Therapeutic Coaching for Chronic Pain
What is chronic pain?
Chronic pain and symptoms of chronic illness are wildly misunderstood. I’m using the word chronic pain here to note multiple different symptoms, not just muscle or joint pain (see below for commonly treated illnesses). Chronic pain is the persistence of pain in the body beyond the usual recovery period or is in conjunction with a chronic illness. Chronic Symptoms are seen as a disease where the traditional medical world believes that it can only be managed instead of healed. When this happens, we can be left with feelings of hopelessness, increased fear of the symptoms, and thus begins a cycle of the pain increasing when the fear persists.
There are many ways to manage pain but what about addressing the original cause of the pain to eliminate it? Yes, I know- eliminate is a strong word. But guess what, we can re-train our brains to not experience pain! When we do this, we can literally tell our brain to stop sending signals of pain to our body. This is a huge part of how I work with pain in the body!Symptoms of chronic pain can include:
Chronic pain symptoms can be incredibly frustrating. When misunderstood, it can lead down a path of self-medicating and hopelessness because you just don't know what else to do. It is common to experience the feeling that no one understands why it’s happening or what you’re going through. I want you to know that if you feel this, you are not alone. Going from doctor to doctor to professional to therapist to try and work with and manage the pain is exhausting. It is a full time job.
Chronic pain can be associated with and lead to mental health struggles including anxiety and depression. You may have a fear that this will never get better which leads you to feeling hopeless and lack motivation to continue fighting. Even the word fighting creates a perception that you have to continue to be on guard and force change which perpetuates your nervous systems response to staying stuck.
A few examples of what it may look like to have chronic pain
Chronic Pain Scenario 1
You started having aches in pains in your joints and muscles for no real reason. You don’t really have anything to contribute to and the pain seems to be happening on and off. Maybe you have negative holding patterns that you have identified in your body- for example - Sciatica, hypermobility in the joints or misalignment in the spine but what you do to help (chiropractor, PT, yoga, pain meds) helps somewhat but not for the long run. If you have identified these, it can help in understanding what's structurally going on but if you have gone through all the treatment for it and still are not feeling better, then there is something deeper going on that we need to address.
Chronic Pain Scenario 2
You’ve had an injury but the pain won't go away after an appropriate amount of time of going through all the treatment protocols you were told to complete. It doesn't matter what you do, the pain is still there.
Chances are, the pain signals in your brain have gotten attached to this injury and are actually masking a mental/emotional trauma or difficult experience that your brain perceives is too fearful to experience so it sends pain signals to your physical body instead to distract you.
Chronic Pain Scenario 3
You may have symptoms such as food sensitivities, allergies, migraines or other health issues that don’t seem to go away with typical treatment. You may be going down the road of eliminating toxins and eating healthy but it’s exhausting to be aso preoccupied with it. Although this may not be the physical pain I noted above, these physical reactions are very painful in their different ways and cause significant impairment in your life.
My Therapeutic Approach to Natural Chronic Pain Relief
In order to treat the pain, we have to understand its function and what is happening. We work with you to understand and change the root cause of your pain. Through coaching, we will talk about what is really happening in your brain and body that is causing this reaction to happen. We’ll go over what the nervous system is and how it’s become dysregulated over a certain period of time. We will then help you understand that retraining your brain’s signals of pain and using techniques to calm the body is at the core of our work. Our brain has an incredible ability to adapt and change & that is what we will be helping you do!
When we retrain the brain, we also want to retrain the body and help it understand that it can be cared for and is safe to be in. Over time, you have probably been conditioned from your experiences of chronic pain to see your body as unsafe or can't be trusted. We will work through yoga therapy and somatic, body based approaches to build a stronger relationship with your body so that you can trust it again and it can feel safe.
We want you to feel free from the agonizing pain and hopelessness that comes with chronic physical symptoms. We want you to be able to go throughout your day without being fearful of what’s the next thing that will set off your pain. We want you to be present in your life and get back to the things you love that you’ve been neglecting because of the pain or the preoccupation with trying to fix it.
Some symptoms of chronic pain can include:
Joint pain
Muscle pain
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Insomnia
Burning pain
Depression
Migraines
Tension headaches
Fibromyalgia
Food Sensitivities
Histamine Reactions
Gut sensitivities
High sensitivity to toxins and mold
Read More From Your Chronic Pain Therapist on My Blog
Start your healing today!
If you’re ready to feel free from your symptoms, we are ready to support and guide you! We help you get to the root of your suffering and change your pain sustainably. Click the button below to schedule a free intro call to see if we're right to work together. Once you schedule, you’ll fill out a few questions and then on our call, we’ll get a little better idea of what’s going on and if chronic pain and nervous system treatment is an appropriate treatment for you. We usually see progress with people within 3 months of working with each other.
Other services at Elevate Your Therapy
We are honored to help people along their healing journey. Specifically, we help people address anxiety, trauma, disordered eating, and nervous system dysregulation. We help through combining nervous system regulation, holistic psychotherapy, and yoga therapy. If you want to grow in your healing journey and make exponential changes, we would love to be the guiding support. Check out our blog for more about our practice.