Episode #106- Extinction Bursts

Episode #106- Extinction Bursts

 

Today’s topic is about part of the normal mind-body healing process- extinction bursts.

When you are starting to experience some success with healing, one thing that can commonly happen is a resurgence of pain in an old area or a completely new pain.

Dr Sarno called this the “symptom imperative.”

In “The Way Out” by Alan Gordon, they call it an extinction burst because of a study with a rat receiving food through a lever.  

When the lever broke, the rate started pressing more urgently and quickly before the behavior of pressing the button extinguished.

If you have an extinction burst, there are 3 common stages 1- panic, 2- forcing it, and 3- oh this is how it works!

Listen to this episode for more, and trust the process- extinction bursts are a good thing because it means the signal will soon become extinct!

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 106, Extinction Bursts. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become unstoppable body and mind. Hello, my loves. Today, we are going to talk about a topic.
I actually can't believe I have not recorded a podcast about this sooner. It's such an important step in the process of mind-body healing. And it's good to know about it, that it can come up and have a name for what's going on so that you know.
So today we're going to talk about extinction bursts. This is also what Dr. Sarno called the symptom imperative. But basically, they got the name extinction burst from an experiment they did with a rat, where the rat was pressing a lever for food and the lever broke.
So the rat wasn't getting the food. So they expected the rat to just stop pressing the lever, which it did. But before that, it actually started pressing the lever even more frequently and urgently.
So there was actually this increase of behavior before there was the extinction. So think of an extinction burst as a good thing, because it's a sign that it's on its way out. But what can happen is you're going along and starting to get these mind-body concepts under your belt and feeling better, and then you have a resurgence of pain.
It could be what they call like a flare of the same pain that you've had before. In the Boulder back pain study, they found that that was often what happened. But some people would have pain in a totally different area, like their hip or their knee.
So most people think that they've injured something, and then they start to get afraid. And then we know the pain-fear cycle kicks in and actually causes the brain to produce more pain and to amplify the pain. But remember, neuroplastic pain is all based on fear.
So this is what Alan Gordon says in The Way Out. By authentically changing your relationship with fear, you can start breaking out of the pain-fear cycle and your symptoms will begin to fade. But if fear has been a part of your life for a long time, your brain has been accustomed to it and may not go quietly.
So basically, it's a protective response from our body. And it makes sense if we've lived with so much fear and high guard and high anxiety and hypervigilance that it doesn't feel totally comfortable to just relax. If you were sleeping in the jungle at night, you wouldn't have the best sleep of your life because you would be in this vigilant state.
And when you're in that vigilant state a lot, it does not feel comfortable to let that go. So these extinction bursts are usually seen at the early part of your healing journey. And it is usually very frightening and brings up a lot of emotions.
The most common thing people think is that something structural is going on after all, or they've re-injured themselves or hurt themselves with a new injury. The other thing I see people thinking a lot is that they're not good enough. They can't do this.
They haven't been doing enough somatic tracking or they haven't been meditating well enough. So just notice if you do start to get some sensations during this process, it's not always linear. And if sensations come up, what emotions come up for you?
And just know that the more neutral you can stay about it, the faster it will go away. There are certain stages that people go through. They describe in The Way Out three stages.
And the first one is panic. So that's normal, to feel panic, to worry, to think something's gone wrong. This is part of the process.
The second stage, he calls forcing it. So it's where you're like trying really hard. You might try your somatic tracking, and then you get frustrated that that doesn't work.
And you do all of the things that you've been doing that have been working, but with this like urgency or intensity. It's like you're in flight. And so your nervous system is still activated, but you're like doing all the right things, but from this energy of forcing it.
And then he says, after the terror of stage one and the frustration of stage two, there's stage three, which is, oh yeah, this is how that works. So if you guys haven't read The Way Out yet, it is really a great book. I love how he explains extinction bursts and the process here.
That's why I'm quoting it so much. Because when you can start to see that this is normal, this is part of the process, then the fear goes away much more quickly. The frustration goes away and you'll actually be able to resolve your symptoms in days or hours or minutes, depending on how you're reacting.
But this process of rewiring these neural pathways and regulating your nervous system is not one that you can force. Trust the process when things do come up, if you have a resurgence or new sensation, stay in the present moment, remind yourself you're safe. Notice if you start catastrophizing, which is basically thinking of the future or the past.
They actually say the best thing to do if your pain is at eight, nine or 10 is distract. Do something completely different. And that could even be taking some pain medicine if that fills in alignment with what would help you.
Or it could be watching a TV show or taking a nap. When we have the symptom and we know these things that normally work, but we're doing them urgently, and that's exacerbating the symptom, the tendency again is to just want to work your way out of it and force and do all these things. It's counterintuitive to go into it, to acknowledge it, to relax when this is going on, to trust that this will be okay.
But seeing that this is part of healing, this is part of the process can help. And each time your nervous system gets dysregulated and you bring it back to home and you regulate it again, you build your window of tolerance, you build this capacity to tolerate more and more. So sometimes you're only moving the needle 1% at a time, but that is still progress.
And that's better than trying to force the nervous system to change 100% all at once, and then all of the resistance that causes with the change. Your body has this natural intelligence. The more you understand it and work with it, the easier these sensations will be.
If you are interested in learning more about how this applies in your life, please check out my group coaching membership, Alignment Academy. There are two weekly coaching calls, that's eight calls per month, where you can join Get Live Coaching or Get Written Coaching through Slack. There are modules that you can watch that teach all of these concepts, and you're able to get real time feedback from me about how you're applying it in your life.
Enrollment is ending November 16th until next year. So if this is calling to you, you can find more information in the show notes today. Have a good week, bye.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review.
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