So Many Recovery Approaches Which Ones Should You Use

Hi there and welcome to the Tuesday evening Bend and Snap Active People Getting Back on Track live. Welcome to anyone that's new here, thank you so much for joining. My name is Joanne Lee Smith. And I'm a neuroplastic pain and symptoms recovery coach. And I'm here pretty much every Tuesday sharing from my own personal recovery journey, everything that I've lived, learned, shared, worked with other people doing. And I just like to come and do a different session each Tuesday and just share just basically from my experience and what's helped myself and others. And I'm always up for suggestions, So please be active in the group. I really encourage you guys to become more active. We've got a lot of lurkers in here that I know you follow. I know you watch. I know you message me sometimes privately, and I really appreciate that. And I really like to hear from you to find out how you're getting on. But yeah, you're welcome to share in the group at any time. Please type in the comments at any point during the live session. My Facebook doesn't always show me the comments when I'm going from my laptop, and I just prefer to go from my laptop than my mobile phone because it's bigger. So I apologise if I'm not acknowledging your messages. I will look back afterwards and get back to you. So welcome again. It started raining in Leeds, just been hula hooping, and luckily I don't have frizzy, frizzy hair because I just basically got rained on and then dried just in time. So, um, today's session title is— I've called it this, I've called it So Many Recovery Approaches, Which Ones Should You Use? Because wow, when I first learned that there was a possibility that My pains and chronic symptoms could be reduced or could even fully recover. Um, I knew nothing about all of these different approaches. People call them mind-body and recovery tools. I don't like the word tools, I'll be honest. Anything that kind of insinuates a tool to me feels like fixing. It feels like you're saying something's broken. But what we know about people who have been diagnosed with mind-body symptoms is that the brain is the driving force of their physical pain, physical symptoms that they're feeling. They're very, very real and they feel in the body. You feel those inside your body. But what we know now is that pain and symptoms and sensations in the body is not a very good reflection on the condition of the body. Basically, it doesn't mean that there is damage to the body. It doesn't mean that there is anything physical or structural. So I must have used the word approaches just because I don't like using the word mind-body recovery tools, but I know that you'll hear that kind of language used. In different things. So some examples, um, just to get us started off, of what you might consider a recovery approach, or a tool if you like that word. Um, but I'm just wanting to reiterate that you're not broken if you fit into this category of having mind-body symptoms, neuroplastic symptoms, which are the brain created. Some of the approaches, the potential approaches, which people do feel better using or get some kind of relief are things, for example, like meditation, breathwork, somatic tracking. This is where you, with somatic tracking, this is where you feel the sensation in a way that is Curious about it. It's not pushing it away, it's not wanting rid, it's just like, oh, how interesting, I'm just gonna, um, just pay some attention here, like watching some tropical fish swimming around a tank, an aquarium, and just being really curious into what's happening. Because this can be really helpful for your brain in reducing the alarm. And providing some safety to the sensation. Like, all of a sudden, I'm just— I'm not resisting this, I'm not scared of this, I know it's not harmful, I know it's not dangerous towards me, so I'm just gonna actually just get really curious and chill out with it and just be with it and just sit there with it. And that's just a quick summary on what somatic tracking is, if you've not heard of that. I know breathwork and meditation, they're more well-known methods that you might have heard of before. Journaling, so genuinely just scribbling down everything that's in your mind, all your thoughts, all your fears, all your worries, all your truths that you don't want to share with other people, all the private secrets. I'm sure that— oh, have I frozen? Oh no, it looks as though my life has frozen. And I'm back, it just froze there for a second, so apologies for that. I was talking about journaling and sharing all those secrets that you don't want to tell anyone, just doing it in the privacy of your own thoughts. And we've got things like affirmations, you know, like positive messages, telling yourself, I'm safe, I'm not broken, I'm strong. They're just a few examples. We've got like the power of visualisation and how we can use our own senses to imagine amazing things happening. We can, you use the power of our senses to close our eyes and see ourselves running effortlessly up a mountain, feeling great, you know, just an example there. We've got lots and lots of types of therapies that are quite commonly used within chronic pain recovery. For example, you've got cognitive behavioral therapy, you've got ACT, acceptance commitment therapy, We've got timeline therapy, which is part of the NLP, which I do. We've got hypnotherapy. There's absolutely lots and lots of really beautiful approaches in therapy, and the most recent one which I'm doing my training with is called EAAT, Emotional Awareness and Acceptance Therapy, which is absolutely amazing from what I've learned so far. And this is a brand new— well, not brand new, it's been around a lot of years, but it's— the research is now showing that it is far, far superior to CBT and ACT when compared with the research trials. The success rate is really high with people recovering, especially people recovering with things, for example, fibromyalgia, And so on. So yeah, all kinds of different therapies. There's so many. You've got EMDR, eye movement— oh God, I always forget what the acronym stands for— eye movement desensitization. Oh, I