Is Being Too Nice Causing You Pain? With Laura Heidrich

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 to today's episode of the show. I am so excited to be sharing this interview with you. Today we're going to be talking to someone who has personally radically changed my life in the most positive ways you can imagine. She is a coach who specializes in helping people overcome their physical pain. But here's the thing. Physical pain is in so many cases emotional pain. So anxiety, stress, fear, social anxiety, inferiority, afraid you're not good enough, comparing yourself to others, all the stuff we talk about in this show, guess what? It doesn't just manifest as feeling bad about yourself and emotionally or limiting your actions in the world. It shows up physically. And there are so many things you've probably heard about me talk about on this show, but there's so many things that I had to learn were not just random, unconnected physical occurrences in my body that just happened because of what I ate or I touched that weird thing or I slept on that bed or whatever. Touch that weird thing. What weird thing? I don't know. I touched the table and someone else was sick and I. No, it's. So much of what's happening is our emotions. So stomach problems, back problems, knee problems, neck problems, jaw problems, foot problems, eyeball problems, ear ringing problems, allergies, skin problems. All these things have a huge component of emotional energy to them, and yet we only approach them from the physical side. And you've heard me talk about this before, but this is the person, if you want to know who, is the person who really radically helped me get these changes in my life. It's who we're talking to today. And as always in this interview, I learn a ton. So if you're really curious about how to completely free yourself from any sort of physical pain. But also we go deep in this interview to the underpinnings of the pain, which are emotions. But what specifically? Well, emotions and stress that comes from being too nice, what she calls goodism. But Then also perfectionism, demanding more of yourself, not liking yourself, your accomplishments, thinking you're not enough, you need to do more. So even if you don't have any physical pain right now, you're gonna benefit a ton from learning about how to unravel perfectionism and let go of goodism. And if you also happen to have physical pain or discomforts, look out. This is gonna be a very powerful interview. So here's the thing I want to encourage you to do is one, turn off other distractions and commit to listen to this. And then two, take notes in your phone, or you can write something down, but really engage with this process because this is about you learning something that you then apply inward and you use it to reflect on yourself so you can make positive changes in your life. So you ready? Let's dive into that interview now. My guest expert for the show today is someone I am extremely grateful and excited to have on the show. Her name is is Laura Heidrick and she's a health coach, but of a very specific and unique sort and in a very life changing way for me. So she doesn't help people get fitter or whatever else you might think of with a health coach. She specifically helps people end chronic pain, not manage it, not get a little better. But your life mostly is restricted and sucks. Like really, truly end chronic pain. And you might be wondering, is that even possible? How does that work? That's what we're gonna be getting into in today's interview. She has a fascinating story herself in that she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis as a young woman. And you know, in the medical world, rheumatoid arthritis doesn't get any more real or physical than that. And that's something that for the most part is agreed upon as permanent. Like, you have this for the rest of your life and you're limited, you manage pain, you. You take a lot of medication, you get by, and it's your bum genes or poor environment when you were growing up or something, but now you're toast. But the amazing thing about Laura is that she did not settle for that. She refused to accept the limitations recommended by the physicians, and she remained active and got a degree in business and went on to pursue work in the medical field. But along the way, she was introduced to the idea of TMS Tension Myositis syndrome. And that term was first put forth by a man named Dr. John Sarno, who you might have heard me talk about on the show. And she at that moment had the seed planted of like Wait, maybe there is a way to actually truly end this and free myself. And so we're going to be talking about what is TMS and how to work with all this stuff. There's so much more to your story, but I don't want to just talk for the whole interview. I actually want to interview you. So welcome. Laura. Thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you, Dr. Aziz. It's such an honor to be here to talk about this really important topic. Chronic pain has become really an epidemic, especially in the United States. Once you discover tension myositis syndrome and Dr. Sarno's approach to really curing it. It's so life changing for so many people, including both of us. We had similar issues. Pain that started young and went on for decades. So if you and I can overcome this, then anyone can. As you said, we had these scary sounding diagnoses. This sounded like a real disease. How could you possibly get over it? But we did, and here we are today. So the more people who can learn about this approach and start believing it and follow through on the treatment, the better. And as far as I'm concerned, yes, absolutely.

And just to really relate this to everyone listening, because some people listening might have a chronic condition or chronic pain, and they might be all ears. Other people might be like, well, I don't have that. I don't know if this is relevant to me. And I'm just gonna say right now, it absolutely is. Because what we're gonna be talking about is how emotion and personality styles and how you show up every day is gonna manifest itself in some sort of physical pain. And it might not be a big major diagnosis. It might just be, you know, your knee hurts when you try to run. It might just be that your neck gets tight when you sit at the computer and you blame. You know, I need 75 ergonomic adjustments. And, you know, so anyone, if you feel any ongoing intermittent pain, if you have any limitation on just doing basic exercise that you love and you are not running right now, you're not lifting weights, you're not playing soccer, you're not doing something because you think, well, it's bad for my knees, bad for my feet, bad for my body, or you're just kind of in fear of your body kind of pooping out on you because you used it, any of those things, and you may have diagnoses, you may have tendonitis diagnoses. I have an interesting story about that as well. I want to share all these things. There is a tremendous amount of liberation possible So I think this is relevant to everyone, especially people that have more limitation too.

