No Agenda Shares

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to the Bend and Snap Active People Getting Back on Track group. Welcome to another lovely Tuesday. Apologies for the late invite. Some of you might not have received it in time, so welcome to anyone that's new here. I usually send out the— either the day before or the same morning, I send out a title with an invite for every Tuesday I'll do a live session, and for some bizarre reason I got carried away and I realised that it was nearly the end of the day and I've not actually sent out the invite for today, so that should explain why the The title of today's session is No Agenda Shares because Jo's got no agenda today, but here I am. And as always, I'm here to share something that will hopefully be helpful for you all today and something that you might hear that might get you kick-started onto your journey to getting back, getting back active, returning to an activity. Having some confidence that there is hope, that you don't need to struggle with continuous symptoms or pain or anything like that. So I literally just thought it would be helpful for me just to come along, and I'm gonna do you a little bit of a story more than anything about how I came to be here today. Sitting here in my back garden, in my office, in my garden office. So please comment in the chat if you're here, say hi, any questions. I'm not sure why it's not working, but I always click and Facebook is hit and miss whether or not the comments come through. So sometimes I'll have a little quick look on my phone as well to see whether it's working on there. Let's have a look. Okay, so I'm going to keep an eye on my phone at the same time. I'm going to keep it on silent so it doesn't distract me. I'm going to try something new today because every week I don't always see the messages coming in. Okay, so something a little new. So, right, so welcome to anyone new that's just joined. I just want to introduce myself so that you know who I am, where I'm from, and what I do. So I am Joanne Smith, Joanne Lee Smith, just because there's so many other Joanne Smiths, and I'm from Leeds in the UK. And my background has always been working in healthcare right from a really young age. I actually started in healthcare in 2000— no, 1998. I was 16 years old, so I started working in the hospital, and that really inspired me to go into a career in nursing. So for a long time, I worked in the hospital. I started out my career doing all kinds of different wards, and I settled for paediatric nursing. So I started out working on a children's ward Loved that for quite a few years. I actually really enjoyed doing that until I had my own children. My son's 18 now, so 18 years ago I took the year off maternity leave and I decided to go back to university to study to be a health visitor, which is a community public health community nurse, and I did that for quite a few years as well after that. I really enjoyed that job. Just going to do a quick summary so that I'm not here for the next few hours sharing my whole life story, but when I first started the training, I was only a couple of weeks in, my son was only 1 year old, he'd just gone to nursery, I'd gone back to study full-time and working full-time, and I ended up being in a car accident literally on my way into work. I'd just dropped my son at nursery, It was, um, I'll summarise it as briefly as possible, but in the accident I got twisted, I got briefly knocked out, I banged my head, and then my ear, I couldn't hear out of this side for a little period of time. The driver that hit me must have called the alarm, an ambulance and the police car arrived. Anyway, I came around. I was fine. I went into hospital, got checked out, got given the go-ahead, got all clear. You know, just, you know, you might feel a bit sore, but just go get on with your life. You'll be fine. So I just carried on. Went straight back. I didn't have a car, but I found my way into work that day, and I just kept going. Never took a day off. I had all the best expectations in the world that I would be fully recovered. But as it turned out, I'm going to zoom ahead, but 3 years on I was still really, really in so much pain with my neck. It had become to the point where the pain did not seem to disappear. Even though I was always an active person, I'd Kind of got to a point where I was really struggling to do things. But I'd done everything as recommended, you know, move, keep going, be active. But it wasn't just the neck, like, other symptoms started to kind of happen as well. But long story short, I did all the things that you would to look after yourself, to remain active. Got myself into a running club when, probably about 3 or 4, I forget, oh, I forget the timeline, but the timeline doesn't really matter. But long story short, I'm gonna zoom right ahead up until literally, probably about 2 and a half years ago. So this happened back in 2018. And then all the way counting forward— no, it happened in 2008, ignore me, 2008. So from 2008 right up until about 2 and a half