Episode #125- The 6 F’s- Reactions that Increase Pain

This Episode is what Dr Schubiner calls "The Six F's" in his book "Unlearn Your Pain"

 

These are natural reactions to pain, but they also cause the brain to amplify the pain or symptoms.

 

Here are the 6 F's, listen for more info:

 

"Fear of the pain or other symptom: We fear the sensation of it as it can be so severe and unpleasant; we worry about whether it will go away and when or when it will return; we spend a lot of time wishing it will go away

 

Focus on the pain or other symptom: We pay a lot of attention to it; we monitor it; we focus on how it feels and if it is changing or getting worse

 

Frustration with it: We get upset, annoyed and angry at the pain or other symptom; we become resentful that doctors haven’t fixed it or don’t understand it; we become sad for what we have lost

 

Fighting it: We work hard to overcome it; we try to push through it; and we get exhausted in the fight, especially when we feel we are losing the battle

 

Trying to figure it out: We spend a lot of time thinking about it; we search for answers online, in doctor’s offices and with alternative care practices

 

Trying to fix it: We spend a lot of time and money on treatments that haven’t worked; we try anything and everything that might work; we get desperate for a cure; we get depressed when one doesn’t materialize."

 

The way you react to pain can cause your brain to produce more of it or decrease it, so reacting differently on purpose will help you feel better.  

