Mind-Body Medicine 101
Chronic pain is not a sign that someone’s body is out of balance as we might generally expect. Rather, it is a sign that someone’s life is out of balance.
Hello. I’m so glad you’re here to learn more about mind-body medicine. By deciding to take a mind-body approach to your pain or other chronic symptoms, you’ve taken a very important first step in healing not just your body, but your mind, heart, and emotions as well.
How do I know this? I know some of it from my work and training with Dr. John Sarno, who coined the term Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) and wrote The Mindbody Prescription and other books spreading the word about mind-body approaches, as well as my work with Dr. Howard Schubiner, who wrote Unlearn Your Pain. Even more so though, my experience with people has taught me that only rarely is a chronic physical issue purely physical at its root. Let me say that again: only rarely is a chronic physical issue purely physical at its root.
Now, certainly if you are having a heart attack or broke your arm or have pneumonia, I don’t want you here reading this right now, and I do want you to take care of the issue physically with a procedure or a cast or antibiotics. But if the issue has been around for a while (usually more than 6 weeks), the core of the issue quite often isn’t found in the body but in the mind, the heart, or the spirit. Let me explain.
As human beings, we’re very concrete thinkers. If we feel something is off in our body, we generally think, “Oh, that hurts. I need to fix that.” And we look for a physical cure, such as medication, procedures, or surgery. Yet decades of research has shown that the fix generally doesn’t come from a physical intervention, since chronic physical symptoms quite often have roots not in the body but in the mind, the heart, or the spirit.
You see, chronic pain appears not to be a sign that someone’s body is out of balance as we might generally expect. Rather, it appears to be a sign that someone’s life is out of balance. This slight change in perspective in turn makes an enormous difference in how we approach the treatment. If it was a body that was out of balance, we’d employ a chiropractor or a physical therapist or use a leg lift in our shoe or go to more yoga classes or see an orthopedist to have a procedure done. And, at times, these treatments are all helpful.
But if it’s a life that’s out of balance, we need a different approach. If it’s a life that’s out of balance, we can think about what that means. Frequently, we find that issues such as the following are at the heart of the chronic pain or other symptoms:
Emotions that are present in our system but not recognized and/or expressed by us
An imbalance between our thinking and emotional brains, usually too much thinking and logic and not enough focus on emotions
Too much stress over too long a time
The inability to draw a boundary that needs to be drawn
Too much criticism directed inward, toward ourselves
Too much time and attention directed outward and not enough time spent in reflection and/or self-care
Too much focus on the negative physical sensation we’re experiencing
A difficult relationship that needs tending to
A difficult work situation that needs a resolution
Getting stuck in a pain narrative that doesn’t have a positive outcome
The tendency to think catastrophically about the symptoms
A previous or ongoing physical trauma, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, and/or violence
Previous or ongoing emotional trauma, usually related to a lack of emotional connection and recognition between caregivers and children
And none of those, for better or for worse, can be healed with a physical intervention. It takes attention to the various out-of-balance life areas for our body then to calm down and stop sending the terrible pain signals or other chronic symptoms.
How does this work, you ask? Excellent question. Results from decades of scientific research show that pain pathways in the body and brain overlap quite closely with emotional pathways in the body and the brain. Thus, when we have physical sensations in our bodies due to emotions, stress, or other nonphysical factors and we don’t know what they are, then our brain ultimately interprets them as pain signals. The frustration about the pain then makes the pain pathways more ingrained, which creates more frustration and the situation cycles downward. It’s only when we learn the concept that the pain comes from nonphysical factors that we can focus the treatment at the right level.
Fortunately, we’ve learned over time the type of tools that combat physical pain and other chronic symptoms. As you know, it’s not medication that cures the symptoms or even herbs or vitamins. And for lots of people, balancing the body physically is not an effective approach either. Instead, tools that we’ve found are useful include:
Meditation
Journal writing
Self-compassion
Self-talk and self-coaching
Guided Imagery
Learning to recognize and express your emotions
Learning how to be healthy and well
Learning to recognize that you’re getting better
Hearing stories about people who have healed and talking to those people as well
Learning to draw appropriate boundaries
Learning to control catastrophic thinking
Believing that you can get well
Understanding why you’re not well
Knowing what you need to get back to doing physically
Knowing what you need to get back to doing metaphysically
Being clear on what healing will allow you to do
Working with health professionals of all kinds who understand these concepts
Learning about trauma—what it is, how common it is, and how to heal from traumatic experiences
Teaching others what you’ve learned about healing
Connecting with your creativity
(Re-) Learning to play
Understanding how healing allows you to be part of something larger than yourself
And then surprisingly—or not—that’s how pain gets cured. Not with medication, but with the “soft” skills that we’re increasingly recognizing are vitally important to living a healthy and productive life in an ever more hectic and chaotic world.
Even better, working on healing pain in this way comes with none of the side effects of medications or procedures. Since the pain and symptoms are a sign that something is out of balance in life, the treatment is to sort out what’s out of balance and then figure out what tools you can use to put that part of your life back in balance. Just that alone is worthwhile, but the common side effect of doing so is the reduction of the pain and symptoms that we’re all looking for.
If you’re ready to learn more about the steps you can take toward healing your pain or other chronic symptoms, click here to request an appointment with me or to get more information from my staff about my practice, my methods, and my classes.