66. How to Heal Chronic Pain By Utilizing Pain Science & Subconscious Reprogramming - A Deep Dive Into BioPsychoSocial Healing

Welcome to the That Healing Feeling podcast. I'm your host, Faith Ashenden, founder and CEO of That Healing Feeling, where we show you how to become a self-healer of mind, body, and spirit through nervous system regulation. Join me and thousands of my other students as I dive into the world of neuroscience, subconscious programming, energetics, and radical self-love. In this podcast, you will learn that your body and mind are meant to heal, and that under the right circumstances, we can experience miraculous healing by leveraging our own internal infrastructure. Let me guide you as we challenge preconceived notions and outdated narratives and dive into the empowering world of self-healing. My intention is that you leave this podcast full of hope and actionable tools. So without further ado, let's dive in.

Hello and welcome back to the That Healing Feeling podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I can't wait for you to hear this episode. Today's episode is super informative, if I do say so myself, and this episode is for you if you experience chronic pain. Okay, so for all my chronic pain people out there, I really think that this episode is going to change the game for you. I was inspired to create this episode after living in my DMs the past couple of weeks and speaking to so many amazing people in my community and just kind of taking note as to like, what are the biggest issues that people are just dealing with, right? And I think what's coming through loud and clear is that you guys are super well-versed on the physical aspect of your chronic pain. Like, you have done the freaking work. You are out there eating the best diets, detoxing, taking your supplements, living your like holistic wellness life to the max, and you're like, why is it not working for me? I know that for a lot of you it has improved your lifestyle, and I am a wellness girly too. Like, I do those things. You know that if you follow me in any capacity. But I feel like that's sort of where it ends for a lot of you. You might be meditating and doing some yoga, but as you will soon learn, it's not enough without this deeper subconscious work. So in this episode, I'm really breaking down for you exactly what it means to do that work and why you are not healing your chronic pain. This is a super meaty one, so I recommend that you take out a pen and paper if you can. But if you're like, Faith, I'm driving, I'm doing the dishes, whatever you might be doing, don't worry. I have loads of info for you in the show notes. And if you are subscribed to the email list, all the information will be in your email as well. So this information is for you to keep and do what you want with. But I really hope that it feels like what you've been missing. And I hope that— and I mentioned this in the podcast— but I really hope that and listening to this, you have this moment of like, oh my God, like, this is what I need to do. Like, you feel that pull, you get the goosebumps. There's some sort of synchronicity, a pull from the universe saying like, this is the stone that's left unturned. And that's what I really feel like this podcast episode is going to do for you. So enjoy the episode. Let me know what you think about it, you guys. Like, I really want to know, like, I live for your DMs that say, oh my God, like, look at the change this made in my life, or this helped me realize this, or whatever it is that it sparks in you. Let me know because I always want to hear, and nothing makes me happier than knowing you've had some sort of shift or that my work has impacted you in some positive way. So without further ado, Let's dive in. Okay, so today's recording is going to be a live podcast. So I have been doing a few of these lately, and I think it's pretty cool, um, because if the information that I'm sharing resonates with you, then you're able to go back and listen to it. Um, and then if you are subscribed to my email list, you're also going to be getting some of these videos sent to you in an email that just like basically sends you the video for 24 hours. So my recommendation is that you have like just a notebook and a pen out and start taking some notes because today's lecture is super meaty. And we're specifically going to be talking about chronic pain. What I really want to dive into today as the overarching theme is this is, in my opinion and experience, the biggest way to prevent healing chronic pain. And we're going to dive into what is that way that we are preventing that healing and how can we change that trajectory so that we can support ourselves in healing. So before we dive into it, I want to define who this applies to. When I say chronic pain, first and foremost, the word pain kind of has a broad meaning in the sense of what I teach. And it really means like an unwanted sensation. So you might say that your sensation isn't specifically like the traditional sense of pain, but it's more like a tingly that's really annoying, or like nausea, or whatever it might be. So for the purposes of what I'm teaching you here today, it— you can fall into that category. And when I talk about chronic, I mean something that has been going on for at least 3 to 6 months. So if it's been going on longer than that, it's definitely chronic. But we're not talking about acute, so meaning like you just started experiencing this sensation. So this is something that you've been experiencing for a long time. Okay. So whether it's 3 months or whether it's 30 years, the science that I'm teaching you here today is still going to apply to what I'm teaching you here today. So we've defined what chronic pain is and who it applies to. Let's talk about the biggest mistake that people are making when they're trying to heal their chronic pain, right? So that is my first and most important point I think I'm going to make today. The biggest mistake that I see people making when they are trying to address their chronic pain is that they are treating their pain as a purely physical experience. Okay, so the biggest mistake— I just want to say this