Live Inspired with Dr. Don Wood - Episode 8

Welcome to live inspired with Dr. Dawn Wood. I'm Karen Seltz, the business development manager for Inspired Performance Institute. Today on this episode, we are going to talk about chronic pain. What causes it, what we can do about it, and how is trauma related to it. So fill us in, Dr. Wood. Where do we start on this subject?

Well, you know, it's something that people are dealing with. You know, hundred million plus Americans are dealing with chronic pain and really not sure why, you know, and typically, again, if you're dealing with pain, you're going to go to your doctor, you're going to be constantly trying to figure out, you know, answers to it. But really, what there's. What research is showing is that chronic pain is really a mental, emotional issue more than it is a physical. And that would sound strange to people. They say, well, I really did hurt my back, right. And it's chronically hurting. Yes. So that's that pain. But what keeps it in that pain is basically a lot of mental, emotional struggles. And so one of the things that they say is a big positive is that if you can maintain a really strong positive mental attitude, that really makes a big difference. And, you know, and I played as, you know, I talk about all the time. I played hockey, which is a pretty violent sport. So there were lots of injuries. And even though I had. I didn't have injuries that would take me out. I mean, I literally played since I was 6 years old until I was 21, without ever missing a game. Wow. And first game that I ever missed, the first time I ever ended up having to sit out of a game was I cracked three vertebrae on my back. And that was an injury that I could not play through. That was too severe. So that was a real major injury for me. And so I ended up actually walking with a cane for a little while. It was so bad. I was only 21 years old. And.

But the advantage was, is that one of the things that the doctor did tell me this is how I ended up falling in love with Florida. I was newly married. And the doctor said, you know, we used to just put people in traction and, you know, let it heal. And he says, but you know what? He says the best thing for you is to really just go down to Florida, lie in the heat, float in the water, right. And just let it heal. Because I was a fast healer, so I would heal very quickly. But I really believe that the reason I healed quickly was because I always had a positive mental attitude. And so this was an injury that wasn't going to just Instantly heal. This was really actually going to take some real time to actually, you know, go through the process of healing. But I was always very positive and in no point in my mind that I believe I wasn't going to heal.

Where if you talk to a lot of people, they just believe that they're going to live with this chronic pain all their lives, right? So there's. And a lot of it is coming down to it's a connection to control, right? There's a negative association with chronic pain and control. So when somebody feels like they have no control over this pain, then that actually exasperates the pain and keeps him in this chronic situation for a lot longer. In my mind, I was just like, this is just a process. I heal, right? And I know I heal because I've healed many times. And so I would always be thinking about, you know, the fact that I do heal. So there was no doubt in my mind that this was just going to be the biggest injury I've ever had, something I couldn't play through, but I was absolutely going to heal. So it did. You know, tennis was the other sport I played, and so I couldn't play tennis either because you have to throw the ball up and you arch your back. So it really took me out for months, which for me was just like unbelievable. But I got it. It was a pretty severe injury.

Right. I have some experience with chronic pain, and the part that really it's almost triggering to the old me is keep a positive attitude because that is so difficult to do when you have that pain day in, day out and don't see any glimpse of recovery. Now, my experience with that is I had a car accident and I had soft tissue damage and it hurt my neck and my shoulders. And I was extremely active. I was in my 20s at the time and I couldn't do any of my regular activities like tennis, running, boxing, hiking, without. And it hit me at an identity level because it took all that stuff away that I thought was me. And I went into a severe depression, which only made the pain worse, right?

Yep, yep. But there, again, what it was, was the way you were looking at it. Instead of taking the focus on the pain, the focus should have been on the healing. But because we have the pain, we tend to focus on the pain as.

Opposed to what would cause somebody to be in the cycle like I was in, to focus on the pain and what I couldn't do.

My limitations, just like I had mentioned earlier, control. You lost control. So if you've lost control at other Times in your life. Right. So maybe this gets. Now there's an association with control. Now I've lost control. Right. And then that goes back into the memory of what does it mean not to have control? Right. I get hurt, and so there's an association with control and pain. Does that make sense?

Yes.

And so if you had had earlier experiences with, you know, control issues, and now you're hurt, and now you've lost control of the life you've been leading, there's that association that magnifies it. And so for me, I had never had that situation. I was pretty much always in control. Even if I was in pain, I could play through pain. So for the first time, for me, I actually did lose control of the ability to do something. But the way my mind looked at it was. This is a temporary pause. The reason my back is hurting is because it's telling me something to allow it time to heal. But at no point did I ever think that was not possible not to heal.

Wow. Wow, that's a fascinating outlook, Especially thinking back to where I was. That was not even a thought that crossed my mind. I don't think it was accessible to me where I was. So what do you recommend to people? I mean, we have doctors that want to treat the pain, which is what? Treating the symptoms, not the cause.

