Feeling stuck with symptoms

Hi there, everyone. Welcome to The Bend and Snap Active People Getting Back on Track Facebook Live. I'm Joanne Smith and I'm really pleased to be back for my Tuesday evening sessions. I've just taken the last 3 weeks off, so I should be back feeling all refreshed and ready to go. So I'll be here with you until my next holiday, which chances are will be in about a year, but I'm saying I'm gonna have a year off going abroad. Just because I actually have been going abroad for the last 3 years and doing like 3-week holidays in summer, so when you come home you're just like, I don't know, I just love the feeling of being back home. So no plans to leave the country for a while, and I'm back here so that I can be here each Tuesday with you guys, all of you lovely people that join me. So if you're here, Please say hi in the chat, please ask any questions at any point. Sometimes Facebook allows me to see them and other times nothing's coming up, so at the minute nothing's coming up, but it doesn't mean that you're not here and you're not with me, so thank you if you are, and I'll look afterwards. So yeah, back to normal really for me then, um, back to my normal hula hooping and Tuesday evening session. So we've just done Hula hooping, managed to avoid the rain, which is incredible because it's been showers all day, quite heavy. And I'm just like, that is just typical when I've got a roof tile that's blown off. And hopefully there's no water going inside my house in the loft. So hopefully tomorrow someone's going to come and fix that. Anyway, today I want to talk to you about feeling stuck with symptoms, whatever the symptoms are, whether they're pains or other types of symptoms, whether it's issues with light sensitivity, issues with stomach discomfort, issues with joint pains, whatever it is, pain or symptoms, I just want to talk about approaches that may be helpful for anyone that is feeling really stuck, because I know I felt stuck for so, so long. And even in the beginning, when I first knew that there was actually the potential to recover from chronic symptoms, which wouldn't matter how many years you've had them, whether you've had them for 20, 30, 40 years, and I found out that it is possible To still recover. I still was stuck, even though I might have had improvement with, with some of my symptoms. There were still others that I felt really, really stuck with, mainly back pain. That has been one of the ongoing symptoms which has been the most challenging to eliminate. So yeah, I'm just going to talk about that for today. anyone that's stuck, because I know that there's so many people out there that, that are experiencing symptoms that are ongoing and they don't know how to free themselves. So I guess that is what feeling stuck is, when you don't feel like you're moving forward, you don't feel like there's a way out, you feel like actually life has just Um, got smaller and smaller, and you may be waiting for something to just sort itself out, or you may just be waiting for it to settle down a bit, waiting for it to feel— waiting for you to feel better, uh, wait until you felt confident again, all of those things. Um, and then you may have even got yourself to a point where it's like, maybe this is just how it is. maybe I just have to accept this is my life. You know, if you're getting to the point where you're feeling so, so stuck. And I know that for so many, many people will relate to this, that actually they have actually been given that message from medical professionals who they genuinely trust, who have told them that you're going to have to just accept that this is going to be your life right now. And we know that for those with For the vast majority of people who have developed chronic symptoms and chronic pain, that we now know differently, that that is not actually true. So there's a lot of hope here. There's a lot of hope for recovery where we once believed that we did have to accept that this is just my life now. So good news all around. So if that's you and you're thinking, why can't I just get past this? And why am I so fed up and stuck here? Then I'm just gonna share that hope and just talk a little bit more about how we can help you really get a bit out of that situation. So I always want to remind you that you're not on your own there. There are so, so many, many other people that massively Relate, you're never alone, there's so much help out there, whether that's from peers, whether that's from people like me who now specialise in this type of recovery, you're not alone, you don't need to be alone, there's a lot of help out there, you don't need to spend any money on it, you don't need to have an investment to make or anything, you just need to be willing to ask. And that is a really great start, because a lot of people who I come across don't even leave the house anymore, or they might have completely stopped exercising, they've completely stopped socialising or seeing friends or family, definitely not going on holidays and things anymore, they're not travelling. Many, many other situations that people find themselves in, like fearing that they're going to make things worse if they begin to do those things, getting into that habit of continuously checking, I hope everything's working, I'm just going to keep going because I'm hoping it's working because it's giving me one of those action needed warnings, and Their life has just changed over a period of time, um, and, and