again— the biggest mistake that I see people making when they are trying to heal their chronic pain is that they are trying to treat their chronic pain as a purely physical experience. Okay, so this is the biggest mistake that people are making. This is the biggest reason why people are joining my program and are working with me. And when they come to me, they say, I've been doing X, Y, and Z, and every single thing that they say is purely on the physical plane. Okay, so the concept that chronic pain is not just a physical experience came about in the late 20th century. So the science that I'm bringing to you now is a new paradigm, right? It's a new narrative in the chronic pain space. So up until the late 20th century, we thought that chronic pain was purely tissue damage, nerve damage, whatever. And the lens that we took when we tried to help people heal was that physical lens. And we simply defined their condition by what we could see. Physically. Now come to the late 20th century, Dr. George L. Engel— so he is an American psychiatrist and internist— developed a new model that started to help people heal chronic pain. And this is a model that my personal work really is based upon. Now if you're taking notes, I highly recommend that you write this down, and it is called a biopsychosocial model. So bio, exactly how you would spell bio, right? Psycho, like psychology. Social. Biopsychosocial model came about in the late 20th century, and this is the lens that we started to take based on the updates in pain science to start to help people heal chronic pain. Now, inherently within this model, it means that there are 3 lenses we should take when we're looking at helping someone heal their chronic pain, not just the lens of the biomedical, which is the physical aspect, but the psycho, so the more mental, emotional, right, psychology side of it all, and then the social. So truly, your social circle and your cultural norms and beliefs and perceptions, these other aspects or lenses to the model we now use for chronic pain are so important if we want to help someone heal. And so the first kind of hurdle we have to get across is, hey, there are updates now, right? There are updates in pain science, there are new narratives, and these updates and narratives allow us to take many more lenses, use many more levers to help people overcome the chronic pain that's holding them back. So the number one mistake that people are making when they're trying to heal their chronic pain is they're only using the biomedical lens. They're only looking at the physical and addressing what they can physically see. Okay, so if this is you and you feel like you fall in this category, like you have done all this stuff, including like the functional integrative work where you are like doing the detoxing and you were doing like the perfect diet, whatever it is, right? And you feel like you are like, oh my God, I do it all. My lifestyle is like exactly what it should be. I'm sorry to say, but you're still falling in the biomedical physical side. You're still not addressing the other components. Okay. So I'm not saying that that stuff isn't important. I'm saying those things in isolation aren't going to get you over the line. So this is a good kind of like point of reflection. Like, am I doing that and telling myself that I'm doing everything? Or are there aspects to my healing and my chronic pain journey that I'm missing? Okay, so let's talk about what happens when you're only using the biological lens from the biopsychosocial model. Okay. And by the way, if this is you, you are not alone. The majority of people only use this biological lens. Very, very smart people. But like I said, the majority of my clients who come to me, they're only using this lens. So what's happening when we're not focusing on the psychological and the social side of healing chronic pain? So first and foremost, if we aren't focusing on the psychological— and we're going to dive into each individually— when I talk about the psychological side of healing chronic pain, Specifically, I'm talking about the brain and I'm talking about the subconscious. So you'll kind of see me touch on these different points. But let's first dive into the science. I like to talk about the neuroscience first. If you know me, you know that all my work is rooted in neuroscience. And I do this for a very particular reason, because science demystifies the subconscious, right? So when I talk about the subconscious mind and your beliefs and all this stuff, it's sort of rooted in what a lot of people think is more like theory. And so if I can go ahead and make these connections and really root it into the neuroscience and what presumably everyone here already believes to be true, then it's much easier to make those connections, to get buy-ins and help you shift these subconscious beliefs because you're rooting this new information into what you already know to be true, which is the neuroscience. So I'm always going to start with, hey, this is what's happening scientifically. And then let's bring in the subconscious work that I teach on a day-to-day basis and kind of tie that into what you know to be true. So let's say you fall into the category and you are only using the biomedical biology side. You're missing the psychological components. So let's dive into the psychology. And how it's so important when it comes to healing chronic pain. Now, I'm going to give you an analogy here to help describe what's happening in your brain when you are experiencing chronic pain. So imagine your brain is a vast network of roads, right? And each road represents a neural pathway. Okay. So like in your mind, I really want you to picture this because The brain processes in images. Okay, so that's sort of the language of the mind. So when we are trying to really deeply understand and embed something, I really try to speak in metaphors and also to really anchor those two images. So I really want you to, in your mind, imagine a vast network of roads, almost like an aerial view where you kind of have those pictures where you see all those highways crossing each other, right? And each road is representing a neural pathway in