years ago, I finally, I have to admit, I gave up the, I gave up my dream for recovery. I actually got myself to a point where I thought, I think I'm out of ideas. I think I've exhausted everything that I can do to get well. Um, with many symptoms— chronic migraine, chronic leg pain, chronic back pain, chronic neck pain, eye pain, massive visual— all sorts of symptoms. Insomnia, um, jaw issues, ear issues, you name it. Massive issues, all sorts of things. I finally exhausted what I thought. I always was really passionate that I'm gonna get well, I'm gonna recover. I got really strong along the journey. I started running ultramarathons, for those of you that have known me some time. I did everything I could to be strong and healthy and fit and eat well and exhausted the options. Never ever kind of given up the hope more than anything. And then I finally, about 2 and a half years ago, admitted defeat. Maybe, maybe I'm a dreamer. Maybe I'm living in hope. I've been told by all these doctors. I was finally like, I gave up and went back and said, I need some help. And I was referred to rheumatology and I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I was told, you're just gonna have to do the best you can. You're at the best case outcome possible. And I came away, I'd admitted defeat. I accepted the medication that they gave me. I thought, I'll give it a try. I'm just exhausted. I'm out of options. I'd done from 2008, 12, 13, 14, 15. I'd done over 15 years. I was exhausted. I was like, right, I'm I'm just gonna— maybe there is something. Because I just didn't want to admit that there was something maybe that I could never get well from. Anyway, that's the story. I gave up, went in, I did get diagnosed. I was hoping they were gonna say, oh, keep going, you'll get there. But unfortunately on that day they didn't. But anyway, soon after that, probably about— well, it was 2 years ago. It was literally just over 2 years ago at Easter. 2024 that I was introduced to Dr. Sarno. Well, not Dr. Sarno in real, I would have loved to meet him because what an original amazing man, but sadly he died in, I think it was 2009, so, but one of my, a person that I was doing some coaching training with had the most amazing success with his clients because he helped people with recovering from back pain. And it kind of came from his own success because he'd had chronic back pain and he'd been told about the book by Dr. John Sarno, and he'd read the book and basically he had his own spectacular recovery. And on the back of that, he began helping other people recovering from back pain. And I can remember in one of our training sessions, I was sharing with him about my difficulties, and he said, Jo, you've got to read this book. You've got to read this book. So initially, it was soon after really that he told me in January, actually, it was round about the January time that I first knew about the book, January 2013. 24. But it wasn't until Easter, April, that I actually got round, because I just couldn't focus, I couldn't, I wouldn't have even been able to listen properly, I was struggling with everything, so it was when I was away on holiday at Easter that I thought, right, I'm gonna listen to the book, I'm gonna actually listen to it while I'm away, but again, I was having such a tough week that week while I was away on holiday that I didn't really able to concentrate or hear anything or do anything different. So again, it was then another 6 months, but there was something that kept telling me, go back to the book. So finally I did go back to the book, and this is around about 18 months ago now. Forgive me if my timeline's slightly out, but it's a rough guide. So this is around about 18 months ago. And the book that I was recommended was the Dr. Sarno— and actually, I was recommended The Divided Mind, which is one of his earlier books, and I did listen to The Divided Mind, but then I saw on Amazon Audible, oh, there's another one called The Mind-Body Prescription, so I decided to listen to The Mind-Body Prescription. Instead. And I decided that I was just gonna listen to it while I was out walking, and I was just gonna really do my best to pay attention. And wow. And this is what I want to recommend to everybody. I'm going to share the links in the chat at the end of this conversation because I now know that I'm not the only person who listened to The Mind Body Prescription. And had a massive wow, wow moment. And leading up to that, right back at the beginning when I was first told about Dr. Sarno at the original, I searched on YouTube. A YouTube lecture came up where Dr. Sarno was educating a group of his patients who had back issues. And I had my first moment of connecting the dots and thinking, wow, this could be relevant to me. I had a moment where I thought, wow, this is really relevant to me. It sent actual shivers, you know, like when you get that shivers through your spine kind of feeling where you're like, oh wow, I've discovered something. But nothing changed. Having the knowledge, having a little bit of