like, um, it might have only started off as, um, them genuinely thinking, I'm just gonna take a couple of days here until this settles down, and then eventually as time's gone on and, and if it hadn't settled down They might just gradually just get themselves into a point where they're really, really feeling stuck, and it wasn't like it was done intentionally, it's just something that can happen along the journey when this stuff begins for many people. So thinking about, like, for example, how did we get there in that situation? Like I just kind of was saying, that it's not a conscious decision that you're going to end up spending the next 6 months in bed, and that things are going to gradually get to that point. It's just that when you develop some kind of symptom or some kind of pain, it makes sense really to not do the thing that is Looking like it's causing it. Like, it just makes perfect sense that you shouldn't do that. So if every time I go running, um, I'm having a certain issue, then it just makes sense, well, don't run, you know. And then I might give it a day, or I might give it a week and try it again, and then it's the same again. And then, uh, okay. And then I might go again and it's the same again. and so on. So it's just like, well, I'd best just completely stop that. But if we're stuck in this misunderstanding that it's that that's causing it, then some people really get to the point where they just don't do anything anymore, which really makes sense, but then it's such a big shame because we know that we can eliminate those symptoms Because the approach I'm going from is if we know that there is nothing structural found and medical professionals cannot find a reason for this, and we have to be very careful with scans as well and MRIs and things because sometimes they're not always proving that that is the cause of the pain also. Then, you know, this is why it's worth reaching out, talking to somebody who does specialise in helping with these chronic pain and chronic symptoms, because, yeah, there's so many clues and giveaways that can be really, really insightful. So let me think what I want to share. So yeah, so if you genuinely are going from the belief that the symptoms or the pain that you're experiencing is because there is damage physically, and that does make complete sense that you're gonna not want to cause any further damage or you want to prevent any anything continuing. And if you're kind of falling into the category where you've fallen into that trap, I'll call it a trap because I was trapped there for a long time, and being told that you are injured and that these injuries are not gonna ever heal and these kind of things that we might get told, Then you're gonna avoid things to protect yourself because that's sensible, that's smart. It's not you being weak or being fearful or anything, it's just you being what looks as the, well, I'm— why would I do something? A bit like me with the sunglasses, which I wore for about a lifetime because light damaged me. But it turns out light's not dangerous, even if you do have visual sensitivities. So that's just a little quick example. But remember, when it comes to these things, it's like your brain is actually doing what it believes to keep you safe, to keep you surviving, and it can make Errors. It's easier for the brain to make an error and give you a symptom or a pain because all sensations, all pain, all symptoms are created in the brain. The body is not creating that, so it's all created in the same way. So it's easy for your brain to make errors. It'd rather get it wrong than you be at risk or be in danger because its main priority is to keep you alive and safe. It's not got a priority for you to be able to go out and hike up a mountain and go for a 5K jog or whatever it might be, do a marathon. Um, so the problem can be the meaning that we actually give To the experience that we're having with whatever sensation it is. So I want to explain something quite important. So it's not about the sensation that you're experiencing itself, it's what your brain thinks that, that— I'll call it a sensation— that you might be having in your lower back or in your neck or in your shoulder, your knee, it's more important what your brain thinks that that means, okay? Because we know that pain doesn't mean damage, yeah? We can experience pain when there is nothing wrong with the body. The brain can do that. Incredible. It's an incredible way that it works. It's such an incredible safety system. Protection. It equals some kind of protection, and it could be a perceived danger that the nervous system, the brain, has decided to protect you from. Something that is perceived might not be an actual danger, so Imagine like you're feeling some sensation in your back, an uncomfortable, you know, an awful one, yeah? But one person might be thinking, well, I've, I've been doing loads, I've, I've been going on my stair climber, on— I have been going on my stair climber. I only went on it when I realised that it's the 8th of September. Well, I realised a couple of days ago and I'm I've only been doing maximum 5K runs. I had 2 full weeks off while I was on holiday where I didn't run at all, and before that, in the week before, I didn't do any further than a 5K distance, so it must have been about 5 or 6 weeks since I've done anything over a 5K, and then I realised that I'd said I'm gonna go and do the Yorkshire Three Peaks at the end of this month, On the 