can't remember, but you forgive me for that one. But EMDR is a very popular approach. The NLP uses some elements from that with eye movement for healing fearful memories, which is really amazingly helpful, and it can be incredible how much people can feel after, after doing that. I've— I use that approach myself with some of my clients, and I've seen some amazing successes. And then we've got things, for example, All the different courses, all the different practitioners who have got their own special programmes and different books and podcasts and all of that kind of thing. So I'm going to call these approaches, you can call them whatever you feel like. At the end of the day, there is no one approach that is going to be suitable for everybody. It's such a unique journey. There is no one journey that is the same as another, and I've done a lot of studying in this type of work, and I've listened to a lot of success stories, and I've heard so many different stories about what people have done, and no one is the same as another. Maybe a few similarities along the way, but in general, there is absolutely no perfect approach, there's no perfect system. There's no magic 10 steps and there you'll be. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that, and also it doesn't align well with the personality types. I've done a session previously about personality types. If you didn't watch it and you'd like to go back and watch that one, just drop me a message and I can send you the YouTube link, because I'll just do a brief summary because What we find is that people who are more likely to develop mind-body or neuroplastic symptoms tend to have similar personality traits. For example, really high achievers, really highly driven, just really, really a little bit perfectionist, people pleasers, wanting to be really good, wanting to help other people. And so they can put that same level of effort into wanting to try out every single approach that's possible, and then they're putting in this massive amount of work and effort, which unfortunately, again, is counterproductive because it's— if the alarm, if the brain is perceiving something as a threat and it's alarming, setting the alarm off, that in itself can be enough for that to keep alarming and for symptoms to keep going. So sometimes we put in so much effort into wanting to get well, desperation, wanting to get better, um, wanting to get out of this situation that you've found yourself in, which is not your fault, by the way. Like, nobody asked for this and it's not your fault. And it can feel very lonely. And the weird thing is, it feels very lonely when you're going through it, but then when you find your way through the other side and start getting involved in learning about this, all of a sudden you realise this is so human and it's part of the human condition and part of being a human. It can be really quite nice to learn from other people who have been through similar. So when, if you start, if you find yourself like feeling pressured that you've got to do, um, a certain Approach, i.e., I've got to journal every day, I've got to do meditation, I've got to listen to mindfulness, I've got to do hypnotherapy or an audio relaxation, sleep. I like sleep casts, I like listening to some of the stories, I like listening to guided meditations and things like this, but this is the best way that I've found to explain whether or not you're using it as an approach or a tool, or whether you're just doing it because it feels like something you'd do anyway if you didn't have any pain or symptoms. So all the things that I found that I do, I do them anyway. I'd do it anyway because I just enjoy it. I just like laying down and listening to a hypnotherapy audio. I enjoy listening to A meditation sometimes, a guided one. I like listening to the sleep stories. It reminds me of being a little kid and having a story read to you, like a bedtime story, but they do them for grown-ups. So I don't see that as me trying to fix anything, because remember, nothing's broken. So I do those things anyway, like I just do them because I enjoy them. Hula hooping, always. Wrong way. My hula hoops, they're my office hoops. I don't see that I need to do hula hooping to get myself better. It's just that's my hobby, I love it, that's my doing it because you just really want to do it kind of thing. So remember, there's no worries about you're not going to get well if you don't meditate, or you're never going to recover because you've not done journaling. Like, it's just whatever's going to be your unique process, and it's just a case of doing the things that feel good to you, that you feel relaxed doing, because again, we're just wanting to reduce the amount of danger that the brain is perceiving. Because remember, the brain is perceiving things as dangerous that are not really dangerous, especially for those of us that have developed chronic pain and chronic symptoms, then it's even more switched on and more looking for danger. If you've been unfortunate enough to be in numerous accidents, or if you've been unfortunate enough to have emotional traumas in life, all of these things. If you've been— if you've got the personality style where you're very harsh and critical of yourself, and judgmental of yourself and internal, lots of thoughts of not being good enough again, that's enough for that danger alarm to be fired up. So if any of this makes sense, then please don't worry about what approach you use. You use the approach that you feel good, whether that's For you, I enjoy reading fiction just for the fun of it, or whether it's, I enjoy, um, I mean, I just, there's so many things that I actually just enjoy in life, and it's just about doing them, but not worrying about what approach is right, whose process, which coach is the best, which doctor's the best to see. Mm-hmm. None of that really matters because it's all what you're doing on the inside that counts. So like for me, I just really enjoy making pancakes on a Sunday morning. Like, I like doing that after I've been running because I like making breakfast for my son because he starts work at half 11. And it's nothing, it's not an