understanding, nothing changed. So Yeah, I went back to it, but I actually began implementing some of the simple strategies that were spoken about in the book. And what I learned in the very beginning was that, which I'd never really made the connection, is that pain is not an accurate reflection of damage to the body. For example, we can have pain when there is absolutely zero damage or tissue damage or issues in the, in the body. So the body is not actually the, the source, the main, main reason why the pain's coming from. And actually, all pain and symptoms can be generated in the brain based upon the perception of what the brain deems dangerous. And, um, but long story short, I, I kind of had my moment where I was like, yeah, this is, this is what's happening with me. And it wasn't an overnight fix. And nothing, like I say, happened until I went back, listened again. And it was something of the things in the book at the very beginning that I was like, yeah, this is easy to do. And when you know, it's easy to stop doing certain things. So I had lots of like, I had like a back, a special chair. I had like a spiky mat that I'd lay back on that was like a lumbar support with acupuncture spikes. And I'd have like a massage and I'd have a cold pad and a hot pad and I'd have, I'd be forever like massaging and stretching and treating my back, my body. I'd be giving so much focus on that particular part that was hurting, but whereas Dr. Sarno completely taught me completely otherwise. that the diagnosis and all of those things, again, it's all body, body, body. The focus is just all on the body. It was all on fixing. There's something wrong. There's something wrong with the back, the body, and not just the back. I had other symptoms too, many other symptoms. But I now knew that this was what Dr. Sarno called TMS, tension myositis syndrome, and it's been later named as mind-body syndrome, PDP, which stands for psychophysiological disorders, neuroplastic pain. It's just so much different language which means the same thing, psychosomatic pain. But originally it was called TMS, and I was like, oh yes, that's what I've got. Finally, I had an explanation for what I had had all of those years, and finally I had the hope back. I had some hope back, which was really, really nice. And who'd have thought it was just shortly after What I felt like having all that hope was taken away. So, but like I say, I didn't really know what to do in the beginning, but I had this new information, so I just followed it the best I could. So I went back to the book, the simple things that he said, what I really heard in the beginning were stop, get rid of the labels. So, for example, fibromyalgia and anything like that, that like, I no longer— I just dropped. I was like, I don't have fibromyalgia. I literally knew I didn't have fibromyalgia. I was like, fibromyalgia, is that a thing? I'm not sure. I just dropped it. I decided I'm not going back. Luckily, they've never— I never got my follow-up appointment anyway, because it appears that when you've been diagnosed with these chronic things. They don't seem to give you a follow-up appointment even when you've asked for it. I've got a warning sign here, but hopefully it's still working. So that was quite— and he said repudiate the physical, and I was like, that means stop any physical treatment. So I made a real big decision there because I'd been over 12 years in the chronic pain Team, having 18— every 18 months I'd have radiofrequency nerve ablation or steroid injections. I was a bit of a regular. I've lost count of the amount of times I went back and had treatments, and it would give me temporary relief in my neck. It never actually worked in my lower back. I now can understand that it was a placebo effect. So I made the decision what Dr. Sarna recommended all of those years ago, and so I stopped, stopped putting hot, stopped putting cold, stopped doing anything that was intentionally to fix. And the other thing that I added in at the very beginning, which was advised in the book, which to me felt really weird, really, really cringy, just not something that was natural to me. I was not really a journaler, I was not really a writer. I'm not really that kind of a person that likes to— I'm just looking to see if I've got an example of some writing that I might have done. But he basically said, he basically said, his theory, the early days theory, was that Look, there's an example of scribble. That's just thoughts. That's just thoughts that are chaotically scribbled. It's actually just a pen moving. It's not written so that you can read it. That's just my style, but in the book it said that what Dr. Sarno, his theory was that Repressed emotions are the cause, and the brain would rather deflect the attention through the physical by giving you a migraine or back pain or a piriformis issue or sciatica. It could be carpal tunnel syndrome. It could be, it could be any one of all the million physical symptoms that we would legitimately get through physical issues. And the original theory was that