3 Steps To Eliminate Physical Pain

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself second, and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome. Today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about physical pain, which you may or may not think of as something due to social anxiety, confidence, other emotional factors. However, there is a extremely intimate and intricate connection between your mind and your body, your emotions, and your physical muscles and other structures in your body. And pain doesn't often just show up as emotional pain, but it's very physical as well. So the barrier between, like, well, my body is a machine and it runs kind of like a car. And then there's my mind and my heart, which are. They're different. Those are just feelings and thoughts, and those two don't have an effect on each other. That's kind of like the default programming in our society and certainly pretty common in allopathic Western medicine, but it's not actually true. And more and more people are waking up to this and there's so many books and references around that. And I've talked about this before in this podcast. I've interviewed people like Steve Ozanich and other authors who have really done tremendous work to spread this information. Talked about authors like John Sarno and Lisa Rankin, who wrote a book called Mind Over Medicine. And both these people are doctors who started to discover, okay, what we're doing is not really working. We need to find a new way. So if you want a more in depth intro to mind, body pain and all that stuff, I recommend checking out those episodes. They're from earlier, they're from about a year ago in 2018, and just type in pain. Go to shrinkforthyguy.com shrinkforthshyguy.com, and in the search there, you can type for pain. You can also type for Steve Ozanich, O, Z, A, N, I, C, H, and just look up pain, chronic pain, that sort of thing. And you'll find some of those earlier episodes. But in this one, what I want to talk about is three simple steps to eliminate your physical pain as soon as it arises. And this is just something I live by. Over the last months and years that I've been able to systematically rid myself of virtually every chronic condition that I had, ranging from plantar fasciitis in my foot that prevented me from running to chronic upper neck and upper back problems that prevented me from working out and doing push ups and pull ups, wrist problems that prevented me from again working out or even playing instruments like the guitar. And then pain that I'd had for many, many years, almost 20 years that had stopped me from being able to use my body in many ways. And that was like tons of back pain, low back and into the glutes, into the buttock, down the leg, nerve pain, tingling, burning, weakness, you name it, all kinds of pains. And then there's a lot of other stuff in there as well, like jaw problems, tmj, throat problems, losing my voice, stomach, gastrointestinal IBS problems. Sounds like I was a wreck, right? Well, in a lot of ways I was. A lot of physical suffering. And every single time physical problem. Go to the physical doctor, okay, go to the stomach doctor. Okay, go to the foot doctor. Okay, go to the back doctor, okay, go to the. And on and on and on and getting some symptom relief sometimes, sometimes not, but never really solving the problems until I discover the mind body stuff. And a great book if you're curious about it. One would be Mind Over Medicine by Lisa Rankine. R A N K I N Mind Over Medicine. And another book would be Healing Back Pain by John Sarno. S A R N O. Those would get you started. In any case, what do I do now when I experience physical pain? What can you do if you experience physical pain? So the first thing, three step process, right? Here's step one. You wake up and you feel pain or you do something and there's pain. So sometimes the pain can happen out of nowhere. Like you just wake up and it's there, or even just doing work at your computer during the day and you get up and all of a sudden, ah, there's pain there in some way. It can also happen because I just finished a run and now there's pain. Or I just went to the gym and now there's pain or something happened while you were working out and it's very easy at that point to attribute it to an injury. Well, it was happening while I did the activity and so now I've injured myself. And while that sure can happen, like you're playing basketball and you roll your ankle and you really bend the ankle and fall into it and put crazy amount of pressure and it gets all swollen and purple or something like that. Yeah, you just damaged something in your body. But a lot of the pain we feel is not that there's no actual swelling, there's no actual problem. And even sometimes if there is swelling, it's still not because there's damage there. It's a mind body thing. But oftentimes it's just like, well, my back hurts now, I don't know why, it's just stiff. Or now my knee hurts, where, I don't know, kind of on the top sort of what, whatever. And look out. If you then have a story that goes on top of it like, oh, I don't have enough cartilage in my knee, or oh yeah, my spine is twisted, or oh yeah, one leg's longer than the other and on and on and on. Because often what's happening has nothing to do with the structure of your body. And that's why step one, to eliminate physical pain is to deeply get this truth, which is that this pain is due to emotion. Step one, for me, this pain is due to emotion. And this is a man. This is a process of reprogramming yourself. Dr. John Sarno talks about it as thinking structural, rather thinking psychological rather than structural when it comes to your body. And I noticed in the reprogramming of myself how often my mind wants to go to structural. So