Yes, absolutely. And really the bottom line here is that unfortunately, the medical community is just wrong about pretty much everything associated with chronic pain conditions, including many of those that you listed. TMS can also apply to stomach upset and skin rash and a host of other things that I think Dr. Sarno came to throw that net much wider as he got deeper into this. But the bottom line is, because we hear it mostly associated with back pain, like you said, a knee pain and neck pain. But the bottom line is that the problem is not structural at all. As you said, Aziz, chronic pain is created by negative emotions. Sometimes it starts with childhood trauma and then you pile on some present day tension, which we all have, and a personality type which we're very familia, the perfectionist, the goodest, that's the people pleaser, the worrywart. And all of this together we found at the Pain Care Clinic leads to this constant tension in the body that leads to chronic pain. And it can absolutely hang on for a long time and seem very serious, but it's really being created in the mind. The pain is real, make no mistake. But as you said, the goal isn't to manage it and just live with it and work around it. We live a long time, you know, hopefully into our 80s and even 90s. Our bodies are incredibly durable, we're told. We get this diagnosis that you're fragile, like you said, you can't run, you can't play with your kids anymore. It takes a lot of the joy and fun out of your life and it's just not necessary to live like that. Yes, it just isn't.

Absolutely. And I'm so excited to dig in with some specifics of how people can use this knowledge to liberate themselves. But first, let's just build the bridge, because people listening, I grew up and as did you, and so many of us in the standard dominant viewpoint, which is like, well, physical pain is caused by physical things. And so if your back hurts, it's because one hip is higher than another, or you're twisted, or this leg's longer than that, or something's pinching on your nerve and this is caused by that. And then it's further solidified by an authority, someone who went to school for 4, 8, 16 years, and they have an office with fancy skeletons and little diagrams and they use language that we don't understand and they speak in Latin and they say, this is ibidus middelis, and this means this. So people have this experience where it's like, no physical pain is caused by physical stuff.

And.

And on top of that, it feels kind of that way, like we're running, and then my knee hurts while I'm running. So it was the running, you know, so let's build that bridge. Like, how do you. What you said something about this pain is caused by negative emotions. Let's help people understand how that could be so.

Right. Okay, so let's just start with, say, childhood trauma, for example. And this can be everything from, you know, just having maybe negative demanding or neglectful parents or brother that's a bully, you know, all the way up to real abusive situations. But something that happened in your childhood just kind of sticks, you know, and it can either be the trauma itself that stays with you and continues causing tension even into adulthood, or. And this is the more common occurrence, it shapes your personality. Right. So little Aziz was born a certain way, but then the things that happened to him as a child might have brought out this tendency to fear making mistakes and thinking he has to be perfect or he has to. To say yes to everyone, or he's worried about the future all the time, or he feels like he has to be the best at everything and be an ultra competitor. Right. And so get out of my head. Oh, yes, I know you well, Aziz, and I was the same way.

Right.

So I know of what I speak. And so then, you know, you become an adult and you get the adult responsibility, which we all have to go to work and take care of our own children. And then maybe our parents are aging, and it just becomes this kind of crushing level of stress and tension that is in our mind. And then our mind is connected to our body. Remember, it's all one system. And so there's something called neuropeptides that flow throughout our body when we have a negative emotion. And they literally cause. They affect all of our systems, our autonomic nervous system, which. Our fight or flight, which is our fight or flight. And it causes our muscles and our nerves and all of our soft tissue to become tight and inflamed. And that's why you can walk around for months and even years with what seems like, again, there's got to be some medical basis for this. And remember, our physicians, they aren't taught this in medical school. Mind, body, unfortunately, just isn't emphasized. And I think that's starting to change. I hope so. But we're not going to wait around for that to happen, because there's a solution right now.

Yes.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And What I love about this is I was just talking about this with my wife the other day how, you know, in the medical world this is some of the most brilliant minds in the world.

Oh, absolutely.

And yet what they're doing is they're sort of fighting with one hand tied behind their back because they're operating from a fundamentally flawed premise, which is like, okay, there's pain in the body. It must be caused by something entirely mechanical, physical that doesn't have anything to do with the brain or emotions. So that's our fundamental starting point. Now let's figure it out. And then they come up with some of the most complex intelligent theories. But the simple solution is to expand the starting point to say, well, yeah, you could strain a muscle by pushing it too hard. You could rip a tendon. You could do that. And you also can chronically tense certain muscles by being in an anxious state because you're worried about if people are gonna like me. You could feel your stomach could be upset and you could have like diarrhea and irritable bowel because you're so nervous about how you're gonna perform at work that week. And on some level, we all. It's strange how we have that denial of that because at the same time, we all know you can get butterflies in your stomach when you're excited or nervous. We all know that something scary happens and we either don't want to eat at all or we want to go to hack the fridge. We all experience that. So I love how you're helping us see that these things are not just one time incidences. They can become an ongoing way.