Exactly. So as a good example, I had a situation, this is probably 10 years ago, and I injured. I didn't even injure it, my left arm and about the middle of the forearm, I started feeling this really severe pain. And I was like, this is really. I didn't hit it. I wasn't doing anything that should have injured that. And I was like, well, you know, maybe I'm getting older, right? Maybe I'm not bouncing back from something. But I didn't know what even caused it. And so I started having more and more trouble. And I was playing baseball with my son, my youngest son. So we were going out doing that. It got to a point that I couldn't even catch a ball. The weight of the ball landing in the glove would create such severe pain. I couldn't lift up anything with my left arm. Now, if I just sat there and did nothing, it was fine. It's only when I put any weight bearing on it. So, like, trying to catch a ball, having to hold the glove and the ball right, or opening the door, stuff like that. And so that was really unusual for me. And I was thinking, it's not getting better. I'm resting it, but it's not getting better. And I kept playing baseball, you know, and my wife was saying to me, well, then why are you playing? You're not, right? Let it heal. And I say, well, but I'm on a team. I can't let the team down. So I moved out to the outfield to see if that would help. And. And then pretty soon, when the other team realized my arm was sore, they started hitting the ball that way, so that have forced to catch it. And so anyway, so that's what I was dealing with. And then I was telling somebody one time about it, and this. This guy was a.

Psychologist as well, and what he said to me, which was really interesting, and this was really when we were developing the program. And so he said to me, says, well, have you ever experienced this kind of pain before? And I said, no. I mean, I hurt my back, right? But, you know, this was a little different. This is my arm. I don't know what. I know what caused my back pain was I had an injury. I flipped head over, heel head over, you know, and crashed into the boards and had to go to the hospital in an ambulance. I thought it was paralyzed. That's how bad it was. And. But anyway, so he said, how about at any time in your life, he said, have you ever experienced a pain that you couldn't understand, that you never didn't know what it was? And what. When he said that, what popped in my mind is when I was little, I used to have these really bad stomach pains. And at the time, they didn't know. And, you know, I found out the story about my grandfather was actually our family doctor. I didn't. Because I was adopted. I didn't know that. And I remember when I was about. I felt like I was about four years old, three or four years old. I remember lying on the picture that came into my mind when he said that was lying on the couch having these, what felt like old ladies. They're probably in their 30s, right? It was my mom's friends, right, that felt like they were really old people trying to comfort me and trying to tell me be okay. But I kept in my mind what I thought as I was thinking about it was that nobody was helping me. This wasn't getting better. And then when he said to me, he says, did it get better? And I said, yes. And I found out later one of the reasons why it got better was because what my family doctor, my grandfather had said was there was a lot of tension in the house early on because when I was adopted, my grandmother fought my parents to get me Back and created a lot of turmoil and a lot of stress. And he said that the stress was coming, was creating the stomach pains. And he said, you have to take stress out of this home. That's why I ended up living in this idyllic home. My parents took all the stress out, but I got better. But just him telling me, did I remember a time when I actually did heal? Karen, I'm not kidding you. I did nothing different. And within 30 days, I had zero pain.

And I believe it was. I had to just remember a time where I actually healed. And that got my healing process going again. On this particular thing, and there was no other explanation for it. I didn't take anything. I didn't do anything different. Right. All of a sudden it was in my mindset that I could heal. And for some reason, I guess maybe that wasn't open to me for that period of time, for some reason. And then it healed. So something created it. I have no idea whatever caused it, because it wasn't an injury, but it was definitely an unknown pain, which then was related to when I was a child. It was an unknown pain. And it got better when we took out stress. Right? Now, I didn't know that when I was four. I found out that later. But then my mind correlated that. Then my mind started focusing on healing and it healed.

Wow, that's fascinating. So if people have chronic pain, do you recommend they go back and think about a time when they had pain and were able to heal from it?

Yes, because what you're doing is you're getting your mind to go back into a healing mode. Thinking about healing as opposed to thinking about pain. It's what you focus on. It's the same thing you talk about if you're in a car and the car spinning out of control, right. And you see yourself heading towards a tree, right? What most people will do is they'll be fixated on the tree, and what's going to happen? They're going to hit the tree, Right? You have to focus on the open space. Then your mind then moves towards the open space. So what you tend to focus on, your mind starts to work on. So the idea is to think about healing, focus on healing. Remember times where you healed. Talk about times where you healed. And I really think that when I talked to this guy about it, I was at it. It was as a training place, right? At a training event. And so in my mind, I started talking this. When I started talking to this guy and he sort of said that that's what I believe Prompted the start of focusing on the healing as opposed to the pain.