repressed emotions, and one of the biggest emotions that is spoken about is rage, anger, that is not, that is in the unconscious, and the brain would rather not allow that to come conscious. It would protect us through the distraction of the physical issue. And it all made a lot of sense to me, and I thought, well, I know I'm mad about certain things in my life, I'm angry about— there's so many things that I could actively, consciously know that I'm in anger over, that I could remember and go back to and get wound up over, you know, things that might have happened. I could easily remember things from the past that I might get annoyed at, but I was like, I'm just going to do what it says because what have I got to lose? What have I got to lose? So I literally just, the week that I went literally cold turkey on everything, I decided I'm not going to treat my body. I'm not gonna— I'm no longer going to talk about— I'm not even going to mention that I'm in pain to anyone. I'm just gonna— I'm not gonna talk about it anymore. I just stopped talking about it. And about 3 weeks later, my daughter goes to me, Mum, Wow, you haven't mentioned your back for a while. And I was like, oh, thank you, you noticed. And it's just an example, but I found it really difficult in the beginning because actually I think I'd got myself to a point where I didn't realise it, but my identity, it just became me. It was just constant, continuous, that I was constantly feeling the discomfort. I'm careful how I word things now. I don't talk about it in ways that are going to, um, annoy myself or scare my— you know, scare myself or anything like that. I'm cautious with my language because that was part of the process too, is how we describe the symptoms. Um, we don't want to be describing things in graphic horror movie kind of ways. Um, but anyway, I'm sure if you would have asked me 2 or 3 years ago, I would have described it in a lot different way. So I just did it, did the journal thing, didn't have any particular order with it. Dr. Sarno said you could have like current things that are potentially, things from the childhood and things about your personality, you could, you know, split it into 3 columns, but I kind of didn't really do that. I just literally just went freestyle with a scribble. I think faster than I can write. I'm never, I've never been a neat writer, so there were no way that I was going to be concentrating to write down a beautiful diary entry, that's just never going to happen, so I just focused on the psychological elements, things that I may have been getting angry at, that's how I began. I did it for a week and I got my first wow moment really during those first times of doing that, I just got my first wow, there's something in this, there's something in Writing about what I'm angry about, who would have thought, and scribbling it all out, that I just felt maybe a reduction in the intensity of the sensations that I were experiencing that weren't comfortable. And I just thought, there's something in this. And that was the beginning of me going in really deep into learning more and more and more about this stuff. Like literally listening to all the success stories I could ever find online, all the podcasts, reading all the books that I could even get on Audible, including some paper books that I, that they're not available on Audible and whatever else, and to the point where I introduced, because I was already a qualified coach, I was already working coaching in the beginning online, I was coaching other trail runners, ultra runners, people that may have had injuries and health issues a lot like me, so it just made perfect sense that I would introduce this stuff into my already kind of early days, it was in its infancy, it was my work in the online space, I was only maybe 6 months into the beginning of doing online, I'd been doing coaching since 2018, like face-to-face and in the NHS, but I didn't realize that recovery was even an option for people that were going through chronic pain, chronic symptoms. I didn't even know it was an option for me. I just was just so super happy to find out that there is an option that not everyone knows about. that I ended up just basically going all in. I had some rapid improvement in the early days, which was enough for me to be fully 100% bought in. I'm a believer, a true believer, because I was absolutely amazed that one of my symptoms of leg— my lower left leg That was— it went away overnight, and I was blown away that that was even ever possible because it had been there for so long, just so long that I would have been— I'll give you an example of how I dealt with it. I would have been in the cold shower numerous times in the night putting cold water on that just so I could have some ease from it, just so I could cope. Or on the floor, on the cold tiles. But I was like, where? That was gone. Not everything were gone, but I just was all in and I started using it in my coaching and other people were getting rapid success and I was like, why are they making quicker