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy

on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 125, The Six Fs, Reactions That Increase Pain. 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. You may know that I did a book club for Dr. Schubiner's book, Unlearn Your Pain.
All of the videos for the replays are actually on YouTube. You can go to my YouTube channel, Body and Mind Life Coach. And I really love doing these book clubs because I learn so much and I get to really study this information so I can present it to you guys.
And Dr. Schubiner's Unlearn Your Pain is chock full of good information. He's been a researcher in this field for so long and has a great way of distilling down the concepts into simpler ways to understand what's going on with pain and especially with chronic pain and chronic symptoms. As you probably know by now, in most cases, chronic pain and disease doesn't actually show you that there is something structural going on or how much tissue damage there is.
When you have chronic symptoms, it's often the case that you have neuroplastic pain. Your brain can produce pain even when there's no injury or long after an injury has healed, which is usually three to six months at the most. So one of the concepts that's really important to learn when doing this work is that the way that you respond to the pain actually makes a difference on whether the brain keeps producing the pain or not.
Basically, it's like a volume knob. When you react in certain ways, the brain turns up the volume or amplifies your symptoms. The six Fs are normal reactions to pain.
So if you have these reactions, don't beat yourself up. They're very normal. It's understandable.
But you also want to know what these six Fs are and recognize them in yourself because you could be inadvertently causing your pain to become higher and higher. And there are more effective ways of handling your pain, reacting to pain that actually retrain the brain and rewire the brain to produce pain less and less. So pain is not just about what kind of damage there is going on in our body, but it really has a lot more to do with the ways that we're reacting to the pain.
So I'm going to go through the six Fs that Dr. Schubiner lists as these natural reactions that increase your pain or other symptoms. The first one and the biggest one is fear. Any type of fear-based response means you're in a survival state.
You've activated the nervous system. And when the nervous system is dysregulated, any kinds of symptoms can happen in the body, ranging from numbness to muscle soreness, to fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, tinnitus. Basically, the brain uses these neural circuits when there is danger, and the brain can activate these neural circuits even when there is no structural danger, but the nervous system is dysregulated.
It's basically misinformation from the brain. When you have pain and react with fear, it activates the pain-fear-pain cycle, which I talk about in episode 69. So fear of the pain is normal.
It's unpleasant, it doesn't feel good, and we start to worry that something more may be going on. We may think about when it's gonna go away or when it might return. There are many people that don't even enjoy the time that they have without symptoms because they are fearing when the symptoms may come back.
And of course, being in that fear-based state, it's more likely that your symptoms will come back. So notice if you're responding with a lot of fear because this will increase your pain. F number two is focusing on the pain.
This is something our brains naturally do. We might focus, pay attention to it, try to find patterns, think about it a lot, notice if it's getting worse. Our brain loves to create stories to explain things and to understand them.
And so our brain may be on the lookout for pain or any other kind of symptoms as a way of trying to understand what's going on. But this focusing on it can actually increase our symptoms. Many times I've heard of people Googling their symptoms, reading all about them, maybe even keeping a pain diary, and they've actually shown in research that people who do keep a pain diary and keep track of when their pain is worse, they actually do have pain that lasts longer than people who are not as focused on it and aren't tracking it.
F number three is frustration. This is so common, especially I see this with people who like to be good, like to do well at things. I work with a lot of physicians, and so a lot of them have been used to being able to solve problems and understand things.
And a lot of people can have an understanding of what's going on. And then when they have pain, get really frustrated. They might make it mean that they're not doing a good job or this won't work for them.
They may be annoyed or angry or upset at the pain that it's back. They could be frustrated that the doctors haven't fixed it or the doctors don't understand what's going on. They may be frustrated about things they're not able to do anymore or things that they've lost by having the pain.
So again, this is such a normal reaction to have, but it also causes the brain to produce more symptoms. If you're frustrated with your pain, try and be so compassionate with yourself. F number four is fighting it.
Some of the personality traits of chronic pain include being a perfectionist, working hard, a strong sense of duty. And in our society, we're really taught that the harder we work at something, the better our results will be. So sometimes people fight the pain.
They want to overcome it or push through it. And when we're in this urgent perfectionistic state, that's the nervous system state of flight. And when we're in flight, we could do all of the right techniques to heal, but because we're still in this dysregulated state, our brain keeps producing the symptoms.
For many people, it's more a matter of slowing down and doing less, rather than trying to fight hard and do more and work through it. When we're fighting the symptom, it's like telling your brain, this is important, this is dangerous. We've got to be on high alert about this.
So it's understandable that our symptoms could increase. F number five is trying to fix it. This obsession with figuring something out and fixing it is also part of the flight nervous system state.
It's this activation, you can't rest, you need to keep reading things, listening to things. The problem when you're in this nervous system state is that even when people do give you the right information, you might doubt it, you might not believe it. I've talked to several people who have actually done a consult with Dr. Sarno or Dr. Schubiner or Dr. Strax and gotten information that, yes, your pain is neuroplastic, and yet they keep trying to figure it out.
And basically this nervous system state is like if you could just get the right information and really believe it, then you'll feel better. And so they're constantly searching for this information and keeping themselves in this high activated state. Oftentimes, I hear people say, if I could just figure out what it was from my childhood or if I could just learn the right technique, then I'll be able to figure it out.
But constantly seeking for more information and trying to figure it out and trying to overanalyze everything that's going on, it's like running on a hamster wheel. You're not getting anywhere, and eventually you're gonna get tired. You're burning yourself out.
Again, this is a case where sometimes people need to take a break from all of the figuring out that they're doing. And instead of listening to more podcasts and doing more reading and getting on forums and discussing it, it might be better to just read some other kind of book, read a fiction novel or a romance book. It's pretty counterintuitive, but if you notice you're in that state of trying to figure it out, that could be what is keeping your pain around.
And the last F is trying to fix it. You might have been looking all over for a solution, trying all kinds of treatments that haven't worked, getting desperate for a cure, and even getting depressed if the fixing isn't working. You might even start to think, I've tried so many things, nothing is working, so chances are nothing will.
But when we're coming from that urgent fixing energy, as I talked about before, you could be doing all the right things, but still being so much in the fear states, your brain keeps producing the symptom. So notice how you generally respond to pain. Notice if it's one or more of the six Fs.
And if it is, again, these are natural reactions, so you don't have to beat yourself up about them. The best thing is to start by just noticing and observing and maybe even labeling it. Oh, here I am going into fix-it mode.
Here I am trying to figure it out. This time the pain is really frustrating. Having understanding and vocabulary for it is part of what gets us out of that pain-fear cycle.
The more we can become observers and notice rather than reacting. The main thing, pain reprocessing therapy or PRT teaches is to respond in different ways that don't increase the fear but increase the feelings of safety. I like to think of the nervous system states.
So instead of responding with fight, flight, freeze, you're noticing what's going on and then getting to that rest and repair state as much as possible. That's the state of safety. It's gonna be okay.
Trust the process. This is temporary. And it's not to say that this is easy.
I'm making it sound easy that when you have pain, you're gonna respond with calmness and indifference and not caring. But the more you practice, the easier these types of responses will be. Sometimes it's really hard to believe that you are actually safe and that there's not a problem.
So going through a book like Unlearn Your Pain can really give you a lot of opportunities to examine what's going on, looking at your past, looking at your personality traits, and give you a lot of insight for that proof for your own brain that this is neuroplastic. When you have that belief, it's a lot easier to not react with the six Fs. Other things that people can find helpful could be distraction or going into the body, like with somatic tracking.
Each time you respond in a different way that's calmer and with these messages of safety, then your brain can form new neural pathways, and it learns to produce the pain less and less. It can be like a toddler that's throwing a tantrum, and when you reward it, you give the toddler some candy, then they learn. But when you could just be calm or ignore the tantrum, then the child learns not to continue to do it.
It's not effective. But this does happen over time. Dr. Schubiner says this process is a lot like training a puppy, and the more you can be compassionate and patient, it will actually go a lot quicker than if you're frustrated and impatient and expect that it should just be easy and happen immediately.
If you want more information about reactions to pain that actually increase your symptoms, check out episode 69, The Pain-Fear-Pain Cycle. The way that you react to your pain does make a difference, and that's one of the main principles and keys to this work. And if you want extra support on your healing journey, be sure and check out my membership program, my monthly membership with group calls where you will have a community of supportive people going through the same process, having the same kinds of questions and struggles with tons of information and support about how to navigate this in the most effective way.
Okay, guys, thanks for listening, and have a great 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. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.