Wow. I believe that too. I believe very strongly in the correlation between the mind and the body and that we can create things. I've been able to do that with weight loss also, you know, just picturing myself thin when I was heavier. And it wasn't quick for me, but it was ten pounds a year until I was thin.

Yep. And that's the key. Because it was a nice gradual approach, the mind could accept the change. Right. And because you focused on being thin as opposed to not being fat.

Right.

You see that difference?

Yes.

It's really powerful. Right. Because the subconscious doesn't understand negation.

Right.

Right. So if it sees. Sees you as thin and not fat. Right. You say, I don't want to be fat. Your mind hears, I want to be fat, I don't want to be fat. It doesn't hear, don't.

Yes.

Right.

Yes.

What it hears is I want to be fat.

Yeah. That's what I've worked a lot with, people setting goals and working on. The language is critical. It's a very critical piece because of that negative language that the subconscious mind doesn't hear at all.

No. Doesn't understand negation at all.

Yeah. Interprets it totally differently. Yep, I get that.

Yeah. Because it's literal. So don't, can't, won't, shouldn't. Doesn't compute. So what it hears is the literal translation. So if I said, karen, don't fall down, what did you just do? You thought about falling down. Right. But if I said, karen, be careful. Right. When you walk out the door, Right now, your mind is focusing on being careful, not on not falling down.

Right. Or on falling down.

Right. Yep. You know, a great example of this is Marco Chiseto. Marco is the double amputee marathon runner who's now, after going through our program, is a world record holder and a Nike athlete, you know, which was phenomenal. He's really good. But love the story that Marco told me when he. When he fell asleep in the snow for three days, he had gotten drunk and passed out because he was so distraught over his friend committing suicide, he staggered into a hotel. They took him to the hospital and they said to him, marco, your legs are so badly frostbitten, we're going to have to amputate them below the knee. And so we have to do that right now. So he. They went through the operation and they gave him morphine. And so he had the morphine. And so the nurse came in in the morning and she Said, marco, how you feeling today? And he says, I'm actually feeling not too bad. And she says to him, how did the morphine help you with the pain last night? He says, oh, yeah, I don't know what I would have done without the morphine. And she says, marco, you did without the morphine. She says, you were pumping it, but it wasn't in your vein. It actually was pouring onto the bed. Your bed is soaked from morphine. He never had any morphine.

Wow.

And he said, and I didn't. I was fine. It was like I had morphine. If I thought I had morphine, I had morphine. And there's a lot of research about, you know, how placebos, right. And actually the medications themselves, there's really not much difference between the two. If the person believes they're getting it, they're going to be feeling it.

That's incredible. So speaking of medications, what are your thoughts about pain medications and the things that doctors give us to treat these symptoms?

You know, a lot of times, again, is it placebo that's helping? Is it the medication that's helping? Generally, what they're trying to do is bring down inflammation. That's generally what most of those medications are doing is sort of or blocking the nerve, you know, pain centers. So to some degree, they can help. So I'm not saying pain medication can't do anything, right? I believe it can. But the power of your mind is more powerful than any medication that you can have. So if you can, if you use medication temporarily to get you through, right? If you continue while you're taking the pain medication, to be constantly thinking about how bad this pain is and how this pain is never getting better, right? You're going to get stuck on that medication. The key is to be able to focus on healing, right? And allow the pain medication to be your temporary solution to get through it, not be your permanent solution for life.

Wow. What do you recommend for people to get to that place where they're able to focus on healing? Like, how do they create those pathways or those habits?

That's really what it is. That's the perfect answer. So what you repeat, your mind will program. So if you repeat negativity, you're going to continue the belief that you're not going to get better. So if you know that you're in pain, you know, you're struggling with that. I mean, this sounds really sort of almost silly, right? But I'd start watching comedy shows, I'd start listening to comedy. I'd start reading books on humor. I would start doing things that make you laugh, make you feel better, right? Start reading books on positive psychology, all those kinds of things. What it takes. Inspiring stories of people who have overcome adversity. You know, you look at a guy like Marco, can you imagine, right, the night after having your legs, you know, removed, that you can actually get through that night without morphine, right? That's incredible. But look at this guy, what he's accomplished, right? So he lost his legs. He had to learn how to walk on prosthetics, then he had to learn to run on blades, right? And then he went from that to being able to now become a world record holder, Right? That's all in the mind.

Wow. Yeah, it's incredible. And what a shift, right? He went from devastated and, you know, drinking so much that you pass out in the snow for three days to being a world record holder and now getting signed by Nike. That's incredible.

