Changing Our Relationship with Pain

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned lifestyle and high performance coach. Welcome to Listen up the podcast. On this podcast I do what I do best. Taking complicated information that is relevant to us now and breaking it down simply with actionable steps you can implement to level up your life. I also regularly interview some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on the planet who at their worst learned how to achieve success greater than anything they ever dreamed possible, creating everything from nothing. If you are new here, I encourage you to go back and listen from episode one, when this podcast was previously called Leveling up for the Full Transformative Experience. So today on Listen Up, I want to talk about a very specific topic around pain and the pain cycle. And this is coming from my own personal experience, but it's interesting. Every time on social media I've posted about injuries or pain, the amount of messages and emails and comments I get is just a whole nother level. So I thought what better topic than to dive into on this episode to answer a lot of questions around this, share my journey and hopefully be able to help you if you are struggling with chronic pain, whether from an injury or a diagnosis or things in life. So just a little background information. One of the top questions that I get through my fat loss and health business is, Natalie, I'm in so much pain. How do I get moving or how do I work through that pain? That's, that's a big question. And typically I'll refer people back to their doctors first to find out can they even work through their pain, what is causing it. But I want to dive a little bit more into this topic today, starting with that I'm 49 years old at the time of this recording and as somebody in the health and fitness space for years and years, 30 year old and 40 year old me did not fully understand pain. I would hear about it but, but I didn't fully understand it. In fact, shame on me. But I used to look at it like people are causing it. You know, did they not take care of themselves? Maybe it's their own fault they weren't moving. That's how I used to view pain and I fully didn't understand it. I would hear about people in their late 40s or their 50s having back problems or chronic knee problems. And I, and I really looked at it as did they? Cause that was this their lifestyle thing. But as age crept up on me and maybe many of you listening and different things in my life happen, like an autoimmune condition and then three major injuries in the last, last year even. It's something that became a heavy, heavy issue in my life. And for those of you struggling with pain, you know, it can be all consuming. It can be all consuming. When we're in pain, everything is in our way. Sitting to watch a movie can be uncomfortable. Driving can be uncomfortable. Going for a walk could be uncomfortable. Doing normal household chore. Things that we always didn't have a problem with can start to be all consuming. I know for me, for example, when I tore my bicep, I've had lingering nerve pain from that bicep tear. I lost supination in my right arm, the hand that I write with, and it's painful now for me to actually use a fork or handwrite. So when we experience pain in things in our life, it could be all consuming. And when someone doesn't understand pain, they don't understand this about people that are in pain. But it can feel really all consuming. It's all we can think about. It starts consuming us. So for years I didn't understand this, and then now, at 49, I understand this a lot more. And I want to share sort of what I went through in the process here and what's changed, what I'm doing now and how this has also helped many, many others with the chronic pain. So first is, you go through a cycle when you have pain, when you have an injury or something's new. And the first cycle for most of us is feeling sorry for ourselves. Like, this sucks. I'm in pain because. And we'll go to others for validation around it. We'll join communities, we'll talk with others about it. The issue with that is that it does feel good initially to feel understood about pain. It feels good to have discussions around it. It feels good to be validated, to know that it's not in our heads. But the downside of that is it keeps us stuck on the thought of pain. So, for instance, if you're in a group talking about your chronic pain and everybody in the group is saying, yes, it sucks, this sucks, this sucks. We stay in this story of pain sucks. And the more we focus on pain sucking, and the more we focus on what it's stopping us from doing, that feels heavy, it can create depression, it can keep us stuck, it makes it all consuming. And the more we focus on it, the more issues we create around pain, the next phase is trying to stop it. So, and I was guilty of this too. Like, how do I get out of pain? What do I need to do? What do I need to take, what do I need to try? And I went down the list of everything from prescriptions to surgeries. My gosh, I've had surgeries for the pain to natural remedies like acupuncture, puncture, acupressure, massage, cryotherapy, CBD oil, essential oils. I mean, literally everything to try to get out of pain. The other issue with that is when we try to just mask or get out of pain, we're not necessarily fixing the problem. What we're doing is giving ourselves a crutch to get through the day, to mute it, to not think about it. And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that short term, the danger of it is by muting it, we're not fixing the problem. By muting it, we're not fixing the problem. So we temporarily get out of pain. But what happens is it requires