27th, and I was like, whoa, I think you need to get going, Jo. So I've got this climber, it's called a MaxiClimber, and it kind of mimics climbing a mountain, so I went on that for like half an hour, and then I did yesterday a 10K run, which is the furthest, and my body felt different, so— And even my skin as well, even the skin on my instep is all sore just from my trainers rubbing, just from doing 10K, which is, for me, so interesting because my skin's clearly softened. My running bra rubbed as well, and that's never happened in years on that distance, so it's the longest gap I've had in years where I haven't done that much. So if I would have I'll get to the point. So I might say to myself, because things have, you know, I've been feeling things, I might just say, yeah, I've done, overdone it a bit. Just been, I probably should have just started off doing half that time on the stair climber, you know. But then another person, because my back's flared up slightly, might be like, um, that's it, you know, it's back again, it's never gonna go, I'm gonna go through another 16 years, or whatever it might mean. You know, you, you decide on what it means and then the brain will go with that. Whatever you think it means, it's going to be like, got you, got you, Jo, this is serious, emergency, she needs to go back and have radiofrequency nerve ablation. You know, It could go any, any way. There's so many different ways that it could go depending on where my thoughts take me with this. No biggie, not a big problem, everything's gonna settle down, I just need to build myself back up. So your same sensation, completely different interpretation. And because the brain is constantly scanning, checking, are we okay? Are we safe? Is there any danger? Is there any danger? If my nervous system decides, which is automatic, I can't do anything, I can't have any conscious influence on this, this is automatic. If it decides that there is danger because Joe's been dwelling and saying, whatever it might be, this ain't gonna go, I'm gonna have this for the next, I can't do the 3, I can't even get there, then it can produce all kinds of responses, all kinds of protective responses on the back of that, whether it's tightness, tension, muscle tension, pain, dizziness, those days where the world is spinning. fatigue. I really have had that since I got back from Orlando, but that was a virus that we all picked up, like a cold, a sore throat, and headaches, fatigue with that. But again, it's a virus, I'm gonna be fine tomorrow. Like, on Friday it was the toughest day, and I was like, I'm going to London tomorrow, on Saturday, I'm going to London for the launch of the Pain Psychology Centre UK. I was so looking forward to going to London to meet some of the absolutely specialist practitioners in this world, people that to me, people to me, people in that world that are celebrities that I was going to be meeting and socialising with, and to me The fatigue meant, little virus, go to sleep tonight and wake up feeling a lot better tomorrow. It could have meant a lot, it could have meant my whole weekend was going to be wiped out and I could cancel the trip. So that's an example recently from the weekend that was personal to me. It can bring up anything and everything, burning, tingling, pressure. So many different things, very, very real things, very, very real symptoms, all real. Nothing is imagined. It's all coming through the same system. So we're not saying that it's not real just because there might not be anything physically wrong with the physical body structurally. It's just as real, but the explanation may not be what you have been taught or believed in the past, that there is something wrong with your structural or your physical. So it's the alarm system, and Yeah, I'll just take you through a way of looking at this. There's many, many ways of looking at this. Some people use a smoke alarm. I'm gonna go with a burglar alarm for today as the analogy. So if you've got— my house has got an alarm on it. I started setting the alarm on a bedtime because my neighbour caught somebody taking pictures of the cars. Oh my God. And I was like, someone wants to take a photo of my car, so they might be going to come back and steal it. And I was like, well, but the thing that made me start setting my burglar alarm is because I didn't want them to be coming inside my house to get the keys. But then someone told me that they can get in them without keys these days. But anyway, we've got an alarm and we need it. Like, it's nice, it's security. We want that. We want our brain to notify us if there's something Dangerous. It's useful, but I think I've used this example before where it went off at like quarter to 6 in the morning unexpectedly, and I'd like jump up and I'm in a panic and I'm like, oh, what's that? What's that? I'm running around the house, I'm trying to deactivate it, and then I realised that it's going off It won't switch off even though I've put the number in, and I realised there's a fault with it and that it's actually a dodgy false alarm, and then we had to like full-on like cut the wires and deactivate the whole thing to stop it from alarming, but there were no burglar. I looked everywhere, there were no one, no one had broken in, no burglar, and so it's a similar way that it works with our, our brain, um, becoming over-central— oversensitive, um, central sensitization, you might have heard it called, um. So it, it literally could