the very first question I'll ask myself when there's pain is, ah, what did I do? Is this from running? Is this from being in the gym? Those are questions I would ask recently, for many years, I didn't run and I didn't go to the gym. So I'd just be like, is this from sitting at my computer? Is this from sleeping in the wrong way? These very inert activities, did this damage my body? I mean, there are so many people that would verify, like, oh, yeah, you sat at your computer, used your mouse. Yeah, of course you have carpal tunnel syndrome now. Of course you need surgery now. By the way, I had surgery for my wrist many years ago. Totally ineffective. And that's often the case. People's surgeries are mostly ineffective. There's so much interesting research in these mind body books about ineffective surgeries for the low back, for the knee, how they can do arthroscopic surgery on the knee and do. They've done placebo trials where they put people under and then just burn a little hole in their skin. And as if they got the laser surgery, but they did not, and they improve at the same rate and the same way as people who did have the actual knee surgery. There is so much going on here in the mind body connection that we don't acknowledge. And so step one is this pain is due to emotion. And the effectiveness at removing the pain is gonna be correlated with how certain you are that this is true. So, for example, when I started working on the mind body stuff, it's a process. You're like, no, really? Is that really true? That can't be true. All those people told me it wasn't. But eventually you start to question it, start to examine it. You can look at the evidence for why it might be emotional. Was something happening in your life when the pain started? Were you going through a breakup? Were you going through a stressful time? Do you have the personality traits that tend to generate tension inside, which are perfectionism or goodism? Another way to say that is overly nice. So are you a nice person? Do you people please? Do you accommodate? Are you afraid of disapproval? Do you often say yes when you want to say no? Do you have challenges with boundaries and. Or are you also a perfectionist? You demand a lot of yourself. You want to do it right. You want to do a lot. When you've just done a lot, you want to do even more. And then when you've done even more, you set goals to do even more. And then you want to do it faster, and you want to do it better, and you want to get there. That one's just me speaking from a hypothetical understanding of others. I don't have those. I don't have that perfectionism one. Right. So this pain is due to emotion, and I've just finally really gotten that. And the fascinating thing is the pain will. So when it shows up in certain spots, like plantar fasciitis, I really got, oh, this is due to emotion. So now the pain never even shows up there. Because if it were to show up there, I'd be like, nah, this is due to emotion. And then it just diminishes. But it will show up in other places, maybe new places that seem to be related to the activities that I'm doing. To be like, oh, oh, well, I guess I did use my legs more, so therefore my knee would want to hurt. And I just keep questioning it, saying, wait a minute, hold on a second. Is that really. Did it move from one side to the other, in which case that's fishy. So this is due to emotion. One of the people That I spoke with about this, who taught me, said, you have to close the certainty gap. You got to be 100% certain or as certain as you can. And at first you might not be, but the more certain you are, the powerfully the more quickly you'll heal. And by heal, well, there's nothing really even to heal. Just the pain will subside. This is due to emotion. So one of the most powerful things you can do to implement this is when you feel pain. Instead of saying, oh, did I sleep funny? Did I sit at the computer? Did I do that thing? Did I lift that thing? Was it running? Was it this? Say, what's going on emotionally in my life that might be bothering me? This pain is nothing more than a warning light on your dashboard that's saying, hey, something's not going right, something is bothering me, something is not working for me and I need to slow down and feel and think and reflect more. That's number one. This is due to emotion. Step two, second thing I say to myself, ask myself, is, what feelings am I not feeling? Because, hey, this is due to emotion. And it's due to emotion that I'm not looking at. This is a warning sign. This is a light on my dashboard. So step two is to look under the hood, say, what's going on? And sometimes I'll resist this one because I'm like, no, I know what's going on. I'm a very self aware person. It's like, okay, or I don't have time for this. I don't have all these projects I want to do at work. All this stuff going on in my life, my fitness, my health, my family, my friends, my family, I just got to. I don't have time for this. Hmm. So is it possible that I'm driving myself really hard during that time? No, no, I just don't have time. Oh, okay. So the emotions that you're looking for are often repressed emotion or emotion that you don't fully acknowledge. So repressed anger. Who might I be upset with? Is it a colleague? Is it a co worker? It's often the people closest to you. Is it a spouse? Is it a child? Is it a pet? Is it a family member? And then maybe a colleague or a coworker or clients or customers or a boss or a supervisor? Who am I upset with? And at first you might be like, nobody. No, no, everything's fine. Well, slow down and ask with certainty as if there is something really there. And you can't just do this. Like in between you check your Text and then you're listening to radio and you're doing this and