your brain. These pathways are like communication routes that carry information between different parts of your body and your brain. So essentially, your brain is a map of everything in your body, and your neural pathways are carrying information from the body to the brain. Now, we are thinking, right, of the analogy of the roads to get a really good visual of what that might look like in the brain. In the case of pain, because that's what we're talking about today, these pathways transmit signals from pain receptors in your body to your brain informing it that something is hurting, right? So this is a very, very simple trigger-response analogy. In the case of pain, there is a receptor in the body that transmits a pain signal to the brain and you experience this sensation, and that is a neural pathway. So that's actually physically formed in the occurrence of that experience as a neural pathway. Okay. Now think of chronic pain, which we've already established is different than acute pain, right? So this is something that is experienced over time. Think of chronic pain like a well-worn dirt road in a forest. Okay. So remember, you're using the image in your mind right now so you can really solidify this into your subconscious. Initially, when you experience acute pain from an injury or illness, a new pathway or road is created in your brain to transmit this pain signal. So the first time you experience this sensation, a new road is created, right? And that is trigger, receptors, pain, which is that response. However, as the pain persists, or becomes recurrent, this pathway becomes like a frequently used dirt road. The more that you experience the sensation, the more you use that pathway. So think about in your mind, when you first create a dirt road, it's not very well established. There's probably lots of like tree branches. It's difficult to walk on. You might trip over whatever's in the way. And that is sort of the inception point of a neural pathway. But the more that you experience that sensation, that very same sensation, so the more you're traveling that pathway, the more kind of established and clear that path becomes. So, you know, you've gone like hiking before, right? Or you've walked on a path that a million people have walked on and it's super smooth. There's nothing in the way. It's super easy to walk on. You could probably walk with your eyes closed. And get from point A to point B super quickly. So that's what's happening to a neural pathway when you're experiencing pain on a chronic basis, right? The pathway becomes very well established, so it becomes well established and easy for signals to travel along. This process is how chronic pain becomes ingrained in the nervous system. Okay, so this is really tying it back to the nervous system, which is my primary focus when I help people start to regulate, to release these sensations that are holding them back. So the process is as followed: initial injury or trigger. So it starts with that initial injury, whatever it might have been that was sort of that inception point of your pain, and it triggers the presence of pain. This is transmitted to the brain via that initial inflammation or whatever might have happened. So when you experience this pain, the brain starts to adapt to this new signal. It strengthens the connections between neurons responsible for transmitting pain. So as your pain becomes chronic, the neurons responsible for transmitting pain become stronger, right? They get more powerful the more you experience your pain. If the pain persists or recurs, the neural pathway responsible for transmitting the pain, um, is used repeatedly. Now, for most of you, I imagine that you are potentially experiencing this pain on a daily basis. So however much you are experiencing this pain, um, is really going to be how strong that pathway is. Okay, and so just like a dirt road that's frequently traveled, this neural pathway becomes extremely well-defined and efficient. Over time, your nervous system becomes sensitized to pain and pain signals, meaning it becomes more responsive to even minor pain stimuli. What does that mean? Over time, your nervous system essentially evolves to become more sensitive to pain. It becomes really good at remembering these signals that are being consistently kind of stimulated via chronic pain, and it starts becoming more and more sensitive to them. So this means on the physical experience of an individual who experiences chronic pain is likely that going to be that they are more sensitive to the pain. So not only are they experiencing it more often, but they're feeling it more deeply. Right. And so this is often why people— this is one of the reasons why people will say that their pain is getting worse. Even though they're doing loads of different treatments. And associated symptoms, which we will talk about, also continue to get worse because of this. So this results in increased pain perception and a lower pain threshold. Okay. Your brain also forms associations between the pain and other factors like emotions or memories or activities. So this is why a lot of times people who have chronic pain will find specific activities to be triggering because these associations in the brain are also not just related to the initial trigger, but related to any other experience that is in the category of that trigger. So let's say that like your initial trigger was that you fell and you hurt your hip, right? So initially, you know, you might avoid standing on a ladder where you fell, but years go by, you might avoid standing altogether because your brain is really forming these tight associations between anything in the category of movement and your pain, and you're becoming increasingly vulnerable to that. You're experiencing it on a deeper level, to the point where even thinking about the trigger activity is enough to set it off. And this is because the brain doesn't know the difference between what you're actually experiencing and what you're imagining. So I'm sure if you have chronic pain, you might be able to relate to this idea that even thinking about your trigger is enough to give you the sensation, the unwanted sensation, right? And