That's a good segue into the way that we often explain this. Initially, this idea of tension myositis syndrome is that chronic pain is just. It's on the list with a lot of other things we commonly accept, which you mentioned, like nervous stomach. Listen to this. We get shivers up our spine, right? We get gut feelings about things. We refer to people as being a pain in the neck. Are you hearing what we're saying here? I mean, we're directly relating the mind and the body. And yet very few people go to the emergency room with any of the things I just mentioned. Because as a society we've been taught that, oh yes, of course, emotions cause that. Well, we're just saying that emotions also cause chronic pain. But because the medical community has assigned so many different labels to it, I mean, think about this. We've had over the last 20 years, carpal tunnel fibromyalgia. Now there's all these chronic fatigues and nerve sensitization syndromes. And, I mean, it goes on and on. It's just a new name for a collection of symptoms that all goes back to tension myositis syndrome. Right. It just sounds very scary. And when a person in a white coat who you've been taught to trust tells you this, we all buy into it at first and we seek a medical solution. But after a certain amount of time. And another point, Aziz, that you hit on. Even if you have a real injury, the body has an amazing ability to heal, and you should still not be in chronic pain six, eight months, two years later.

Yes. Right. Yeah. Oh, man. I used to really believe in that. And someone would tell me, like, oh, yeah, no, I can't do that anymore. Oh, this part of my body's hurting. And I was like, oh, why? Oh, I got. I was in a car accident. Oh, yeah. Recently. Oh, no, that was like, six years ago.

We hear this all the time.

It's like, oh, it's acting up again. And. Yes. So let's liberate ourselves of all this. So let's say someone is listening, and they're like, okay, I get that. I can see the connection between mind and body. And though it hurts, what do I do?

What do I do? Yes. Well, what we do with our coaching is we work in three different areas of these, and the first is to really help you continue changing your belief system that you are not structurally damaged. You do not have a disease process. You know, if you've ruled out anything serious, we always recommend, of course, doing that first. But you really have to get a strong belief in this. As you know, Dr. Slano has many books. There are a lot of other Mind body authors that we recommend. There are also clinical studies that are backing up this premise now, which is. Which is great. Then we have to look at the tension in a person's life. Where is this coming from? You know, so that we can work on reducing it. And we feel very strongly about increasing or tweaking your physicality. Like you said, you're a runner, Aziz, and the worst thing you did was to stop running because it's a tension reliever for you, and you love it, and it keeps you overall healthy. So these are the three major areas that we work on, and we start with a real examination of your life. You remember the first hour that we talked was all about you and what's going on with you. And so we turn over every rock and ask you a lot of questions to try to get to the Bottom of it. A lot of times it's hard to talk about certain things and it's a safe place, right, where they can say, you know, my mother's driving me crazy or you know, my brother's a bully or you know, I hate my job or I want to move. And people need permission to say these things. There's a lot of resistance, you know, to society norms and parental pressure and we've just come to accept it, but our bodies are not liking it.

Yeah, I mean, there's a great quote. I think it might be Gabor Mate who said, maybe it's the title of a book. When your body says no.

When the body says no.

What you're highlighting is so important that permission to really acknowledge these things. Because what's happening is the pain is a message and it's saying, hey, everything's not cool. Like it's a barometer. You can say, oh, I'm happy, everything's great. But if you're in chronic pain, then there's something that's not right in the system. But the problem is the message is being cut off and not being able to be delivered consciously. So it's like, and usually that's because there's some internal. Yeah, society might not like it or so often it's our own inner pressure to appear a certain way. So to be like, I don't like, you know, it's hard to be around my brother in law or my dad or, you know, I spend a day with one of my kids and my young children and I love them and some of the things they did were pretty dang irritating, you know, so it's.

To feel okay, to feel human.

Yes, to feel those. And usually it's the emotions of upset, hurt, dislike, the kind of thing where you think, oh, you know, if I love someone, I shouldn't feel that way.

There's a lot of guilt, A lot of guilt.

And that guilt prevents us from just, you know, because we're not saying you have to go run out and tell that person that they're terrible or yell at your kids. We're just saying allow yourself to acknowledge in a safe place. Yeah, I don't like this, or yes, this is hard, or yes, this is upsetting, or yes, this is stressful. And when we can do that, it really starts to release the need to smash it down with all that guilt. And then the pain can start to dissipate.

Yeah, absolutely. And then the next step in this process is just what you said is these, is we really deep dive into the Personality type, and we figure out where you are on the scale, you know, what's your dominant issue. A lot of it is goodism, but this perfectionism is just pervasive.

Yeah, let's really unpack both of those so people listening can kind of identify that, you know, I definitely resonate with and. And can fall back into operating from both. And I think, as we. For those of you who haven't picked up on any, I did work with Laura. She was my coach. Still is. Sometimes when I get the tms, that comes back. But overall, she really helped me make a major turning point. I read so many books on the subject and made so much progress and healed up all kinds of conditions. I had plantar fasciitis in my foot that prevented me from. Well, one of the things that prevented me from running. I had repetitive stress stuff in my wrist that prevented me from playing the guitar. I had chronic neck problems from sitting. I thought, I can't sit at a computer. I mean, on and on and on and on. Migraines. And I was able to cure a lot of those using these exact approaches with the books. But then when it came, I mean, like Laura, I was diagnosed with a condition that sounds awfully real. It was called ankylosing spondylitis.