blah. You're just totally distracted. You need a slow down. Best ways to do this are go for a walk or a run. If you can run at that time with no headphones, no music, just reflect. Journal is one of the most powerful ways to start just digging in there. And of course meditation can help too, but not if you're just trying to disconnect from everything and go back to your thought. It's more like reflection time than straight up mindfulness meditation. But journaling is very powerful. You just start asking what's going on? What might be upsetting me? What pressures am I putting on myself right now? Or what pressures do I feel? What demands do I feel in my life right now? Because there's a part inside of you that doesn't like all the demands. Even if you took them on, even if you agreed to it, even if you sought it out. That's a part of you that's like the driver and the go getter and all that. There's another part of you that's like, eh, I don't want all this responsibility. And it's not about changing and fixing everything in your life so you have no problems and there is no stress. That's unrealistic. What it is is about acknowledging what's going on underlying emotionally. Like, yeah, part of me is scared of this new venture or yeah, I do feel resentful that I'm giving to my elderly parents. And yes, I'm going to do that. Yes, that feels like an important value for me. And yes, there's a part of me that's upset about it. So it's acknowledging the shadow is what we do. You don't have to stop being with your parents or stop taking on that new, exciting but scary venture in your business or in your life or that new relationship. It's just slowing down and acknowledging. And that's one of the key insights that I didn't get for a long time. It's about slowing down and acknowledging rather than making massive changes or you need to fix everything. Your life has to be stress free. So that's step two. And number three, action. You must take action. There's two kinds of actions you must take. One is you must do the physical activities that you're scared to do. You must face your fear and challenge what your mind says you can't do. Because one of the most natural responses to pain is to contract and tighten up and kind of want to hide away in a Hole. The problem when we do that, though, is we perpetuate the cycle. We become more afraid of stimulus, we become more rigid, less mobile, less powerful. And we're sort of just waiting for the pain to go away. Now that does make sense. If you broke your leg, right, you'd need some time to recover. But when most of the pains that people feel are not acute injuries like that, even if they think they're an acute injury, it's like, oh, yeah, I fell and I twisted my leg, so it still hurts off and on. Okay, maybe they strained something. Sure. When did that happen? Oh, about five years ago. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Your body heals. You don't like hurt your back from lifting that one thing one time, and then for the next seven years you have off and on pain that is mind, body pain. And it's not due to the bulging disc or the stenosis or the whatever you get diagnosed with. Now, again, of course, this is all my opinion and perspective. And I am not a medical doctor. I'm a doctor of thinkology. And so you are going to want to check before you do anything or take any medical advice. This is not medical advice. You're going to want to consult with a physician, ideally a doctor, a medical doctor who is aware of tms. Tension Myositis Syndrome. That's one of the names coined by Dr. John Sarno. So just go to tmswiki tmswiki.org to find out more. Tmswiki.org because then there's a whole list of practitioners all over the country and the world who are versed in this. So that would be the optimal person to get checked out. Because a lot of doctors not only don't know about this, but are staunchly against the idea that emotion can be related to pain. So then you might go further down the wormhole and end up way further than where you want to be. So that is step number three, which is do the physical activity. And this one is hard, this one's scary because your mind says, no, I'm going to get horrible pain if I do push ups. I cannot run. It's going to hurt so bad. And so look, you need to go run out and do some intense activity. No, just lean into that edge. So if your mind says, oh, I can't lift anything, don't go lift your heaviest attempts, but just go move the weight around. So if you normally do a lift where you're lifting 30 or 40 pounds, do it with 15 or 20. So you're just Showing like, look, my body can do this. And recently when I had an episode of pain come up, because it happens now and then, as much as I am aware of this stuff and I try to take consistent care of myself, at least so far in my journey, pain will emerge, and it seems to happen every couple of months. And all of a sudden I'll start to feel stiff in the places I used to have chronic pain in. And then I start to feel like my legs are weak. It's hard to work out. I get back pain, it's hard to move around sometimes. And I do this exact process. But also while that's happening, even when there's this pain, I will still continue to go to the gym and continue to run and work out. Maybe a day off here and there, maybe, but usually not. So I might just take down the weight or take down the length of the run. Like recently I had an issue and then I went and I did. I worked out at the gym, did less, and I went for a run and I went for like a short run, like maybe three or four miles. And normally I would go for, I don't know, 6 to 10, depending upon what the day is. So less intense is a great way, but you're still going into it. You're saying one of the things that Sarno says, Dr. John Sarno, is I will not be intimidated