this is also what we call anxiety, because anxiety is the fear of an unwanted future. So you might be like thinking about something potentially happening, and that is enough to trigger the sensation to come about. So eventually the neural pathways for pain become deeply ingrained, leading to what we call chronic pain. This persistent signaling can continue even after the injury has healed. Okay, so if you are someone who experiences chronic pain and you kind of followed the analogy of the dirt road and what's actually happening between the initial onset of the tissue damage to these really worn, torn pathways in the brain, right? It's really important to understand that your chronic pain becomes so much more than the initial damage in the body, right? Your chronic pain becomes sort of the responsibility of the brain. So much so that the majority of people— and these are the updates in pain science— the majority of people who are experiencing chronic pain actually are experiencing it as a result of these neural pathways becoming so, so strong and so, so sensitive. And actually, they have healed, but they can't realize the benefits of their healing because these pathways have completely monopolized and taken over the way that they experience life. And so then you can kind of bring it back to, well, what are people doing wrong when they're trying to heal? Well, you can see that taking purely a sort of biomedical approach to it, taking purely this physical approach to healing and not considering what's happening in the brain is what's going wrong, right? When you look at it from this lens, because actually there are so many people who say, well, I went to the doctor and actually my labs look fine. Like, how many times have I gotten someone who said my labs look fine or they don't know what else to do because it looks like it's getting better, but I'm still experiencing pain even worse than before? Well, hopefully the overview I've given you is a little bit of a deep deep dive for you as to why the pain could actually be getting worse, not better, and why your labs or whatever it is that you're getting from your doctor are presenting like you're healing, but your physical experience is different than that. Okay, so this is what we're talking about when we say a biopsychosocial lens. We need to be deeply looking at the psychological component and the social component if we're looking to heal chronic illness. So let's talk a little bit about the social component because this is important as well. So we can now prove scientifically that the social component impacts the way that you experience your pain. So the people that you hang out with, your communities, their shared perceptions and beliefs are going to impact the way that you experience your chronic pain. One of the things that I often find with my clients, and it's why like week 1 is a huge detox of this, is that people start to identify with their chronic pain. So they start to say like, I am just someone who experiences chronic pain and therefore I must only hang out with people who experience chronic pain. Therefore, I must only hang out with people who like to talk about this, right? And I must join all the Reddit groups and Facebook groups and da da da da da. So this kind of behavior, which makes sense, in the same way impacts people's capacity for healing, right? Because if you are surrounding yourself with people who also believe that you cannot heal, who also believe that reality is crap, who also believe that reality isn't fair, etc., etc., etc., right? You will never heal. So contrary to our instinct to surround ourselves with people who potentially are going to not put up friction and just accept, you know, the status quo. We know that this kind of behavior actually elongates the experience of chronic pain, which is why who you surround yourself with is so freaking important. But what's even more interesting to me than that is the identity piece, the perceptions and beliefs piece, right? So the perceptions of your community and the beliefs of your community about chronic pain is going to impact the way that you experience chronic pain. Now, the reason why this is so interesting to me is because perceptions and beliefs are firmly rooted in your subconscious mind. So right below your conscious awareness. So what you believe to be true and what you perceive to be true isn't actually the truth, right? It's what you subconsciously believe and subconsciously perceive. And so that's why this subconscious work is truly at the core of healing chronic pain, because we know that those variables so deeply affect your physical experience. But the reason why so many people actually struggle to overcome these chronic sensations is because they aren't aware of how to bring what subconscious to the conscious awareness. One. And I think that's like the primary reason. But I think outside of that, they're not aware of how to really identify these pathways that we discussed earlier in the brain and then how to rewire them. So those are the two kind of components there. And we're going to dive deeper into that. Let's talk a little bit about the brain being the culprit here. Right. Okay. So again, this is specifically if you have chronic illness, We want to focus on beliefs, identity, perceptions, and neural pathways, right? This is what we're missing. This is why we're not healing. So let's talk a little bit about the science behind why the brain is actually responsible for your sensations of chronic pain rather than tissue damage, nerve damage, or whatever is going on in the physical body. Okay, so the more often a certain type of pain is triggered, aka chronic pain, right, the easier it becomes for the brain to replicate the experience. Just like any other habit, the more you engage in a habit, the easier it becomes for you to subconsciously replicate that experience regardless of whether or not there is a reason to create pain. This is really important, so I'm going to say that again. Regardless of whether or not there is a reason to create pain. We see this kind of pain memory show up with phantom limb pain, a condition where amputees report excruciating