Quite the mouthful, right?

You know, it's Latin. It's gotta be legit. And it started when I was 15, but I didn't get a diagnosis until I was 19. And it got really solidified that this is real. And I got on medication, and the medication seemed to help. So then, like, explain that. Like, wait, if I don't have a thing, then how come, you know, this medication? So I. Despite my best efforts solo and with the help of my wife and people I talk to, I was not able to really break free until I worked with Laura. And the processes she guided me through really were transformative. And one of the big things we looked at was these two personalities, goodest and perfectionist. And I saw how big perfectionism was for me and how essential it was for me to really address it. So I'm so excited for you to share both of these with people.

Yeah, let me talk a little bit about both of those. So the classic perfectionist is really just trying to control circumstances. Right. And it's. Usually there's some fear underlying that disease. Right. Our fear of being incompetent, being judged, losing our jobs, not being well thought of. There's always fear behind all of this. And, you know, you can't do everything perfectly all the time. But you will make yourself miserable trying. Right? And we've just got to learn to find a place of what we call optimalism. And you know, we talked quite a bit about that, where you can still have high standards and be ambitious. We are not suddenly going to turn into slackers. That's just not who we are. So make mistake. We are not trying to completely change people's personalities. We couldn't even if we wanted to. But there are some really minor things that you can do to dial this back. And you know, a lot of it lives in that kind of space between what happens to us and how we react. Think about that for a minute. That's where, that's where we get off the rail. Because things are going to happen, things are going to irritate us and we're going to have expectations that aren't met. But how we react to it and how much we allow in. Remember we talked about prioritizing your intensity and that's important. We can't bring this high level of intensity to every situation all day long or we're just in this constant state of tension and pain. You know, the traffic jam and a minor argument with your spouse is not on the same level as having a critically ill child, you know, and we have to learn to pick our battles. That's a lot of the issue for the perfectionist is. Okay, there's a comma out of place in my email. Well, everyone's still going to read your email and probably won't even notice, right? Versus okay, I'm on stage in front of a thousand people, you know, giving a workshop. Of course you're bringing your A game to that. But even then you're human and we, you know, we put such expectations on other people about how they're going to react to us. It's a little bit self absorbed when you think about it, isn't it? To be walking around acting like we're perfect doesn't let a lot of connection in. So it's really dangerous on many, many levels with connecting with other people and just creating that undercurrent of tension all the time.

Absolutely. And let's talk a little bit more about that. Prioritizing the intensity, I think I hear you saying, is that there's going to be this desire for intensity. And so you want to choose the things that you bring that intensity to.

Exactly.

Other times though, like the comma in the email or the minor disagreement with the spouse, like, are you suggesting that we, in those moments we just let it go and we stop? We Find a way to not care so much about that.

Yes, and that brings a good point, because perfectionists also tend to be very sensitive to criticism. You remember us talking about this, and we immediately.

Certainly not me, though.

Other.

Other perfectionists.

That's why other people. No, but we tend to. We get defensive right away. I had this issue with my own partner, and he really, you know, pointed it out to me. He's very lovingly. Would suggest something to me that was absolutely true. And my first response would still be to get defensive. And so my strategy is I really. I take a breath. I mean, I literally count to five or ten. And. And what comes out of my mouth tends to be very different. Just that small space of time to say, now wait a minute. Is there any reason to really be defensive about this? You know, that person is just trying to help me. So you see all the different ways this manifests in your life. It, you know, it's at work, it's at home, it's with neighbors, it's with your church. It. It can come from everywhere. And if you're trying to be perfect in all these different areas all the time, be the perfect father. And I know you, you know, are really concerned about being a great dad to your kids, but we talked a lot about how sometimes that. Just bringing them along on your normal day. Right. And modeling good behavior. We're gonna play some. We're gonna do a few chores, you know, because that's life. And you're raising them to live in the real world, not this perfect dad world. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the. The question I have about this one, though, is where is there the difference between perfectionism and discipline? Because there seems to be this place where we need to, for example, come up with a certain schedule and adhere to it, which might seem rigid or perfectionistic, but at the same time, if we just sort of say, well, I don't want to have a rigid thing. I don't know, I don't want to. I just got to let go here. Then there's an element of. Sometimes we need that push to break through. You know what I'm talking about, right?

Yes, I do.

This is something that I'm always sort of just learning and experimenting with and exploring because I'm like, well, how do you do this? You know, it's basically the path of optimalism. How to achieve, how to be ambitious. But, you know, do so in a sane way, in a way that doesn't produce chronic pain in our body.

