Episode #119- High Alert

One habit that leads to the perpetuation of chronic pain is being in high alert.

 

Do you often go to the worst case scenario?  Do you habitually worry?  When you don't have pain are you thinking about when the pain may return?

These are signs you are living in high alert, and making your pain worse.

 

When the brain is in a high alert, fear based state, then it can percieve normal signals in the body as dangerous and produce pain.

 

High alert can be reinforced by technology, facing uncertainty, or feeling trapped.

 

Listen in for more details about the high alert state and how we can rewire those neural pathways to ones of safety, calm, peace and freedom.

 

For weekly calls and community support integrating this work into your life, check out Alignment Academy:

https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-academy-membership

 

Plus click below for my special PRT-based group if you have back or neck pain specifically.

 

This six month group will walk you through PRT concepts, the latest research on back and necks, and even individual coaching sessions for deeper somatic work- all for an amazing low price:

 

https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/happy-back-&-neck-club

Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 119, High Alert. In this podcast, we learn 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 is an episode about this tendency of many people who have chronic pain or disease to be in high alert and how that high alert state affects our body.
Spoiler alert, it does not do helpful things for our body to constantly be in high alert. As you may know, I've been doing a book club for Alan Gordon's book, The Way Out, and he has a chapter all about breaking the habit of being in high alert. And he has a couple of interesting quotes that 55% of Americans say that they are dealing with a lot of stress.
And we know from neuroscience and studying chronic pain that when people are in more of a fear state, if they're on high alert, they're sensing danger, then their brain is less likely to interpret the signals correctly. The brain is more likely to interpret safe signals as dangerous when you're in a fear-based state. So decreasing this habit of being in high alert will decrease your chronic pain.
Now, one area that can cause people a lot of high alert is technology. Our phones are something that we may check several times a day, maybe hundreds of times a day. And we have constant access to emails and social media and news and all of the Google information about medical conditions, all at our fingertips.
So it's very easy to live in a state of high alert, thinking that everything is always dangerous because we're consuming information, teaching our body that things are dangerous, especially if it's like news that is cultivated to get us into a fear-based state. So you can look at how you're using your technology. You do not have to be perfectionistic about it.
And I like to see that there are some benefits of technology. And even things like social media, you could follow people that are posting funny videos of babies and kittens and funny memes, and you could have a very different experience scrolling on social media than someone who is engaging in activating arguments and comments and ingesting a lot of fearful information. They've shown that your cortisol level goes up every time you hear your phone notification or think you hear your phone.
And I've definitely experienced this as I've been a moderator in some of these groups and putting my stuff out there and receiving comments. My brain automatically goes to fight or flight when I see that there's a comment about my post. I'm in this state of anticipation as I open it.
And so far, knock on wood, no one has ever been really mean or said really hurtful or fearful things to me. And my brain is starting to get out of that habit rather than assuming the worst every time I see a notification. But just notice for you, when you're getting notifications or when you're checking your phone, what state your nervous system is in and what emotional state you're in.
Another thing that can put our brain on high alert is when we're facing uncertainty. Our brain does not like things that are unknown, unpredictable, and uncertainty can cause stress to the system. And we can accentuate that by our beliefs.
We can really believe that every decision we make is very important. And often we can get into this nervous system state of flight where we are trying to find problems and trying to solve them. And by doing that repeatedly, our brain starts to think this is very important and will actually start creating problems for us to worry about and then solve.
We know that our brains actually do get a little bit of dopamine when we solve a problem. So this is a way our brain can control getting little bits of dopamine in an uncertain situation, is to think of all the things that could happen and how we would solve that. And it can seem like a productive thing to do, but when we are worrying excessively, when we are overthinking, when we're preoccupied with things, we are in this flight mode of the nervous system.
We are not thinking clearly. We're using our survival brain, and we're actually perceiving the world differently when we're in any of these nervous system states. So if you're in fight or flight, you're more likely to see the world as dangerous and just perceive it that way.
So you may have gotten into the habit of seeing things that could be dangerous and thinking about them and worrying about them, but worry does not help. It really doesn't help anything. It really just makes your nervous system dysregulated, and most of the things we worry about never actually even happen.
And when you're not worrying about things, as much, you may be surprised about how your life unfolds in different ways than you ever would have possibly imagined. If you tend to go to the worst-case scenario, maybe you could spend some time thinking about how you do want the situation to go and what if it does go well. And if there are little things that you can do to calm some of your fears about uncertainty, you could start to develop the belief and find evidence for the belief that things are going to be okay either way.
