Chronic Pain
The treatment approach offered here, Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), addresses a broad scope of problems. You can understand why using the following example:
If you wear glasses, you know that everything you look at is affected by them. Sharp and clear or fuzzy and muddled; rose-colored or almost too dark to see — your glasses affect everything.
PRT works by cleaning your lens, and by replacing it, if it’s the wrong prescription. It targets your perceptual habits and responses — the automatic way that experience your body. If you are able to change your perceptual “lens” from a feeling of fear and upset to one of safety, everything you see through that lens will change.
You can retrain your response. You can, because that’s how the brain works.
Because of this, people suffering from a very wide variety of disorders have found either some relief, or complete healing, from using this method or others like it that rely on the “neuroplastic”, or changeable nature of the brain.
You can retrain your response. You can, because that’s how the neuroplastic brain works.
Following are some of the areas in which chronic pain specialist and former spine surgeon Dr. David Hanscom suggests patients might find success, using his similar method:
Musculoskeletal
- Fatigue or chronic fatigue syndrome
- Fibromyalgia
- Muscle tenderness
- Tension headaches
- Facial pain
- Temporomandibular joint syndrome (TMJ)
- Neck pain
- Shoulder pain
- Chest pain
- Abdominal pains
- Back pain
- Pelvic pain
- Chronic tendonitis
- Repetitive stress injury
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
Neurological
- Tinnitus
- Insomnia or trouble sleeping
- Migraine headaches
- Unexplained rashes
- Numbness, tingling sensations
- Dizziness
- Reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD)
Internal Organ Systems
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Irritable bladder syndrome (Interstitial cystitis/Spastic bladder)
- Palpitations
- Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS)
- Hyperventilation
- Heartburn/acid reflux
Mental Symptoms
- Anxiety and/or panic attacks
- Depression
- Obsessive-compulsive thought patterns
- Eating disorders/Body image issues
- PTSD
I do not suggest here that PRT, or any other therapy, is a panacea that will heal all chronic pain or stress-related illnesses. Rather my suggestion is to consider the possibility for yourself, and dare to hope.
If you have questions, call.
Answer #1. Ask your doctor, first. I require all clients to see a doctor to rule out hidden acute causes or some other pathology that might be causing the pain. However, if you’ve seen a doctor (or many doctors and/or other service providers) and they are unable to provide you a diagnosis that leads to a clear or sufficient treatment, then you might consider that your pain is created by the brain.
An caveat here is that we are still in the middle of a paradigm shift in treatment, and some doctors may tell you that your pain has a physical cause, e.g., “a slipped disk”, when actually, the cause is found in the brain and not the spine. Finding the truth of the matter involves conversation, evidence, and possibly, new learning.
Answer #2. To be honest, this question was a red herring, because all pain is “created by the brain”. Even if it’s structural, it’s still created the brain. Pain is an experience created by the brain to provide you some information.
My goodness, all that screaming and yelling really wasn’t necessary.
If you break your leg, that information should be loud and sharp, so you don’t injure yourself further by running on that leg. But sometimes, some brains get stuck on “loud and sharp”, no matter what the issue is.
Have you ever had someone scream or yell at you to give you some information? Maybe when they did you felt: “My goodness, all that screaming and yelling really wasn’t necessary”.
It’s the same here. Sometimes brains develop the habit of being easily frightened and screaming about things that require, at best, a whisper.
Pain Reprocessing is about teaching the brain how to increase its vocal range, so that it can whisper about things that are not actually threatening, and only scream when it is necessary.
Your pain is real, but let’s take a closer look at what that means. One thing is for sure: Pain can feel ultra real, isn’t it so? If you have a bad headache, its as if your head is made of iron and it’s ringing like a bell in a tower.
But have you ever had the experience of feeling something was totally real or true, and then finding out that it actually wasn’t? It can be a pretty disorienting experience, but very interesting too.
Have you ever that felt something was totally real or true, and then found out that it wasn’t?
Once when I was in college, I had a particularly powerful nightmare. I was a passenger in a plane that had just entered a thick cloud bank, and I was sitting in a seat that, strangely, was located inside the wing.
As I was contemplating how odd this was, suddenly the plane exploded and I was suspended in the open air. 😲
I was so shocked that I shot awake and jerked upright in bed. My eyes were wide open, and I faced a window framed by sheer white curtains. It was a cool summer night and a strong breeze fluttered the curtains before blowing past my face. I saw the curtains as clouds and I could feel the wind as I fell down towards the water. It was an exceptionally vivid, full-body experience.
And then suddenly my eyes blinked and I saw curtains where before there had been clouds. Looking down, the dark sea had been replaced by my blanket and I realized that I was in bed and not at 30,000 feet.
So that was a situation in which I was awake and something appeared totally real and true … that one moment later appeared totally unreal and untrue. It can happen.
A little more sophisticated answer is to say that we cannot really know what is real, but we can very definitely change how we respond to what we are experiencing. When we do that, if we can do that, then our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions change.
Coaching
I presently work as a counselor in the State of New Mexico and Florida, and I let my coaching knowledge inform that work. Some issues are more appropriate for counseling and some for coaching. But there’s also an overlap, because both can focus on a person’s strengths.
In general, coaching lends itself to resolving normal (though sometimes fierce) challenges that get in the way of the attainment of specific goals. It’s about getting unstuck, as well as about developing vision and commitment, and moving forward. If you go to a mental health counselor to help you set business goals, you might find the process going slower than you’d hoped. In general, coaching is for a person whose life is functioning well enough but could be a lot better. At the same time, it’s often the case that hidden psychological challenges are getting in the way of business goals — in which case a counselor might be just the person for the job.
If you are unsure if we would be a good fit, we can talk about your concerns in a free introductory meeting.
Of course, serious, typically longer-term mental health problems — severe depression or bipolar disorder, schizophrenic spectrum disorders, personality disorders, complex developmental post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. — are typically approached with long-term psychotherapy, psychopharmaceuticals, or a mix of both. It would be rare to treat these with coaching, and in most cases, unethical, unless a coach had received very specific training for specific purposes.
In order to ascertain if my expertise meets your needs, I offer a free introductory meeting.