Yeah. And that's where optimalism comes in. It's just. It's kind of one rung down right from the perfectionist. And you might remember when I first sent you your action plan that I prefaced it by saying, do not apply perfectionism to this plan. Because the first issue we usually have with people is then they try to get better perfectly. And that's, you know, the opposite of what we're trying to do. But, yes, you do have to put some deliberate effort into getting better. Right. And there has to be some consistency without rigidity. You really hit on it. Okay, so, for example, you know, we want you exercising and doing cardio and weights and some stretching and yoga, but we don't want you being rigid about it to the point where if it's a beautiful day in Portland, then I want you outside, even if it's your day to do weights. You know what I'm saying? We get so tied into. You're not so tied into the schedule if you miss a day of journaling. We're not beating ourselves up. We're just going to get back. Back on the horse the next day. So you see what I'm saying? It's just a dialing back. Because, yes, you're right. Getting over chronic pain. We would never say it's easy. It's very simple what's happening to us, but it's not easy to get over it. It takes some time. We're rewiring the brain, so you gotta bring a lot of patience to the process. But you don't have to do it perfectly to get better. Yes, you will get better, even if you're just being consistent and you're moving forward and you have the. That this is TMS and you absolutely can get better. You are not the one person who will not get better if you really follow through.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And let's explore the other side of that coin. So we have the perfectionism on one side, and then the other side is. You called it goodism. And then people might. You reference people pleasing. And for those listening who might have read my book Not Nice, which talks a lot about that. So what's the. What have you seen with that? How does that contribute to pain? How do people work with that?

So goodism is just perfectionism applied to relationships. Okay. You can't make everyone else happy all the time. You can't even make yourself happy all the time. Right. You're just gonna have down days sometimes. But again, you will just be running around like a chicken trying to figure out the perfect formula so that no one will ever get angry at you or be displeased. One of my favorite lines from Not Nice is we have to learn that we are not for everyone. Right? We can be a wonderful person, but we just don't connect with certain people. And so what you find is goodest will give up their time, their own interest, or their own self care to cater to others beyond a reasonable expectation. And the key word is reasonable because of course we're going to help other people and take care of our children and do nice things for our spouse and all of that. But if you are still on a committee at a charity from 1992 and you've been over it for the last 10 years, it's time to graciously resign. You know, if you are always the one bringing everything to the bake sale, it's time to let someone else take a turn, right? Especially when you're recovering from chronic pain. You know, you may have to say, you know, I've got to get a massage this afternoon. Thanks so much. I have to decline that invitation this time. You know, you start with small things as a goodest and then you work your way up to those big things. Like, you know, we're not coming home for the holidays this year, we need to stay home. We have two small children. You see what I'm saying? And so goodism is this wide range of just minor things that seem like that, what's the big deal? But if you don't practice on the small things, then when it's a really big deal, when you need to go in and ask for a raise or, you know, again, just, just say no. And again, it's not mean, right? When you talk a lot and not nice too, about assertiveness. Assertiveness is this nice in between, you know, being overly aggressive and rolling over other people and being a doormat, which we don't want either of those extremes. We just want that middle ground where we state our preferences and we're able to say no and set some healthy boundaries.

Yeah, absolutely. I love this. And as you're talking, I'm just, just I'm hearing the overarching theme is one of, part of the path to healing the pain is we talk about the body saying no. It's basically, it's like listening to yourself. So I'm working on my next book now, which is called Omos, on My Own side. And I'm expanding the idea of being on our own sides beyond just basic positive self talk. But to really do a deep study of what would it mean to really Be on our own side in the way beyond what we've ever given ourselves, what we would give someone we love deeply, like our children or our spouse or someone we respect and admire. And in there, part of that process is we spend so much time trying to direct, push, massage, change. It's like we're guiding ourselves to go be this person, some voice in her head that's like, well, you feel, you know, you like, you like a. Well, you don't like A, you should like B. And it's like, I wanted to go talk to that person. Well, don't go talk to that person. Go talk to this person. You know, on up the chain to like, I want to pursue music. You can't pursue music. Go pursue engineering. You know, we just. We're like, there's like some inner authority other than ourselves maybe.

Yeah, the self sabotage.

Yeah, that's just like guiding the show. And I feel like it's the same thing with both of these. Like, there's a person who is. They're awesome, they achieve, they do things however we opt in life. But then there's this voice inside that says, you got to do more and you got to be perfect. And then there's like this natural person inside of us. It's like, well, I like these things and I like these people and I don't want to do these other things. And that voice of the goodism gets in there and says, no, no, be this. And underneath it, to really heal the pain requires this like almost like strong or firm reclaiming of ourselves and saying, like, no, I gotta, like, figure out who I really am and be who I really am and stop striving in these ways to become someone superhuman and stop trying to be this super pleasing, nice person. And until we listen to that, we're gonna get that constant message or reoccurring message of that pain.