approach, it's just doing life, it's just doing the things that you, that you want to do. Just because you want to do them. So you don't need to do any of the things really, any of the things that they might call tools, and they're not actually necessary. What I figured was understanding how the system works, how the mind works, how the brain works, how pain works, having that knowledge, understanding how emotions Emotional pain you feel in the body too, because it seems a bit crazy that your body can hurt because you've got a really big emotion that's not been allowed to, to play out in real life, real time. But most people can kind of get that they might have had an exam coming and then they've had a stomach upset, or they've been really worried about something and got a really bad headache. So you can see real basic examples of how the brain would perceive the exam as danger to you, and it's going to give you a headache to distract you, or something along those lines. Just a small example. The fact that we create tears when we cry, when we're sad, that's a physical response to an emotional situation. So this stuff is super, super interesting, and it's really easy to get caught up in trying to do so many different things and being stuck. So I wouldn't want that for anyone. So I like to keep it as simple as possible. So like I hinted on, the main question is, is what I'm doing making me feel safer, or is it making me feel like I need to fix myself? Is it creating more danger? So I ask that to myself a lot, because I'm— let me think of an example from this week. Um, getting back to running, as you all know, I've been away up until last week for like nearly 3 weeks on holiday, so I've not been doing long runs for about 4 or 6 weeks. I don't count because I don't keep track, um, of things. And again, keeping track of things again can increase the perceived danger too, if you're monitoring things really closely and counting and counting the days. I don't do that, but all I know is it's been a long time because when I did my first 10K run back, my shoes rubbed, I had blisters on my instep, which I've not had blisters in years, and then I did my first longest run since going back, maybe like 10 miles, and then yesterday I did a 10K the day after it, and that pain I told you about last week in the session, Where I was carrying the rucksack and I was like, no way! I knew that it wasn't physical, I knew I'd not injured myself and I knew that it was the mind-body connection going on because I was going to a meeting in London. I mean, I maybe remembered it from the airport as well, like your brain learns really quickly, but then I was going somewhere I'd not been before, meeting people I'd never met before and And all of a sudden that same arm played up in the same place. I'd not really ever had an issue here before. And then I called it out in London for what it was and that was that. Forgot about it. And then last night when I was running, it came again. I've never had pain in my arm when running. And again, I gave it literally— I didn't give it any attention. I was like, oh, that's interesting. I rubbed it a couple of times thinking, oh, what's that? And then I realised, oh, and then I was like, right, just get on with your evening, Jo, and that's done, absolutely gone. And that's the incredible power of when you really begin to understand what's really happening and why it's happening, and that you can call it out and be like, no, I've not been in an accident, I've not been In an— I've not done anything. So you can just easily, eventually, for yourself, see that there's nothing wrong with the physical, and you can be like, oh, thank you, kind of, you're kind of thanking it in a way, for trying to get your attention, and then you can look and think, hmm, what does need my attention? What am I trying to push away? What am I trying to avoid? What do I need to do? You can look after yourself the way that you deserve. And am I giving myself a hard time? Am I putting pressure on? Like, potentially the pain there could be that I was, I was like giving myself a hard time about needing to do, get my fitness up before the 27th of the month because it's not long away. And again, that's enough for my brain to see that as a danger and be like, right, let's give her some warning, let's put the alarm on, and it can come anywhere. Any part of your body, any symptom, any pain, it could be anything, um, the same as a real physical thing. It'll mimic it to perfection, um, and usually it'll mimic it much higher than if you really had, um, been injured, which is so interesting for me. Um, so what else do we want to share for tonight? Um, So aim to do the things that you know— you can ask yourself, does this make me feel safer, calmer, more confident, more trust, more able to live my life? Or is this activity that I'm doing making me more anxious, more obsessed and focused on physical More desperate, more pressure, more worrying. Because if it's making you feel worse, then please don't do it. Just don't do it. You don't have to do anything like that because it's not necessary. There is just like so many ways that you're never going to run out of ideas and you will have the best ideas. I mean, I've done training in lots of different kinds of things. But not all of them have, not all of them I thought, oh, I want to continue with that one. Like one of them that I used to quite like was called EFT. I didn't mention this at the beginning, EFT tapping, Emotional Freedom Technique, and it's tapping and you like tap on the palm of your hand like this and then on your head and then on the Sides of your eyebrow and then under your eye and on your lip and your chin. And as you're doing it, you're talking through messages and it can be all that, you know, you can follow a script, you can do it in a group, you can do it one-to-one, you can probably go on YouTube and watch a video and just do your own, you can do it without words, you can just do the motions of the tapping. And when I first learned about that, I thought, oh, I quite like this, and I used to do it a bit for fun. But again, it wasn't something that stuck. It wasn't something that