What's your problem?
We all have something to gain by understanding pain.
Hello friends, patients, and colleagues! Welcome to my new blog/email platform. I promise I won’t bomb your inbox but I also promise to share something new and interesting weekly-ish. Things I wish I’d learned sooner, Things that inspire wonder and awe. Things that make you think. Things I hope inspire interest, curiosity, growth, confidence with movement, and hopefully entertainment. Let’s go!
Pardon the snarky title. But the reality is that pain is a universal human experience. No one escapes it. If you’re a clinician, you might struggle with why it behaves so weirdly as you work with patients to fix and figure it out. If you’re a person living with pain, as is the case with 20-25% of people worldwide, you’re likely dealing with fear and/or the other associated life stresses that drive pain in all of us. If you’re in pain, I’m sorry, but I’m glad you're here. If you’re pain free…yay! But I guarantee you know someone, a friend or family member, dealing with symptoms. Pain is everyone’s problem.
Pain is, by nature, scary and a sign of danger. But it also creates an opportunity. Turns out, once you understand it, pain actually has something to teach us. It has meaning and purpose. It’s a helpful message. Are you listening? We used to think pain was always a body problem. So we’d treat the body hoping to fix the issues in the tissues using body work and movement to correct biomechanics. But this isn’t how pain works, so it often fails to relieve symptoms.
The body explains only a small part of the pain story. All pain is bio-psycho-social, driven by factors inside and outside the body (body, psychology, social realities) as well as things that happened in the past, are happening in the present, and that might happen in the future. More importantly, all pain is experienced in the brain, regardless of the cause! If you break a bone, have surgery, experience a car crash, or fall off of your bike, your brain is the reason it hurts.
Pain is meant to be short-acting, not long-lasting. It’s meant to keep us safe from either physical and/or emotional danger, only to recede once the danger has passed. But your brain, like my brain, happens to be really good at learning. Once the brain decides we’re in danger and turns on pain, it can learn to run it as a habit in order to maintain efficiency as it moves on to other things, then pain gets connected with other things in our life and it runs on repeat outside of our conscious awareness. The brain can even predict certain things are dangerous and decide to turn on pain in anticipation of a movement, a situation, or a thought or feeling. Watch my mentor and co-teacher Dr. Howard Schubiner’s explanation of how the brain uses prediction to keep us safe.
I realize this is all a bit strange and even potentially scary. To think the brain is in charge and on auto-pilot. But understanding pain this way actually makes it even more simple and treatable. While pain is a complex phenomenon (because we’re all different), once you shift your belief and your mindset about the “message” that pain is trying to deliver, you’ll see that symptoms offer an elegant, helpful, and hopeful opportunity for you. Regardless of whether you’re a clinician, a person who is dealing with pain, or both.
The most exciting thing about this time in history is that we know how to cure pain and other chronic symptoms. We know how to discern whether symptoms are due to tissue issues or when it’s simply a brain habit in the absence of tissue injury or medical problem. We also know to synthesize bodywork (bottom-up) strategies with brain/mind work (top-down) strategies to reduce symptoms and improve performance. The subjective nature of pain is no longer a mystery. But most clinicians need permission to re-conceptualize pain, get out of their silo, and treat it with novel strategies.
Dr. Howard Schubiner, MD and I offer an effective model that is curing people of months, years, and decades of chronic pain and liberating them to live life again. The old model of pain = body problem is old news. It’s not evidence-based, accurate, or effective. Pain is no longer a confusing mystery that leads to unnecessary suffering. If you’re ready to re-conceptualize your symptoms, please reach out.
If you’re a clinician who’s ready to paradigm shift your practice, improve your outcomes, change lives, love your work, and change the world, register for “Beyond Pain Education” today. You’ll learn the foundation and all the clinical strategies you’ll need to be at the pointy end of this exciting movement. We invite you to join live June 9-11 in Boulder, CO, or learn at your own pace by taking our asynchronous course. Either way, you’ll be a part of our community and have access to an endless library of resources, ongoing mentoring, and the pleasure of doing this work.
If you’re still not sure you’re ready to shift your belief, here’s a recent podcast episode Dr. Schubiner appeared on with Dr. Rangan Chattarjee, MD. It’s one of my favorites of 2022 and I think it underscores how, while education is a helpful starting point, it’s not a treatment in and of itself.
Join us to go “beyond pain education” and solve for the biggest health challenge facing the world today. Please share this email far and wide by forwarding to friends, family, and beloved clinicians. Please also blast it on all the socials. We’d really appreciate it.
Thanks for being here and for reading to the end.
All the best!
Charlie Merrill