Right? Exactly. I love that you're doing this book, Aziz. It sounds like a great kind of follow up to not nice. So we get the premise of that. But then, you know, how do we promote, like you said, just self care. Because there's this idea that we're selfish, Right. If we take care of ourselves and take time for ourselves and we use this statement all the time, it's just putting your own oxygen mask on first. Right. When you're on the plane and your child's next to you, you've still got to be able to breathe yourself, to be able to contribute to society and help your family. And we've really got to get over this idea. You know, one of the big questions that we get from clients, especially those with small children and spouses, is, you know, how can I take the time to do all this self care and get over this chronic pain when my family needs me? And we explain to them it's not one or the other. I know you and Candace negotiate this all the time. You know, it's not well being or Candace's. It's. It's. You're taking turns and taking care of each other. But when you were in this massive chronic pain, that had to be the first priority for the family. Right. And so this is, this is a question that I just got last week and I actually referenced you, Aziz, and said, you know, that you had a similar situation with, with a young family and a lot going on, and how do I take time to meditate and take these hours for myself every day, but, you know, getting better with everything. Because in the end, if we're not healthy and able to, you know, take care of ourselves and do the things we want to do, nothing else really matters. Right. It doesn't. Success, money, all of that goes out the window with chronic pain. So you've got to make this a priority. And it's not selfish.

Yeah, absolutely not. Just another form of the goodism that says, oh, I don't have the time to do this. For me, it's like, well, what is more important? Well, what my boss wants, what my wife wants, what my husband wants, what my kids want, what my. All the commitments I've made to other people and all the ways and there's.

No end to that.

Yeah, it's just, you know, all the things I've said yes to because I was scared to say no. And oh, me, oh, my own pain. Like, I'll just. That's fine, I'll just keep managing that. That's not that important. And I think that what you're calling for is basically a return to sanity and saying no, that's of the highest priority. And it is. It's not. It's like a system. Our family is a system. It's a collection of all these interacting parts and same thing with your workplace. So if you got a man or a woman down on the team, you want to work with that to help them get back up. And it's the same thing in taking time for ourselves.

Right. And then what we say is, once you are feeling better, then you look at things again, as you just said, all the different aspects of your life, and you decide with a clear head and a healthy body you know, where can I be of the most service? What priorities am I going to set for really making an impact? We are not saying that you are never going to help or contribute again, but for a short space of time, it's usually just a few months, as you know, until you start, you know, seeing some significant difference, sometimes faster, you can revisit all of this. But just continuing to spiral downward to the point where you might even. Even not even be able to go to work at all or support your family is not where we're headed.

Yeah. And yeah, that's the key thing is, like, so many stories of TMS. I mean, Dr. Sarno said it was one of the most intense kinds of pain or can be one of the most intense kinds of pains that he's seen in all clinical medicine. And yes, it's not structurally damaged or there's nothing broken in your body, but it can hurt horribly. And there's so many people that can't walk upstairs. I've had tms. The pain's so bad where I'm barely able to make it from the bed to the bathroom.

Oh, I know it's hard to believe, but it's absolutely true.

And it can be so like to say, wait a minute, this has to mean damage. It's so bad. And yet I want people to really hear what Laura's saying with doing this kind of approach. Within a couple of months, pain that has been there for a decade can be significantly reduced. And for me, my experience was like, intermittent. It's resolved. Oh, my gosh, it's back. But even now, once you see that, it's very inspiring because you're like, whoa. I mean, if it's intermittent, then there's.

Onto something that doesn't make sense.

And that's something that I want to highlight because you mentioned in the beginning, and this is I found so essential in the process, which is rejecting that it's a structural problem and really having a sense of certainty and belief that it's due to these underlying emotional personality issues. Because when there's like a. It's like that door has to be. In my experience, that door has to be solidly closed.

It does.

Because if it opens, and I just had this experience just, you know, TMS will always be trying to. Seems to try to creep up in different ways in my life. So the other day I noticed out of nowhere getting some pain in my right elbow on the inside. And if you look it up online, it's called golfer's elbow, and it's a whole thing I mean, people have tendonitis there for months.

Yeah, tennis elbow.

Yeah, tennis elbow. You know, and of course, my trainer, bless his heart, I've introduced him to TMS literature and he's bought it in a lot of ways. But he still thinks structural a lot because he's a body machine.

He's trained that way.

So he talks about, like, he's basically with was like, oh, yeah, I remember I had that for like almost eight months. And, you know, we can adapt your program because you might not want to just load it up with a lot of pull ups and chin ups and deadlifts. And so I left the gym kind of scared and like, oh, no, is this gonna last for. And then I'm just like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

You know, actually makes no sense.

And bless my wife, she's like, TMS alarm. She's like, yes, that sounds like tms. And I'm like, wait a minute. Yeah, tennis elbow. I remember reading about that and books. And so, I mean, it was going from like, it hurt to not just do pull ups or something. It was hurting so much. Like, I'm using a sponge on a dish in the sink and it's throbbing and I'm carrying, you know, picking up with my kids, and it's hurting and it's starting, and all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute. This is tms. No, there's nothing. No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with me. And I close that door. And because of all my history with this work, I know, like, okay, not only do I close that door, but I'm gonna go do some chin ups tomorrow.

Yeah, exactly. You did exactly the right thing.

And then all of a sudden, it's.

Counterintuitive, but it's true.

Crazy. Within a day, the pain is entirely gone.