I thought, oh, this is what I'm gonna do. But if I'd have been worried thinking, I'm never gonna get well if I don't do that tapping thing, then again, I'm still not gonna get well, am I? So just do what you enjoy. Do what you enjoy. More of what you enjoy, because then you're going to be feeling more relaxed, more safe, more calm, less rushing, whatever it might be. And again, breathwork. I've never really been— I've done all the training, but I don't particularly practice it because it wasn't something that I'm massively passionate about. I just believe in slowing down your breathing and breathing whatever's comfortable for you. Whether it's in your nose, out your mouth, in your mouth. Some people can't breathe in their nose, like my husband, he broke his nose so many times that he can't actually breathe in his nose properly, so it's just like, I'm not, I don't believe it's necessary, but you know, some of the somatic movements and somatic kind of exercise and really, really slow Movements can be really useful for some people, but for me, I'm being part of me, it's just been for me more, when it comes to movement, I like to move a bit quicker and I like to have spinning hula hoops, and you can do it slowly with hula hoops, so sometimes I just slow it down a bit, but Again, just don't worry about doing anything perfect, all right? Practice, actually practice not being perfect. Like, I'm just gonna do this and I'm not gonna, like, it doesn't have to be done over and over and over. So I'm trying to help my daughter a bit with this at the minute because we're going to write something to help her with a college thing, and I'm like, right, you know what, we just set a 20-minute timer, do as much as we can in 20 minutes, and then that's that. If it's nearly— if it's done and it's the finished masterpiece, brilliant, and if we have to go back to it tomorrow and just do another 20 minutes, then so be it, but we're not gonna Overdo it and get worked up over something that can be done easily. So I just don't want you to feel like you've got to do a certain thing and for it to become another, another thing to do, another, more thoughts into an already busy mind is not helpful. More snur into the glur. This is my new snur glur, by the way. Upside down at the minute. This is my new one. This is my Kennedy Space Center globe with the rocket. Look how quick that snow settles in that globe. That's why I picked it, because I like globes where the snow settles really quick, because we can do the equivalent with our own mind by putting it down and letting the thoughts settle. That's how quickly the mind can settle when it's left to do its own thing, without us thinking, I need to do a million and one different things to fix something that's not broken. So, yeah, probably the remain— for the last, like, few minutes, I've just kind of gone nicely on to an analogy, which is quite a nice one, which I quite like, which I've heard Quite a few other people using. So it's not my analogy, I didn't make this one up, but I like it. It's the car analogy where you ask the question, how much time would you spend trying to fix the engine of a brand new car that works perfectly? Like every day you're taking it to the garage, you want to get it checked. Is everything okay? Are the brakes okay? Are the tyres okay? And you might want to ask them to take it apart just to check and, um, all of this, like, is it okay, is it okay? Um, it's a brand new car, it's, it's not broken, yeah, and you're not going to find anything wrong with it, especially when, um, it's— you've been looking and looking and finding nothing and nothing. So it's kind of like Potentially the situations that many of us can get a bit stuck in, um, when we've got all these symptoms but we don't know where they're coming from and nothing can be found. It's like everything's normal, everything's coming back fine, um, we're doing the same with our bodies and constantly looking and checking and monitoring and trying to find something. But see it as a A positive thing, that it's— there is— that it's not— that we now have an answer that you've not had before for many people, because mainstream medicine and doctors, there's few and far between that are trained in this approach. Many more are becoming trained now, and a lot are doing this privately, but now that the message is beginning to filter through, some people might get the answers that they're looking for, but— Again, it's unlikely that you are going to get those answers and you're just going to be getting told, we're really sorry, this is permanent, this is forever, this is incurable. And— but really, you've actually got a perfectly working engine, like the equivalent of that brand new car. There's nothing actually wrong. It's working the way it should. The brain's working the way that a brain should work when it's had Um, the things that have happened happen, um, it's just working the way it will, and when you understand it and you've got the knowledge and then you can respond to it differently, new pathways form within the brain. The brain is plastic, neuroplastic, so it means that it's capable of change and it's capable of learning a new way and it's capable of getting out of pain and symptoms too. So be excited, be very excited. Get in touch if you want to chat more, if you want to ask any questions. Part of the process for those of you that might have been avoiding activity, avoiding getting out running, walking, hiking, we're an active group now. It used to be when I first started out coaching that this group was for trail runners initially, And right at the beginning, 3 years ago, I didn't even know about this stuff, and it was probably only a year in that I learned about Dr. Sarno and started implementing the approaches, because they're not tools, they're just things that he said to do and understandings that I began to have symptoms that I was told I had forever that were beginning to disappear. It was incredible. So stick with me. Thank you for being here. Ask me anything, anytime, and thank you for listening. It's 8 o'clock, so I'm gonna leave you to it. Have a lovely evening, and I'll see you next Tuesday. Bye!