pain in a limb that no longer exists. So phantom limb pain is where an amputee will, for example, have their arm amputated, and they will report excruciating pain in that arm even though it no longer exists. You can Google it, write it down. I encourage you to Google it because that will really help you, um, subconsciously start to shift things, right? The more you collect evidence, the faster you're going to shift these subconscious beliefs. So there is no physical damage triggering the pain. So there's nothing we can do to apply physical treatments to an arm or a leg that is no longer there. But what's fascinating is how it's possible to relieve this kind of pain by changing the brain's perception of the situation. That's why mirror therapy is often used in phantom limb cases. The patient puts a mirror up to their healthy limb, creating a reflection that looks like the missing limb. Then the patient moves the healthy limb around, performing small tasks like clenching and unclenching their fist. When looking in the mirror, it seems as if the missing limb is suddenly present and moving around with EASE. This visual is enough to convince the brain that there isn't any danger in the missing limb after all, and then the pain disappears. Whether it's pain in a missing limb or pain from an old football injury, the brain never forgets how to create that sensation. So I feel like this is a really fantastic example because nobody can argue with the fact that if you have And let's say you had like damage and pain in your arm and you have it amputated. No one can argue with the fact that when it's gone, it's gone. And it makes very little sense. This person is experiencing chronic pain in that limb when that limb doesn't exist anymore. But this is a very, very real example of how the brain remembers and memorizes the sensation. And the damage does not need to be there. For you to experience that sensation. And this is not just happening to people who are, you know, experiencing amputations. This is happening to everyone to some degree who is experiencing chronic pain. Um, so some individuals experience chronic pain without clear evidence of ongoing tissue damage or inflammation. This phenomenon challenges the traditional view of of pain as a direct response to tissue injury and suggests that the brain can generate pain independently. Okay, so migraine is a really good example of this. I have a lot of clients that come to me with migraine headaches, and this is a fantastic example of chronic pain without clear evidence of ongoing tissue damage or inflammation. And it's why it can make it so difficult to overcome these migraine headaches. But also why it makes it such a fantastic opportunity for us to dive into where does pain actually come from when it's chronic and how can we attack it. If you haven't heard, we are on the very last launch of my signature program, the Health Transformation Accelerator, in 2023. I will not be opening up the doors again until later on in the year in 2024. If you are here because you are interested in taking your healing to the next level, you are tired of trying things that aren't working for you, or perhaps work but then you flare again, then this is for you. HTA is all of my life's work built into one freaking beast of a program. It is the guidebook you should have been born with that tells you everything you need to do to rewire your subconscious and your neural pathways so that you can send messages of safety to the body and self-heal. If you are ready for this quantum leap and you want to do this work with me in the only program where I coach live, then make sure you grab a seat in the Health Transformation Accelerator by going to the link in the show notes or DM me heal on Insta to make sure you get in before the doors close. So this is going to be my last example for you and just provide your subconscious mind a little bit more evidence that there are so many examples of pain coming from the brain and not the tissue itself. Some of the most dramatic results are if you take sham medication, so you release opioids in the brain. We have our own internal pharmacy. So yes, we can do this, and I recommend you Google it because Again, the more research you do, the more you shift your subconscious beliefs. The reason this pharmacy exists is to translate your knowledge about where you are and what's happening to you and what's the bigger picture into lower-level changes in the brain. So it's interesting what we see. People are given what we call sham medication, yet they're still able to release these internal opioids in the brain and they're not given, you know, placebo effect, right? And so the placebo effect, the phantom limb pain, migraine headaches, all of these are examples of how there's absolutely no tissue damage or physical damage at all. And yet people are able to not only experience healing by tricking their brain, but they're also able to physically manifest their own opioids, right, to suppress the pain. There are so many more examples of how our brain really takes the reins when it specifically comes to chronic pain. And I just want to really take a second here to clarify something for you, because a lot of people will say to me at this point, well, isn't it important to address the pain and not ignore the pain? And I want to answer this with yes. So pain does serve a very specific purpose. Initially, when we are experiencing pain the way we are designed to experience, so in an acute way, pain is there to protect, right? So you put your finger on a hot stove and you get a sensation of pain, and then you move your hand. That protects you from burning your hands any longer and saves the skin, right? And we can apply this to so many different experiences in our life, and that's how we learn. So we learn to not put our hand on the stove. We because we have that sensation of pain and it protects us. So that is a very acute experience. It's a one-and-done thing and it protects us from hurting ourselves anymore. The problem is we weren't designed to experience chronic pain, right? So this protective mechanism kind of is a bit confused in our modern day and age when we are now in these