Usually when there is uncertainty, like a decision we're making, if it is a decision we didn't already easily make, it's because either outcome has some positive and some negative. They're probably about 50-50 on either outcome. So seeing that either way things turn out, you still have tools to support yourself.
You may have the ability to ask for help or problem solve in the moment. You don't have to worry and stress about it now if you have that belief that when the time comes up, you'll be able to use that great analytical mind of yours in the moment to solve the problem. You don't have to do it right now.
That kind of thought has helped me a lot as I've been preparing for podcast interviews, for example. So I used to stay up at night thinking about how I would phrase things, kind of going through the interview in my head, not getting great sleep, feeling more brain fog and confusion in the morning. So instead of doing that, I have just come to this place of understanding that my brain thinks well on the spot.
If I don't plan it, things go better. I'll be inspired to know what I need to say as long as I focus on my nervous system and remaining more calm. Then those things flow naturally, and I don't have to figure everything out ahead of time.
The more you worry and look for things to worry about, the stronger those neural pathways will be, and the easier it is to find things to worry about. But the more you practice seeing safety, that you can do it, that things work out, that you don't have to do things for everyone. Sometimes it's better to let them actually learn and do things for themselves.
Keep looking for examples, like we do with Detective for the Opposite, with pain. Look for examples of there being uncertainty, and you being able to handle it. Maybe thinking of other times that you've worried quite a bit about things that never actually even happened.
Another big way that we stay on high alert is by feeling trapped. Dr. Schubiner said in his experience, and he's been doing this work for decades, he has found that every case of mind-body syndrome or neuroplastic pain has an element of feeling trapped. So maybe you're feeling trapped in your job or in a physical situation in your house.
But I want you to think for yourself. If you have chronic pain or disease, if you have a sense of feeling trapped in some way, feeling trapped will put your nervous system in high alert. Sometimes you may be in situations that you feel trapped by your pain.
I know for me, I struggled with a lot of digestive issues. So there are many times that I felt like I needed to excuse myself from a conversation and go find a bathroom. And usually, actually, that's when I would have the worst type of symptoms is when I would think, you know, there's this amount of time that I need to be here talking to this person before I can leave or there isn't a bathroom nearby.
Any of those feeling trapped without an escape or without a solution would actually make my symptoms so much worse. There may be certain things that you develop that you're able to say to people to get out of a conversation or to set yourself up for success by knowing where the bathrooms are, or you could schedule yourself breaks so you're not rushing from one thing to another and you're giving yourself more time in between. In The Way Out, Alan Gordon uses an example of feeling trapped on a plane when the person next to him was asleep and he wanted to get up to stretch his back but didn't feel like he wanted to wake up that person.
What he did in the future was change his seat for the return flight home so that he was on an aisle, and then he found that he only actually did need to get up once or twice during the flight, but just giving himself that permission and that access to getting up if he needed to, he found he actually didn't even need to get up that often. How does this resonate? Do you see these patterns of being on high alert in your life?
This is contributing to your chronic pain. When you're in high alert, your brain is more likely to misinterpret safe signals of the body as dangerous. So fear and high alert do produce more pain.
Pain reprocessing therapy, PRT, is focused on decreasing these neural pathways of fear, danger, anxiety, worry, high alert, and making new neural pathways, building new connections to the emotions that we do want, safety, calmness, and freedom. So not just decreasing the high alert and anxiety, but increasing the time we're feeling safe and good. And that's what I'm going to talk about next week on the podcast is embracing and leaning into more of the positive feelings.
And that's one of my favorite things to teach about. If you are resonating with this information, if you want to learn more about pain reprocessing, and if you want to do so in a community with support and with coaching, I have some great options. Alignment Academy is my monthly membership where you'll get loads of coaching, group coaching, and written coaching.
Plus, I have a super cool group coming up focused on back and neck pain exclusively called Happy Back and Neck Club. Although PRT does treat all symptoms the same way, I wanted to have a group focused on backs and necks partially because there's so much research out there. It's one of the most commonly studied areas, partially because as a physical therapist, I had a specific interest in this and treated a lot of people with back pain.
And I've even struggled with my own back pain on and off. So I feel like I have a few personal tricks up my sleeve of what I've found helpful, including things like kinesiotape to help support the nervous system and the fascia. Happy Back in Net Club is an amazing low price for individual and group coaching.
So please check that out in the show notes if that's of interest to you. All right, my loves, have a great week. 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. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.