go off at a little bit of, um, a storm outside or something, you know, the alarm, the equivalent of my alarm, um. And, um, Or just someone, you know, just something really simple that could set it off that's not real, and you know it's not real, um, but the noise is and the alarm is, but it don't mean that there's a real burglar. So that's just what, how it kind of works sometimes with our, um, our brain, and it can get really, really good at detecting a potential, um, and it learns this, it learns this based upon previous past experiences. So, um, there may have been a moment where you were moving something and then you have this scenario where something happens People will use examples like, they'll say, I was just vacuuming and my back went, and then I was stuck, and then I couldn't stand up, and it was like a really dramatic situation. And then in that one moment, your brain can decide that movement is dangerous, you know, so every time that you replicate that movement, the same thing will happen again. I'm going to use a recent example that's Because we're all humans, so we're all going to have, um, our own examples of situations where we've had things like this. So this was when I was coming from the airport. My hand luggage is a rucksack, and I always— I know they say 10 kilo hand luggage is the limit. I'm sure if they weigh my bag— luckily they never weigh them— that it's more. It's really heavy for some reason. I just put loads in there in my hand luggage. I've got my laptop in there and other things. So for some reason I put the bag on and then I'd had the rucksack on, this happened going on holiday, and this shoulder here was just doing this really, really sharp shooting pain and it just seemed to be each time that I'd had the rucksack. This side's fine and I was like No chance, there's nothing wrong with my shoulder, it's well, you know, there's no wrong with it, like, what is that? And I didn't give it no attention, I was just like, I'm still carrying this bag, I don't really— I didn't, I just let it be and then I completely like forgot all about it. I didn't, I got there on the holiday, it happened when I was carrying the bag, coming home in the airport Same bag, it weighs a ton again, put it on, exactly the same thing coming home in the airport, and I was just like, wow, how incredible, like, you remembered as soon as the bag went on. Anyway, that was in the airport coming home from Orlando last week, and then anyway, I used the same bag to go to London on Saturday. It was nowhere near as heavy, it had hardly any as much stuff in it, just had some food, some snacks and a bottle of water, um, and a coat like in case it rained, even though it was lovely and sunny. Put it on in London coming out of the train station, I'd had it on a little while and I'm walking down the road and then again! I was just like, wow! Anyway, I ignored that and then it wore off, it completely disappeared in London. And I came back from the event and it was like, I was like about 2 miles away from the train station where the event was, and I, I just came with a rucksack on for the whole 2 miles all the way back. But I don't remember it happening after that. So it's so interesting how it works, but you look for your own examples in your own life how these things Get curious and see whether you've got examples. What else did I want to say? Yeah, it'll just make these decisions based upon the past, and it doesn't mean that you're— it doesn't necessarily mean that you've damaged yourself. Your brain is just super smart at associating things with danger and warning us and protecting us. So yeah, this is, but this is how we can get really stuck. So we can get really stuck and we can start avoiding. I could have been like, I can't carry this bag, I can't go to London. Being a bit far-fetched, but it really is like a legitimate thing. So avoidance just makes sense. So let's be honest, if something does really scare you, or you've got fear or avoidance around it, then you do get an immediate relief. It's like, you know, it's like immediate feeling of, ah yes, I'm safe, phew, I don't have to do that. But then what happens then is your brain will be like, yay, what a great decision, nothing bad happened, yay! And then it doesn't necessarily learn that that thing was actually safe, when it was. I put the bag back on, didn't give it much attention, went back, did it again, and so then the brain can learn that it is safe, but it can actually learn, um, that if we've avoided something because we, we believed it was not doing as good, or it was dangerous, or whatever it might be, that next time it could raise— put the alarm on even louder, you know, even stronger. And then you avoid it even more and even more, and then the cycle continues— avoidance, fear— and you get stuck. For some people, for a long time, because you think something's wrong and you just want to protect yourself, and you get some temporary relief by not doing it, but then you've learned that it's a dangerous thing, you can't do it. There's so many people have so many beliefs that I can't do this, I can't do that, and confidence just goes down and down and down and down, and then you get more and more and more focused and obsessed on the physical, on the body, Um, and it— they just become the sensations, whatever you might be having, become more and more important, and then more and more things are avoided, and then you're feeling stuck, which was the title of today's