situations where we have chronic pain, not just an acute situation where we can quickly react. And move on and just simply remember not to do that thing again. When we have these chronic sensations, the brain is hardwired to continue to try to protect us. So it's sending the sensation in a way that is intensified over time, in a way that we have the onset of it faster than we used to have before. And it's continuing to say like, Why are you still doing this thing? Why are you still doing this thing? Let's say that your pain is in response to movement, right? You can't sit down all day. Most likely not. It doesn't work, right? So you might move here, you might move there, and your brain is going to continue to send that chronic pain thinking that it needs to protect you. So what's happening is your nervous system is on red alert. It's like stuck on red alert, right? Because that's that protective mechanism is a response from the fight or flight or sympathetic nervous system. So it's stuck, right? And it thinks that it continuously needs to protect you when actually you're safe. And so it's kind of like a glitch in the system, right? What happened is that our environment evolved big time and our brains just haven't caught up. So don't think of it as my body is broken, my brain is broken, like what's going on? It's all wrong. Think of it as now we have to make a conscious effort to evolve the brain to catch up with how quickly our environment has evolved. That's all it is. It's not that something is wrong with the brain. It's that the brain is defaulting to the way that it has evolved, which is pain is a protective mechanism. So it's going to do what it does best, which is to keep us alive, right? And it's going to continue to send these signals until we can get the message across that we're fine, we don't need to be protected. And when we can get that message of safety through the nervous system, we can turn off that pain, right? So if you are taking notes or you're trying to really like digest this information, I think something that's really important for you to really internalize is pain is a protective mechanism from an evolutionary standpoint. And when we are experiencing chronic pain, the answer lies in our capacity to communicate to the brain and the nervous system that we are safe and we do not need that signal anymore, right? That whatever it's worried about, we've got the message. Thank you for letting me know. Because think about this, the brain can't communicate to you in language, right? And the body can't communicate to you in language. So it's going to communicate to you in feelings, whether that be an emotion or a physical sensation. So if you are experiencing this physical sensation of pain on an ongoing basis, your body is trying to tell you something. And if you've looked from the biopsychosocial lens at the biomedical side and you realize that there's nothing wrong physically, then we take the psychosocial lens and we say, why is it still trying to communicate to me that something is wrong? Right. And in this lens, specifically when it comes to chronic pain, we can simply determine that it's trying to protect us. That it's memorized that these specific triggers in our world are dangerous, and our nervous system is stuck in protective mode. It's stuck in fight or flight, and we simply need to create a subconscious line of communication to the nervous system to say, "Hey, don't worry, we're good, we're safe," and that, like a light switch, protective mechanism goes off. And in that place, so does the pain. There's so much more so much more beneath the surface that needs to be understood and addressed. If you're on the journey of trying to heal chronic pain and you feel like what you're doing isn't working for you, or you feel like you are actually like doing the most but you're not reaping the benefits. Okay, so this is what's going on now that we're looking at the biopsychosocial lens. And hopefully you've written this down if you are taking notes. Assuming you're already addressing the biomedical side, What do we need to do to address the psychosocial side? Pain perception is a huge talking point when it comes to the psycho side. So the sort of like, let's call it like a brain subconscious side, like trying to think of a good term there. And so the way we perceive and experience pain is influenced by our beliefs, perceptions, values, all of that. Pain can be amplified. Or can be mitigated based on our emotions, based on our thoughts, and based on our feelings about pain itself. This is pain perception. So you need to first understand the purpose of pain so you can take away the negative charge. So I've just explained that to you. The purpose of pain is to protect. If you are looking at your experience of chronic pain and you are like, oh my God, Why is this happening? I'm so annoyed. My body hates me. Da da da da da. You are villainizing pain, right? You are literally working against your body and you cannot heal in a body that you're at war with. And I just can't emphasize that enough. So the first step in addressing the psycho from the psychosocial aspect is thinking about your perception of pain and starting to understand that The evolutionary purpose of pain is to protect you and everything in your body. Every single mechanism at play is there to protect you. The ultimate directive of the human mind and body is survival. So every single mechanism is there to protect you, including pain. Just because it's uncomfortable doesn't mean that it's not working in your favor, right? So we need to kind of seperate our feelings about discomfort and for a second just reconcile with the fact that, okay, pain was initially there to protect me, but now I'm in an environment where I don't need that signal anymore. So I'm no longer at war with my pain. I'm going to start to become friends with it, and I'm going to start to create a line of communication between my pain and my conscious mind to let my pain know, one, Thanks for trying to protect me. I appreciate it that you're always doing your best. And two, I don't need to be protected anymore. We can turn this signal of pain off. This is pain perception. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack within the pain perception kind of bullet here. But ultimately, your perception of your chronic pain is impacting the way that you feel that pain. So again, with all my work, I'm putting it back on you. And this is this internal locus of control. You get to control your physical experience of your sensation. You're not the victim. And it goes back to, can you look at how you're subconsciously perceiving this experience? So I'll leave you with that one. The next one is emotional states. Now, if you're a student of mine, you know that on week 1, we go hard on emotional states because this is so, so so big when it comes to healing chronic pain or honestly any chronic symptom. So chronic pain tends to, when misunderstood, lead to emotional distress, anxiety, depression, frustration, anger, right? All these emotional states and these emotions intensify our pain perception or perception of pain, what we just talked about, and create a cycle of suffering. Okay, so these emotional states can be triggered by a real experience or our anxiety. So anxiety is never real, it is the fear of an unwanted future. So whether you're thinking about it or really experiencing it, you are shifting your emotional state, right? And we can feel that shift, right? Like when you feel excited and happy, like you're feeling good, you've got those neurotransmitters flowing, you're excited, you feel a bit energized, you feel a bit happy, and you can quickly and easily be triggered into the opposite sensation, right, where your heart rate is racing, you feel a bit sad, you feel a bit anxious, whatever it is. These are your emotional states. Um, so these are going to impact the way that you experience your chronic pain, believe it or not, because when you shift your state it actually manifests physically in your body. If you're not watching this, I just did a little like mind-blown thing because I really want you to understand that every emotion triggers a cascade effect of 1,200 biochemical and hormonal reactions in the body. Every emotion triggers a cascade effect of 1,200 biochemical and hormonal effects in the body, meaning that the way that you feel about your situation and the meaning that you've attached to it sends chemical messengers through the body that impacts every single cell, including the way that you experience pain. So we are talking about what do we do with the psycho lens from the biopsychosocial model. One, we're looking at pain perception, which we talked about. Two, We're looking at our emotional state. I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying you're going to bullshit yourself. I'm saying you're going to change your subconscious beliefs about pain so that the emotional state flows easily and effortlessly and creates this huge cascade effect of feel-good chemicals in the body, which minimize and can completely heal the pain. Let's talk about the next point. We're talking about solutions, right? Cognitive factors, negative thought patterns, catastrophizing, so exaggerating the severity of your pain, all-or-nothing thinking, all of these contribute to the persistence of chronic pain. I just want to emphasize that these tendencies are trauma responses. Catastrophizing, perfectionism, all-or-nothing thinking, overanalyzing, all of these different responses are trauma responses. They are not your personality. Every single one of my clients, when they come to me, I would say they either fall in the category of perfectionism, overthinking and overanalyzing. Oh my gosh, all or nothing thinking, like a million percent. They're like, if I can't do it at all, I won't do anything. Um, or if I can't do it perfectly, I won't do anything. Um, so all of these cognitive factors impact the way you feel chronic pain because they are trauma responses. And when you live your life thinking this way, you start to release survival chemicals. Survival chemicals are going to perpetuate this notion that you need to be protected. They're going to take your nervous system into fight or flight, and we all know what happens there, right? Pain is like, holy shit, I need to turn this up because we are in danger and I am here to protect. So let's go, right? So this kind of thinking, which is deeply ingrained from a trauma response, is making the experience of pain worse. And you can see how all of these things are working together— pain perception, emotional states, and cognitive factors— to impact your experience of chronic pain. And this isn't even touching on the neural pathways that I gave you analogies for earlier. So by now, if you've been watching this, I hope you're thinking, whoa, this is actually really encouraging because actually there's so much I haven't looked at. There's so much hope here for healing. And I thought I was at a dead end. I thought I had tried it all. But actually, um, there's so much I haven't tried. That's what I hope my work does for you. I hope it just like sparks this like, holy shit, like there's so much I haven't done. So those are some sort of stones, if you will, that are left unturned. So what are the benefits of using a biopsychosocial lens when it comes to healing chronic pain? Here's the thing. If you stick on just the biomedical side, it's unlikely that you will completely alleviate your chronic pain. You will either be on medication for the rest of your life, or you'll be at the very best, like, dancing around on eggshells trying to make sure that you don't flare. When you take a biopsychosocial lens on healing your chronic pain, you heal with so much ease. Because think about the kind of work I've just described to you— emotional states shifting to peace, and joy, away from fear, resentment, whatever it might be. We talked a little bit about thought patterns. Think about working on releasing those thought patterns and how that would impact every area of your life, not just your pain. But what would be possible for you if you felt joy more often? Or what would be possible for you if you stopped catastrophizing? Or if you let go of perfectionism? How else would that impact your life beyond the implications on chronic pain? So when you