’t desirable. In fact, a healthy anti-inflammatory diet can dramatically improve your health and sense of well-being. It is a significant factor in decreasing mental and physical pain. What I am saying is that focusing on nurturing yourself as opposed to mentally punishing yourself when you fail to meet your dietary standards (or any other ones) allows you have higher chance of eating better. Additionally feeling content with who you today are is anti-inflammatory.

Recap

Rigidity around food is a powerful metaphor for rigidity in other aspects of your life. Food is an opportunity to learn strategies to lower anxiety in order to not need to me in so much control. The stress generated from “failing to meet your internal standards” not only detracts from your capacity to enjoy life but is inflammatory and damaging to your health.

The essence of healing is minimizing your time in inflammatory threat physiology and increasing your exposure to safety. An anti-inflammatory diet contributes to healing, but ongoing self-criticism is a form of anger, which is highly inflammatory. Why not love yourself first, regardless of your behaviors? Many of them are not ideal, but how does it help you to mentally beat yourself up? You don’t have to like many of them. However, we all are doing the best we can with what we have been given.

Choosing to enjoy the experience of eating creates an energy that carries into other arenas of your life. You get to practice daily (sometimes all day). Enjoying your life also changes your body’s chemistry to safety, you’ll react less, think more clearly, and make better choices about food. Then there is the added benefit of your diet being less inflammatory and you’ll feel even better.

Questions and considerations

1. You might feel that this article is not relevant to you. You may not care about eating a healthy diet. Consider that maybe you don’t care about your health. You are used to feeling badly, don’t see any hope, and have given up. This is “The Abyss.” Being aware that you are in this spot is the first step in healing. Don’t give up, and please start your healing journey.
2. Have you considered that being more focused on your beliefs about diet might detract from enjoying your meal? Having rigid belief systems about life is also tedious and eventually wears you down. There is not much room to nurture joy.
3. Food is a basic defined need and your relationship to it becomes deeply embedded in your unconscious mind with repetition. It is easy to see and becoming aware of its impact will allow you to address other aspects of your life.
4. Remember, a healthy diet is better, but self-criticism is a bigger issue. Why not address both?

References

1. Feldman-Barrett, Lisa. How Emotions are Made. Mariner Books, Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2017.
2. Berger, Jonah. The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind. Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 2020.
3. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, NY, 2011.
4. Xu J, and S Xu. Possible reason for the high metabolic rate in neurons of a brain. Austin Jrn of Women’s Health (2018); 5:1031.
5. Burns, David. Feeling Good. Harper Collins, New York, NY, 1980, 1999.

The post Your Relationship to Food and Life first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Your Relationship to Food and Life appeared first on Back in Control.

• Most of us have become so used to solving problems and just making ends meet that we have lost sight of what we really want out of life.
• It is impossible to move forward without some idea of where you want to go.
• View you and your life as a “business” and what do you want to achieve in your life, regardless of the pain.
• By executing any part of your plan, you are moving away from your pain and into a more enjoyable life.

It is the norm for most of us to run our lives by continually fixing problems. We not only get worn down, but we don’t have the pleasure of achieving our dreams. A friend of mine uses the term “surviving and fixing” to describe this approach to living life. He challenges himself and his audiences to develop a “vision of excellence” regarding their own lives. Create the vision of where you want to be and then break it down into doable steps.

Your business plan

Here is a suggested template that to develop a “business plan” for your life. Visualize yourself as a small business trying to accomplish specific goals. Instead of having a nagging sense of not doing what you really want, clearly define the variables. You could also use a more complex small business template and be more specific.

Self-Inventory Template

Overview of self today:

Core Values

• Self
• Family
• Friends
• Career
• Finances
• What brings me joy?
• Giving back

Character – be honest with yourself on both accounts. None of us are perfect, and I have long said that if all of us have “flaws”, why do any of us have flaws?

• Strengths
• Flaws

Skills

• Highest (expert)
• Strong (Competent and can contribute)
• Moderate  (competent)
• Light (participant)

Dreams

• Minimal or no skill but strong interest

Where do I want to be in five years?

• Overview
• Specific areas
  • Self
  • Family
  • Friends
  • Career
  • Finances
  • Hobbies/ travel/ enjoyable activities
  • Giving back

Action Plan

• Each area
  • Specific steps
  • Time frames

My concept of an action plan has changed over this last year. I historically have put time frames around my projects. To a large degree, it has been helpful and also a step to consider. However, one of my mentors who is an incredibly successful businessman counseled me to write down my projects/ vision, then ask myself if I am thinking big enough? Then he said to take time out of the equation because it only creates more anxiety. It is concept that I am still trying to figure out, as I have been so process oriented.

I would venture to say that in the context of being in chronic pain, that removing time from the process is a good idea. He is right about the anxiety factor. It is inflammatory, drains your energy, and you are less apt to achieve your vision.

What about the pain?

The key to this template is to create it without regards to the status of your pain. What do want to do with your life, with or without the pain?

Then create a focused plan regarding your chronic pain. You clearly have been seeking treatment for a while, sometimes for decades. Now that you understand the specific aspects of pain, break out the ones that are relevant to your life, and create an action plan for each and all of them. The more organized you can become, the more effective you will be in solving it. Without a plan, you will remain a victim of a disorganized health care system. Don’t let that continue to be your reality.

One of the cardinal rules of healing is to minimize your time talking about your pain and medical care. This is still a core concept. However, creating an action plan around your pain and medical care is the opposite energy. Instead of being at the mercy of the circumstances, you are taking control, which also happens to be anti-inflammatory.

Recap

You have heard me present the idea of moving forward with or without your pain many times. It is challenging to implement this because you have been so used to being trapped by the pain and your circumstances. You may be thinking that I don’t really understand the depth of your suffering, and I don’t. I am not you and only know that the extent of my suffering was severe and that there is only one choice. You must move away from your pain circuits and forward into the life you want in order to get there. We clearly know that first trying to “fix “your pain means that your pain is running your life and it is being reinforced. Besides, since mental pain is the bigger issue for most people, there is not an end point. Life keeps coming at all of us. You are learning strategies to process stress more efficiently so you can move on. But you have to move on.

Questions and considerations

1. This step of taking the time and effort to create a plan for your life is a bigger step than you might think. The essence of healing is creating a shift in your brain from your pain circuits onto more enjoyable ones. That doesn’t just happen.
2. Have you ever considered your life in terms of running a business?
3. Even if you are completely incapacitated with pain at this moment, please spend a few minutes a day with this process. Any movement forward will help.
4. Your life has been at the mercy of others for a while. What would it feel like to regain control?

The post Create Your “Personal Business Plan” first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Create Your “Personal Business Plan” appeared first on Back in Control.