session. And it's not because, um, you don't want to do those things. It's not because you're weak or because you're lazy or because you're a loser. Or whatever you might want to call yourself, because I would never say that to anyone, and I would never say that to myself these days, ever. I used to, but it's all because your brain's super smart and it's learned. It's a learned response, and it becomes conditioned response. It happens automatically. So it's a really important bit. If your brain's learned avoidance because a certain thing it's believed is dangerous, then we need to start inputting new information. We need to give messages that, that you've got this wrong. There's no burglar in my house. I'm okay. I can do this. It's a false alarm. This feeling, this sensation, Does not equal danger. I don't need to be scared of it. I need to live my life, and if it shows up, I need to respond calmly. And this does not happen by staying safe and staying on the sofa or staying in bed or avoiding exercise, avoiding activity. It, it just does not happen that way, sadly. It happens through experience, it happens through corrective experiences where we have a go, but we're doing it with giving the brain those new experiences, um, new messages that we're giving to ourselves. Like, thinking like you could understand this stuff inside out, Research, read all the books. You could read the book on how to learn to ride a bike, 100 books about learning to ride a bike, watch a load of videos, watch 50 videos and get someone to explain it, but honestly you've got to do it, haven't you? You've got to ride the bike to know, to show that you, you know, to do it. Recovery is the same really, you've got to do the things, you've got to implement the stuff, You've got to proactively implement and show through doing experience, and it can begin with visualization. I've done sessions before on visualization, and I'm sure I'll do many more, but more and more importantly, you go and do the things. Um, so education is important, but it doesn't, um, give you the outcome. It just doesn't give you the outcome. You have to give your brain the experiences, and then just be like, oh wow, that movement was okay. I actually went outside, I went onto the doorstep, I went to the end of the street, and I didn't panic, and so on. Just using little examples because I've gone a little bit over, and I need to leave. So we don't go from 0 to 100. In one day, but we start building that experience little by little. Apart from if you're me and you end up going on those crazy roller coasters just for your daughter at Universal, and the roller coasters go from 0 to 70 in like 2 seconds. Wow. Some people are able to do that. But we're not saying like— If you've been housebound for 6 months to tomorrow go out and do a marathon, it's like little by little incremental steps. It's not about forcing yourself, it's about— it's not about ignoring things that are coming up, it's just not about pushing through extreme. Don't do that. I did that. I pushed through extreme pain and symptoms and it didn't work. It just kept me even more stuck for a lot of years, over 16 years. Please don't do what I did, um, going for the I'm gonna fight you until I win mindset. It's just got to be a more safe, gentle, good feeling approach. So just start where you're at, because if things have got to the point where you're not doing nowhere near what you want to be doing, The first step might just be something really little. Yeah, like dancing in the kitchen, and then take it from there. Whatever it might be, if you've not been out driving for a long time, it might just be sitting in your drive in the car and behind the driver's wheel. The goal is not to have zero symptoms, get rid of everything. It's more important if you're feeling really stuck where you are, it's more important, um, than aiming for like getting rid of symptoms, is aiming for just starting to do things with them, knowing that they're not harmful and not dangerous, um, because We don't get to decide at what point they'll fade away or disappear. We don't get any control on that, it's done automatically by the brain. But instead, you can start thinking about what you can do whilst they're changing, whilst you've got them, Maybe it might still be there, maybe it will be uncomfortable, maybe you'll need to use some medicines, you know, for as long as you might need them. Maybe you'll be a bit nervous or not confident, but you go anyway, you do it anyway, you know, because that's what That's what, what is the way forward, yeah. If you sit and wait for things to change, then if you look at how long you might have been there, that'll give you a clue for, for what, what the future will be. So yeah, you don't need to make anything happen and make anything go away, but You just need to not let it stop you from moving forwards little by little. Yeah. So hopefully you've heard something in this. If you do need help to understand, um, because what I was going to say is if you're stuck with your symptoms, you need clarity on what you think is causing them. Because that can be— that is so crucial. That is the most crucial thing. I'm going to leave that with you for today. If you don't know what's causing them, get help, find out. And if meds— if you've had everything ruled out medically, rule this in. And, um, good luck with everything. I hope you've enjoyed tonight's session, and I'll see you all next week. Have a lovely week. Bye!