success? They're making more progress than me when I still had many other things going on. But things were dropping away, like, as time were going on, like, more and more and more of my symptoms were improving and other people were getting rapid success based upon what I were learning and helping them with and sharing. And what I found in the beginning were that those that were maybe only in the first 6 months or some only maybe like 4 or 5 months were seeing the quickest success, whereas for me I'd been over 16 years at that point, um, with ongoing issues. Mine's been more gradual. In the beginning, it was quite rapid and enough to know that this is, this is the way forward. This is the only thing that works. Um, so yeah, so I, I continued on my, my journey. I made the decision, this is my pathway, this is what's helping. And I want to help other people to do the same, and I want to make sure that I'm fully qualified. And so I followed the process. I joined Dan Buglio's group coaching program because I knew that I just wanted a helping hand and meet other people that were going through the similar. I did about 6 months in that group, learned a lot, achieved a lot. Got through my— did graded exposure for light sensitivity, so I can now go outside without the big sunglasses on all year round. On the back of all of that, got an unplanned bonus of migraines. Just like, I'd not— at the time, I'd not had a migraine in over 9 months. I'd publicly declared that one in one of these sessions, and then I just had a one-off when my daughter was doing the prom dress shopping, and that was no biggie. So the gap has been the longest it's been in 25 years since I started with them when I was a teenager, so that was incredible. Did some training with SERPA, did the SERPA training. I did training with the Freedom from Chronic Pain, the Dr. Schubiner, training. I also joined the ATNS, the Association for Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms. I started working with doing the diagnostic and working with clients that do have TMS quite a long time ago now, and I'm loving doing that and just loving helping people to get back to being active as well. Along with helping them to just get a whole new life, because when you've been stuck for so long and you really don't believe that there's a way out, this is just like the way forward. And more and more and more professionals, healthcare professionals, are getting involved in this world. So yeah, I'm now a registered practitioner on the directory for the ATNS, and I'll share some links with everybody. Because as part of the journey, I really would recommend the app Curable. So I'm going to post a link as well in the comments where you can join and get a 6-week free trial because it's a really good place to begin the education. It staggers the learning day by day so that you don't end up being overwhelmed and Binging out too much, because again, if we're binging out so much, the brain might sense that that's a danger alarm. Oh my gosh, and you could end up with more symptoms. So it staggers it for you so that you're not overwhelmed. And I'll share the links. But yeah, I hope it's been helpful for tonight, just sharing a little bit of background. I've not really done an update for a while with where I'm at. As far as active-wise, weirdly, for those of you that have followed me, you've probably seen that as part of my recovery journey, believe it or not, I have weaned a bit down because I was being very, very active doing massive, massive distances of over 100 miles in one, in ultra runs over 100-mile distances. But actually, what I think many, many insights I've had along this way is that you don't have to, you don't have to do so much to get well. In a way, sometimes it's doing it, doing less for many people. So for me, it's been a bit of a do or less. I mean, I did still do recently, a few weeks ago, the Yorkshire Three Peaks. We ran that, it's about 25 miles, and maybe just some like 10-mile runs here and there and a 10K last night, but I'm just going a lot easier really lately and But I've tried the approach of focusing too much on the body, and clearly I was on the completely wrong path. So much focus on trying to fix a body. But that's the issue. If the, if the, if the root of everything what's happening is being controlled by the brain, but it just really looks like there's something wrong with the body, you're going to be completely on the wrong path. So I just want to save anyone and everyone who may potentially be doing some of the unintentional mistakes what I did, because it's no fun. It's really not fun when you're maybe being a warrior and, oh well, if I have to have this anyway and I've been told that it's a lifetime issue, Then I'm just gonna go and do what I can anyway. It's, it's the love, and there's a, there's something better on the menu for you. So get in touch if there's anything I can help with, and thank you for listening. Any questions, please type them in the chat at any point, and I'll be back again next week. See you next week. Bye. Bye.