Really incredible. Great story. ESPN just did a story on him. It's actually out right now, and so you can look it up. So he's just a great inspirational story to other people that there's nothing that you can't do if you put your mind to it. And that's what he said. So when he came to us, it was over a year ago, is the beginning of 2019. They said that they. That he had basically plateaued in terms of his timing. He was training harder and harder, but wasn't getting better. They said they really believe now was his mind. And then after he goes through our program nine days later, he runs in his first race and he takes 15 seconds per mile off his time. Wow. No difference in training. It was all. And that's what he said. If you watch his testimonials, as it was all in my mind, once he got his mind freed up, he was able to do more. And then the next race he ran in after that one was the Boston Marathon. That's when he broke the world record. And then a couple months later, he ran the Chicago Marathon and broke his own world record by another five minutes. And this guy, can you imagine? This guy is running miles in under six minutes.

Like how incredible, right?

26 of them in a row.

26 in a row. Here's another incredible story. I just worked with Charlie Engel, the marathon man, the guy, the running man. Charlie ran 20 ran across the Sahara desert.

It took 111 days, the sand, running two marathons a day.

Oh, my gosh.

So he ran a 26 mile marathon in the morning, slept, ran another 26 mile marathon in the afternoon and slept and then started all over. He went for 111 days without stopping to run across the Sahara desert.

Oh, my gosh.

And I love what he said to me. I asked him, I said, how is that physically possible? And you know what he said to me?

What?

It's not.

It was mental. It wasn't physically possible.

What made it work was his ability to mentally do it. His body would have tried to stop long before.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

That's incredible.

That's the power of the mind. What an incredible. And he said he ran in when he was just really beginning to start, you know, running. He was just running and he entered a 5k race. And so he got to the start and somebody, they were just sort of warming up and talking, and somebody said to him, he said, have you ever run in one of these before? And he says, yeah, you know, a couple of them. He said, I haven't run a lot of them. He says, 50 miles is a long way. He goes, no, this is a five mile race. He goes, no, look at your. Your number. It was a 50 mile race.

Did he do it?

He. Not only did he do it, what he said was, okay, he says, I'll run 10. He says, and then I'll quit. He says, you know, nobody will notice after 10 miles like that. I've quit. And so he ended up. Then he realized he left all his stuff back there, right. So there was no sense in quitting. He may as well just keep going. And he won it.

What?

Yeah. And yet he was thought he would quit, and yet he actually just continued because in his mind, oh, like, I just, I can't do anything else now. I just got to keep going.

Wow, that's a mindset. We could all learn from that. That's incredible.

And so if you've got chronic pain, you're struggling and stuff in your life, just look to other people to inspire you. Right. Sometimes that's all you need is just somebody to give you that little boost up so that, you know, you can then say to your mind, your mind can say, I can do this. Right. It's just incredible what, what people can do. Mario Ortega, who came to us over a year and a half ago, he lost his left leg above the knee from a car accident. And he'd been suffering for 10 years. The pain got so bad that they put him on oxycodone. And so he lived on that for four years. And when he came to see us, he asked me, said, will this program help me get off Oxycodone. And I said, well, you know, let's talk about that when we're finished. And I figured he'd forget. So when we finished, he said, okay, I'm going to ask you again. Will this program help me get off oxycodone? And he said, the words you said to me saved my life. I said, mara, you can stop anytime you want to. That night, he took one more. He took one pill when he left because he'd been sitting for four hours. So he said he was feeling the pain. He got home, he flushed all his pills down the toilet, shredded all his pre prescriptions, hasn't touched it since. In a year and a half, he lost 40 pounds. And he's a veterinarian. And he's gone back into his veterinarian business where he couldn't even get out of bed.

Oh, my gosh.

For those four years. That's the power of the mind. That wasn't me doing anything. That was his own mind deciding he just needed to be told. Right. He just needed that little encouragement. Right. That you can stop. Same thing with, you can heal. Right. You can get better. You can, you know, and so don't go out, you know, if you've got a serious injury, we're not saying go out and start running. Right. Allow it to heal. But the same time, focus on healing, not. Not the pain.

Beautiful. And find those inspiring stories of people that have healed from your same type of pain or condition. That would really lift you up, Right?

Yeah. Because your mind is going to hear that story. The subconscious mind responds to stories, symbols and metaphors, so when it hears stories, it inspires. And so if all of a sudden you're reading stories about people who have overcome some tremendous adversities, your mind is starting a belief system that it's possible and that's all you need is that possibility.

Yep. Crack that door. Let that healing in. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Wood. This is.

The light just went out.

Oh, that's interesting.

Look at that. See that? We're supposed to be finished.

Do you have the clapper?

Yeah. Really? Actually, you just have to wave.

Oh, advancements in technology.

Yep.

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us. This has been really enlightening. I wish I would have had had this information 20 years ago.

Yeah.

I'm grateful to you and I'm sure you're going to touch a lot of people's lives with this information. So thank you.

You're welcome.

And we'll see you next time on Live Inspired.

Thanks, Karen.