Gone. Oh, yes.

And I'm just like, oh, my gosh. And that's the kind of thing where if that happened to me, you know, five, six years ago or, you know, and I had that elbow pain, I would have looked it up. I would have been like, this elbow. I would have gone to a physical therapist, I would have gone to a chiropractor, and I could have had that pain for three months, six months. And this is the mind boggling thing that I just. It's like. It's like having this incredible freedom and secret that you just want to, like, tell everybody, like, you can do this. And so many people I'll share this idea with and I'll share my story, and they're kind of like, yeah. Wow, that's good for you. But, you know, my elbow really is golfer's elbow, and it's different. And I heard it golfing, so it's legit. And I wonder if that's something that. Well, first of all, before I ask my next question, I just really want to help. People listening can feel that these are true stories. And I mean, how many people would you say, Laura, you've personally seen through your work with you and John, have this kind of freedom come to them?

Oh, yeah, well, we've coached hundreds of people, you know, over the last few years.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Hundreds of people.

Yeah, yeah, hundreds of people. And, you know, we. We don't hear back from all of them. Of course, we have to rely on them self reporting, which is. We wish we had a more, you know, exact science on this. But here's what we say, you know, for people that we know who follow through and report back to us, I mean, the results are. It's close to 100%. I mean, it really is. The proof is in the results. And that's where it's tricky because it's just what you said, az, you have to kind of put the belief first, like with your elbow, because unless you have overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you really did hurt yourself in some way that leads to swelling or blood or a bone is broken. It's tms. And you can remind yourself that if you did go and get an X ray of that elbow, there could be 10 other people with exactly the same X ray results, and seven of them would have. Have. Wouldn't have pain and three of them would. How can that be? So, see, there's a lot of evidence that's really backing this up now. But, yeah, that's the tricky part is you really, you kind of just have to take responsibility and say, listen, the good news and the bad news is that this lives inside of me. It's part of who I am and how I hold stress in my body. That's a little daunting at first, but when you really catch on that, wait a minute, that means I can also fix it. The freedom is unbelievable. Right? And so another quick story about that, which I think is really relevant for the listeners here because you deal a lot with anxiety, right? And so what starts happening is you'll think in your head, wow, you know, this situation is something that makes me anxious, but that's where it stops. I remember I used to feel this just flood of those neuropeptides moving through my body, and that meant the pain of was coming soon, but now I can stop it in my head, if that makes sense. Right. So I still have tension, I still get anxious, but I can process it. Similar to what you said, this is tms, you know, breathe, calm down, you know, just process this issue. And it doesn't ever get into your body. That's the key. Because you're right, we will need to practice these things all of our lives. But it's so worth it.

I love hearing that. What I always enjoy about talking with you is it's like there's. It's like martial art belts or something. And you're like this black, double degree black belt or something. So I'm always like, I always pick up something. So I would say that I'm at the level where it'll. Sometimes I'll catch it, and then other times it'll start to manifest in these little ways as pain.

Yes.

But then there's like a faster. Because even after we had kind of a big breakthrough, I would go through every two, three months, I would have this big resurgence of pain, and then it would go away, and then a big one. And now I feel like as. Like just yesterday I noticed some stiffness in my low back and my glutes and down my leg. Kind of the classic place where the ankylosing spondylitis would occur. And the mind instantly goes to like, well, I did work out harder yesterday. And then I'm like, wait a minute. Not really. Hold on. Yeah.

Does this make sense? No.

This is Tiana's. And sure enough, we're actually going to go visit my family down. My parents down in Santa Cruz. We're leaving tomorrow.

Okay, so you were thinking about that, most likely.

Yes, I was thinking about that. And I was like, well, let's. Now, at this point, when I identify something as tms, it's almost like.

Like.

I don't take no for an answer. It's almost like, all right, it's emotion. Let's explore. What is it? It's not saying. I wonder if this is really feelings instead of something. It's like, no, no, I know it is. So what's going on?

Yeah, that's huge progress. You just. You stop wondering and you go straight to what's going on. And once you connect those dots like you just did, it really takes a lot of the power away from. From the pain.

Right.

You don't want to give the pain any power. That's really the bottom line. And if you say, huh, I know exactly what's going on here, it becomes A game, really, that you're just going to outsmart your own mind from going off in this direction. Because there's just really no other explanation, Aziz, for why there is so much unexplained chronic pain. And it's mainly in first world countries. And why is that? Because third world countries, certainly they have survival issues and safety issues. But here we are in our sophisticated society, kind of over diagnosing, assigning new titles to the same collection of symptoms, and we have all these pressures coming at us all day long. It really makes a lot of sense when you stop to think about it.