another level of things. It requires more prescription, another procedure, another strong whatever. It's a chase of how do we mute the symptoms versus how do we fix it. The next phase that a lot of us go through is let's get to the root of it. Like, let's fix what's going on there, what has created the pain. Now that's a great approach, but we also have to do the next step that I'm about to dive into. So we. And that's change the relationship with pain. You see, when we try to fix the cause of something, there's also issues with that. It's not always 100% fixable. For example, I'll talk about the story of my back for a moment. A few years back, I ruptured a disc between L5 and S1. It literally ruptured to the point where I had foot dropped. I had sciatic nerve path damage. My right leg stopped working when I had that rupture. So clearly I had to get to the root of that. I went in, I had surgery, I had that disc removed, the rest of it that had ruptured out, removed through a laser endoscopic spine surgery. And great, I stopped the cause, but I didn't think through what else was next. So now not having a disc between L5S1, that created a whole other path of issues, hip problems, problems in my joints. So then the chase is, how do I stop that? So it's an ever going cycle of how do I fix the next problem because of this. Take it to my bicep tear this last year, tearing that bicep. Great. Have to fix the problem. So we have to reattach the bicep but there's then the side effect of the nerve damage from cutting that tendon, from having to reattach it, from it being three weeks from the time of the rupture to the surgical repair. Losing supination, not being able to hold a fork or write correctly, created issues now in my shoulder, for instance. So if you get where I'm going with this, getting to the root of things is not always the final answer. So what is the final answer? The final answer, what I found has worked for me and that what has worked for many others is we've got to change the relationship with pain. We have to change our relationship to it. Now, what does that mean? What does changing our relationship with pain mean? Well, it means we stop fighting it, we stop chasing it, we stop trying to mute it, and instead we make friends with it. We start trying to understand. And this is a list of questions that I've continually asked myself, and I hope these will support you too, and how I've changed the relationship with it. Number one, I've asked myself this question. What is the pain telling me? What is it telling me? Why do I feel things in my back or my arm? Why do I get injured? What is it telling me? Where do I need to slow down and listen? In the case of that question, around my back. What I know is for years and years and years, I was not properly activating my glutes. I had a tight core, I had strong ab muscles, but I wasn't fully activating my glutes. I wasn't spending a lot of time warming up, cooling down, all these things which, fine, in my youth, it wasn't hitting me, but as we get older, that can start to change. So I had to think, what is the pain telling me? Where do I need to listen? Where do I need to listen? If we're getting injured or having chronic pain somewhere, what is it telling us and where do we need to listen? The third thing, what do I need to do? Anyways, now, this is a big one. So many times we get stuck in, I'm in pain, this hurts, so I can't xyz. However, I want you to know that a body in motion stays in motion. So assuming you're not going to make something worse, meaning your doctor has said, this is the situation, this is what's wrong. You're not going to make it worse by doing the movement. We have to do it anyways because staying sedentary, staying laying down, staying sitting down, we're just making things worse. That very act of moving Our body breaks us through that cycle. For example, I wake up every morning, every single morning I wake up with, with pain in my hips, my lower back, all the different areas. But it's the very act of moving my body throughout the day, using a standup desk, doing specific exercises, working through it, that gives me the relief throughout the day. So if you're listening to this, and this is you and you've been cleared saying you're not making it worse, it just hurts. Stop being afraid of the pain and do it anyways. Go for that walk despite it feeling like it hurts. Do those exercises despite it feeling like it hurts. You're not making things worse. You're going to make that alleviation come, come a lot stronger. You're going to give yourself a break from it. The next question I ask myself is what will support strengthening my imbalances? So for example, with my lower back, I for years spent time developing my core, strengthening my back, thinking that was going to somehow magically fix the problem. But I had to really look at anatomy and say, what is this telling me? And for me, I figured out it was inactive glutes. Despite being in the fitness industry, it was inactive glutes. I wasn't properly training my glutes. So it was going back and really relearning this, really learning how to develop muscle there, how to activate those muscles correctly, how to use those correctly. And by doing that, I took a significant amount of pressure off my lower back and it did not make the pain a zero, but it certainly lessened it a lot. So asking yourself those questions, if my knee is hurting, if my elbow is hurting, if my shoulder's hurting, if my back is hurting, where am I having imbalances so that it's showing up in those areas? Ask yourself those questions and get the help of a physical therapist or a chiropractor or somebody that can help you from the outside figure this out. The next question I had to ask