use this biopsychosocial lens, not only is it more effective for your healing of your chronic pain, but you see huge benefits in your life. Because to take it back to what I was talking about at the beginning of the podcast, you start to evolve your brain because that's what this work is doing, right? We talked about the fact that our environment has evolved way faster than our primitive brains. And so it's not that we're broken, it's that our brains haven't caught up. So doing this work is evolving your brain. It's literally taking these like primitive responses that are subconscious that have kept us alive, bringing them to the surface and manipulating them so that our habits are in alignment with what we want with our lives. And this is evolution. So when you hear people talk about a quantum leap, This is what they're doing, right? They're shifting their subconscious and it's manifesting in their life. So this biopsychosocial lens is how you take a quantum leap, not just in your healing of your chronic pain, but in your entire life. So the benefits are vast, right? And you hear often people talk about like my story, for example, because I'm not the only one. Most people who do this work have a story. You hear people talk about their specific story and how it inspired their business and how they have this amazing life. And it's all because of this seemingly quote unquote shit thing that happened to them. And what I would say is this biopsychosocial approach makes you that person. You don't get to hear about those stories anymore of people saying that their shit situation is the best thing that happened to them. You get to be that person because when you change your subconscious, you change your life. And you start to realize that you can manipulate everything around you, right? If you want something different in your life, you change the way you look at it and then what you look at changes. And so it gives you the power back. That's what taking a biopsychosocial lens does. It does so much more than offering you relief to your physical sensation. That's the point I'm trying to get across. It's just so much more. So this is what informs— and I said this at the beginning of the podcast— This is what informs all of my work, like this biopsychosocial approach that I've just taught you about today. Right. So I personally believe, and if you've been following my work, you know this, that it's all about that subconscious work if you have exhausted these other options. Right. And so, and this approach of really digging into, okay, what does the literature say? What are these updates in pain science? This is where we learn that it is about the way that we see things. It is about what we believe, because our beliefs and our values and perceptions manifest in the physical body, and they impact our experience of our physical sensations. And so that's why I really work on that subconscious level. I think it's so important. I think that it's not talked about enough, and I think that really it's what people are missing. So I know that this was a super, super dense podcast. I mean, I have my notes here. I have like 3 pages of really in-depth, like, scientific breakdown for you. And it was a lot. It was a lot to take in, which is why I'm recording it for you now. So don't worry if you're like, oh my gosh, I missed something. I am going to be sending it back out so that you can listen to it again. So just make sure that you're subscribed to my podcast and subscribe to my email list because I honestly send out so much free information. Like, every time I come on a Facebook Live, I record it and I email it to you. So like, if you want this, just make sure you're subscribed, you guys, because then you'll never miss it. So that is like such a good way to start to learn this work. But you've got to be in the right place at the right time, which is on my email list and subscribe to my podcast. Outside of that, if you are looking to do this work specifically with me and you want the step-by-step guide on how to reprogram the subconscious mind to heal your body, make sure you head to the link in my bio and sign up for the Health Transformation Accelerator. Everything I have taught you here today is exactly what I teach in HTA. It is literally the guidebook you should have been born with if you are trying to manipulate the subconscious mind so that you can heal your physical body. We are diving into your neural pathways, how to identify them, your neural networks, how to weaken them and create new ones. We dive into what are your beliefs, where did they come from? What is your identity? Where did it come from? Your values, perceptions, all of that, and so much more. And how to create these subconscious beliefs and identities and all of that that are in alignment with what you want in your life. So whether that's physical healing, whether that's mental, emotional healing, whatever it is, we give you the tools to do this with ease. So not only are you shifting your physical experience, but you're shifting your life experience because when you start to be able to control the way you see things, your entire life changes, right? So I hope this was informative for you. This was a really fun one to teach on. I'm so passionate about it. I think it's so important. And if this is the first time that you learned about the biopsychosocial lens to healing chronic pain, I highly, highly recommend you do some research. I recommend that you go on to Google and literally just Google like biopsychosocial and start to read about the literature and start to educate yourself. Watch videos, subscribe to my podcast, or take it to the next level and join me in HTA. The more you educate yourself and the more you read about it, the faster you, you reprogram your subconscious mind. So if you're wanting to reprogram, you really want to immerse yourself in the information. That's the one of the easiest ways to do it. So just staying really dedicated to surrounding yourself with, you know, the up-to-date science and literature in this space and kind of removing yourself from any circles or places that aren't speaking in alignment with what you want for your healing.