Oh, absolutely. And that I feel like this interview could go on for days. We can get into like the whole. When you start to really see this. And. And for me, it fundamentally changed my perception of the medical industry, of this way that we're taught to give our trust and the authority over. It's like the benevolent doctor, the benevolent hospital will tell me what's wrong, give me the fix, and just all is well. And there's this kind of stark wake up call. If you've ever been turned around in the medical system and not gotten a great result, to be like, oh, man. But it goes back to what you were saying. These things might be disturbing or disillusioning at first, but inside of that, if you work with that and get to the core of it, is this seed of total liberation. And let's just end with this, because I think this message of inspiration could be really beautiful for people. I'll share mine and then I'd love to hear your experience. But 15 years ago, when I was just like struggling to walk and thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me, if you would have shown me a movie of my life now and specifically my physical ability now, I mean, it would have. Just imagining how that would have felt to that younger version of me, it would have been the most. I would have cried.

I would have been like, oh, my.

God, this is going to end. And this story is going to, you know, go from what feels like a tragedy to a breakthrough. And I'm gonna do what, you know, I'm gonna be able to lift weights, I'm gonna run and pick up my kids, throw them around, you know, and I'm gonna be able to go run further than Joy, you know, and it's just like, it's such liberation. And I'm curious, you know, if you think back to when you were in those days of rheumatoid arthritis, quote unquote, if it was that or if it was tms whatever. And you looked at your life now, like, what would you, what do you say about your life now? Or what is your experience now?

Well, I love this question because of course, I often think about the fact of that there was purpose to my pain, you know, that I wouldn't probably be doing what I'm doing now had I not lived through that. So there's some comfort in that, in the things that I missed and the pain I suffered as a young person. You know, for me, Aziz, because I'm a little bit older than you, I'm in my 50s now. Here's the absolutely amazing thing is, you know, I feel better in my 50s and really physically, especially really in every way than I did in my 20s and 30s. So it has helped me tremendously with aging. You know, a lot of my girlfriends will be complaining about a few gray hairs or some wrinkles, and I'm like, bring it on. You know, I can deal with that. I am not in chronic pain. I am able to do things in my 50s. We live in Colorado, we hike, we moved last weekend. I'm lifting boxes and going upstairs. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm 52 years old. I couldn't bear it, do some of these things in my 20s and 30s because of the supposed disease that was going to last the rest of my life. And so it's liberating, really, beyond what I can put into words. And it just keeps getting better because just the rest of your life will be. You just won't have that fear. It takes away that fear. You can deal with some normal aging. It encourages you to take good care of yourself. It's just there's a lot of silver lining. A lot.

That's beautiful. I love it and thank you so much for sharing. Of all the area, it's a star. And for those who want to go further, Laura, you know, you guys do this, I mean, I can say as a, having received it, life changing coaching work, and there's ways that you help people with that. Now, what is the best place, you know, one, for people to find you guys online? And then two, you know, how do you work with people if someone's listening and they want to end their pain? What, what kind of stuff would you do with them?

Okay. Yes. And I'll be brief. So our website is paincureclinic us. That's paincureclinic us. Dr. Aziz has a great testimonial on our site. My partner John and I both tell our stories. So if you go there, please watch the videos you can navigate around a little bit. Read one of Dr. Sarno's books if you haven'. That's a great place to start. We have a two day program in Boulder, Colorado. So you come out here, spend two full days with John and I. Plus we have a wonderful soft tissue specialist named Kelly. All three of us have healed ourselves of chronic pain personally. Okay. So that's really key. The great thing about coming in person is you can work with, we can work with you physically and mentally, get you out of your day to day whirlwind. Again, you're working with all three of us and we teach you how to take care of yourself. Then of course, when you get home, it's not all solved in two days, but it's a tremendous jumpstart. We don't know of any other coaching for TMS that's being done quite like this. So this is what we're focusing on. But please check out our website. There's a contact form. We can have a consultation that's free to just evaluate your situation and see if this is a good fit. But, you know, don't waste another moment in pain because this can be over, really in a matter of months and then you'll have a plan to keep it away for the rest of your life.

Yeah. That's fantastic. Awesome. So we'll have the link to the website below as well.

Thank you.

Shrinkforthshyguy.com you can just go there and look up this episode and then there'll be a link to the UR as well. Thank you again so much, Laura, for being here on the show and just for doing what you do and being who you are.

Well, we so appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation, Aziz. It's really important. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, there you go. That is the end of our interview and almost the end of our time together. But we got to do one thing, which I'm sure you know what it is by now. Time for action. Action. Action. That's right, your action steps. So here's my one big question for you. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do with all this information? Are you gonna let it be intellectually stimulating and sometimes somewhat curious and interesting? Are you going to use it to transform your life? And if so, what's the one thing you're going to do? I mean, there's tons of ideas in this one interview and you already know what it is. You're going to start journaling. Are you going to read one of these books by the guy, Dr. John Sarno we kept talking about S A R N O. Perhaps you're even going to reach out to Laura if you're ready to really make these changes fast. And I couldn't recommend that highly enough as it's been profoundly changing in my life. What are you going to do to challenge this way of living where you're afraid of pain, you're stuck in perfectionism. Or maybe you're going to read Not Nice to overcome goodism and being too nice and actually do the exercises in the book. Whatever it is, what's the one thing you're going to do and commit to choose that and do that. That's your action step for today. Until we speak again may have the courage to 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. Azeez. 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 Social Confidence center dot com.