myself, and this sounded so woo woo to me at the beginning, but there's really something to it, is what unhealed emotions am I holding onto? That's a deeper question. But I'll tell you that most people in chronic pain or that are dealing with pain, they do have unhealed emotional trauma. Things that we didn't deal with from childhood, things that we've been holding on to. Emotions show up in our body if we don't release them. It's true, if you think about times you haven't cried, you haven't grieved, you haven't expressed your feelings, it's going to show up somewhere in your body. So working through that, what unhealed emotional trauma do I need to work through and understand? The next thing I had to do is really get serious about my eating, my hydration and my movement. Because inflammation is super real with injury and pain. Super real. So why not give your body the most optimal, best chance at thriving? Why not feed your body with the right foods to help prevent inflammation? What do you have to lose from there? I can tell you hands down, my pain is a whole different level when I'm eating specific foods than when I eliminate specific foods. And I eat for anti inflammatory eating. So for example, there's certain foods that create inflammation in our body and, and some of you might want to argue with me here, but what I'm going to tell you is if this is not creating pain in your body, then awesome. You're one of the lucky ones. If you are experiencing pain and you are eating these things, I'm going to highly suggest you take them out and try it. See how you feel in seven days. Things like, things like dairy, which is highly inflammatory. Dairy, wheat, wheat products. So gluten and wheat and also sugars. All three of those things create inflammation problems. So I'm going to highly suggest taking those out. What's really great is that I will say 95% of the time I do not eat those things. And I feel a whole different level if I do decide to go out and have gluten free pizza, for example. I'm a celiac by the way, so everything is gluten free for me. That dairy, I'm going to feel it in my body. So the next few days I feel it, but at least I can relate it back to, that's what created that, that extra issue. So eliminating those few those foods and then adding in so much more of the good, making sure are you properly hydrated, are you drinking enough water, Are you moving your body to help with inflammation, getting in that daily exercise? And are you eating highly nutrient water based foods, things like vegetables, things like fruits, antioxidants, get all those antioxidants, water based vegetables, fruits, are you eating healthy fats? For you, avocado oils, if you're eating meats, are you eating organic, are you eating foods with that are raised humanely, are you doing that? Are you eating foods that are going to fight inflammation? Are you eating foods that are going to create more in your body? And I'm also going to link up here in the show notes by the way. I have two books that can fully help you with this. Number one is seven Day Jumpstart Unprocessed your Diet. The other one is Aging in Reverse. Both of these books are available online on Amazon, in bookstores everywhere. They are a great place to start which will really teach you anti inflammatory eating. A seven Day Jumpstart Unprocess. Your diet by the way is like level one if you fully need to like fully learn about nutrition. Aging in Reverse is my more recent book so it really dives more into the whole other level, especially as we age of anti inflammatory eating where we where I remove grains, dairy and sugar fully. So anyways, getting off topic a little bit there but Pain Cycle. Really, really critical that you realize that there is something called the pain cycle. And when we are in pain and we choose to not move our bodies and work through it, we also stay in more pain, which can create a depression which could create more anxiety around this, which also has us not necessarily eating our best. We're eating bad because we don't feel good. We want to feel better. So what that does is that keeps us in a full pain cycle. So to break it, I hope you'll start asking yourself the questions that I've asked myself. Start really looking at how you can change your relationship with pain. How you can start fueling your body with foods that help you not hurt you more. Now before you send me an individual private message, and I do love hearing from all of you, but I just want to say this because I do get a lot of messages about a specific injury and what do you recommend and what do I do? My question back to you is always first going to be please check with your doctor. Make sure you are allowed to do movement. Sometimes there are instances where you cannot move for a certain reason so you would need clearance from your doctor first. So make sure that that's the case. Assuming you have clearance too. I'm going to say then move anyways. You've got this. Work through it, change your relationship with it and get living again. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen in as my guest today. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with friends and on social media. I don't advertise this show so I rely on word of mouth and reviews. Get it out in the world. The biggest thank you that you can give me is Leaving me a review and a nice one. I hope. By the way, this is how others find these episodes. If you do leave me a review, be sure to message me@supportataliejill fitness.com with a screenshot of your review because I would love to send you a free digital download of my DSR journal as a thank you. And please don't forget to connect with me on social media at Natalie Jill Fit on Instagram and Facebook.