by the pain. Because if you're intimidated by the pain, then you're saying it's real. And yes, it's real in the sense that you are feeling pain, but the pain is not originating from damage to your body or tissues. The pain is originating in your brain. There's another great book called Think Away youy Pain by Dr. David Schechter. S C H E C T e R Schechter. Dr. David Schechter. And he's an amazing man. Why am I making fun of the guy's name? In any case, who am I to make fun of someone's name? Aziz Gazipura. Gazipura? What kind of name is that? Gazipura. So his book is awesome. It's called Think Away your Pain. And he really illuminated for me that the pain is not in your back. The pain. Pain is in your brain. Like your brain is interpreting signals that are not dangerous, that there's not damage, as if it's damaged in danger. And that's what we need to rewire. So take the action, do the physical activity. There is one other kind of action that you want to take though, which is to course correct in Your life as needed. Now, I know in the last step, I said, you don't have to make all these big changes in your life, but sometimes you do. So, for example, for me, one of the triggers is perfectionism. And so I'll be going along, and I think I'm taking it reasonable and going slow. But it's like there's a part of me that just wants to jam on the gas in life. And so I think I have an episode of pain. I kind of pull up off the gas. I'm like, okay, we can keep going forward at a good steady momentum. And then slowly over the next couple months, it's like I just press on the gas slowly. So I'm going like. I cool it down to like, you know, 60 miles an hour. And then it's like 65, 70, 75, 80, and I don't even notice it. Have you ever done that while driving? You know what I mean? Sometimes it's like the flow of traffic around you, or you're just on an open road and you just start to go faster and faster and faster. And you look down, you're like, I'm 95 miles an hour. And that's what happens. And then, of course, I'll get symptoms in my body, little signals. And then it's like, sometimes for me, it's often I need to ease up. And it might not be doing less. It might be slowing down internally. Cause maybe I'm not doing too much. I'm just holding it as if it's life and death. I'm like, I gotta do this and I gotta get to that, and I gotta get to this. And I'm like, stressed in my body. And I'm not taking moments to pause and activate the relaxation response, which Lisa Rankin talks a lot about in her book. And that's one of the first things I think of, is like, oh, I'm just not activating the relaxation response enough. That was a change in your body that was first observed or named by Herbert Benson, I think it was Robert Benson, some psychiatrist who sort of popularized or brought. Was one of the pioneers to bring meditation and mindfulness and all that stuff into Western psychology, Western medicine and. And legitimate it in the eyes of science, although it's been used for forever and has been very effective for Buddhists and other people for many years. But now it's got the seal of approval of science, so it's legit. In any case, we need to sometimes course correct. And sometimes you do need to make a big change. Like if you truly just Hate your job and you really, really are dissatisfied. You, you might start having chronic problems in your body and you can try to slow down, you can try to take whatever, take a bath on Sundays or whatever you need to do to feel better. But maybe you need to do you actually need to change that job. So sometimes you do need to make a big change, but not always. I wouldn't jump to it. I would work on other things first. So what action are you gonna take time for? Action. Action. Action. Your action step for today is gonna be to apply this three step process. So if you feel PA something that comes up for you intermittently, run through this. Can you get more certainty? How can you get more certainty that this is due to emotion? One of the best ways is to read one of those resources I referenced a lot in this episode. If you just read one, it could be profoundly life changing for you. Another thing to do is take some time to journal. And this is a valuable practice. Even if you don't have physical pain. Journaling for 15 to 20 minutes a day is profoundly helpful. There's research on this that it shows it improves people's mood. You can improve your self compassion, your mindfulness, your self awareness, your problem solving abilities. It's good, good stuff. Journaling. And then of course, action. Can you do the physical activity? Can you lean into that fear and ultimately get to the other side of it? And then maybe we need to make some changes in your life, but that's something you can examine over time and see if that's necessary. Awesome. I hope this serves you. This is something that is deeply meaningful to me. Having lived in pain for so many years, every time I hear a story, I mean, when I hear liberation from emails and random messages I get online or from clients that I'm working with directly in a live event or mastermind program, it always fills me up. I love it. I smile. I'm like, yeah, we're winning. We're liberate Operation Mass Liberation. Like it's everyone's winning, just Charlie Sheen style winning. But when I hear about someone liberating themselves from chronic pain, I get like an extra dose of whatever brain chemicals are serotonin. Like, yeah, we're double winning. Because I just, I know how amazing that can be to get your life back and I want that for you. So hopefully one of these resources serves you. And until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening. To Shrink. For the shy guy with Dr. Aziz, if you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com it.