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Science based strategies for the brain and nervous system, and thought work tools from life coaching to help you feel better in your body at any age!
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Wednesday Mar 15, 2023
Wednesday Mar 15, 2023
In this episode I define trauma in nervous system terms, so you can have a more compassionate view about the survival states and why you go into them.
Your nervous system is always trying to keep you safe and can get stuck in survival states from all different types of trauma.
All of us have had things that are more than our nervous system can handle, but some have not been able to process it because they have not had a compassionate witness.
Trauma can be processed and there can actually be more growth than would have been otherwise possible (post traumatic growth).
If you want to learn more about the nervous system, how it affects your body, and how to regulate it, sign up for my free nervous system modules here:
https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
I will send you 4 of the video modules I use in my coaching programs, to teach you the basics in an easy to understand way!
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If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Transcript- Automatically Generated:
This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 110, Trauma and Post Traumatic Growth. 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, I want to talk about a term you might have heard a lot about, trauma, and maybe one that you haven't heard about, post-traumatic growth.
Now, I want to just keep this really simple and give you a few facts, not dive too much into depth into the world of trauma. There's obviously so much with trauma and healing, and really what we know about how trauma affects the body. But I don't want to get into all of that today.
I just want to give you a basic, basic concept of what we even mean by the word trauma. So if you think of the nervous system's capacity to tolerate a situation, trauma is more than what the nervous system can handle. So there are certain things that tend to be traumatic for everyone, but it is possible that something could be traumatic for one person and not for another, because it's more than what their nervous system can handle.
When you think of going into a trauma response, that's the same as going into a survival state. So when you go into fight or flight, freeze or fawn, again, just keeping it simple, there are more nuances to the nervous system. But the main four states that we talk about are fight or flight, freeze or fawn, and those are survival states, or what you might hear called trauma responses.
So if you, for example, didn't get a lot of attention, a trauma response, a survival state that you might have gone into could have been flight, where you tried to be the best at everything you could and be a high achiever and be a perfectionist and always be doing things so that you can get that sense of safety that you want. And your nervous system develops as you are a child and adapts to going into these states without your conscious awareness. So again, thinking of just as a child growing up, your nervous system was doing its best to survive, to help you survive.
And so you may have gone into some of these survival states, inevitably, you did, and even not process some of what happened because you were in these survival states. Now, we are made to go into and out of these survival states, right? We might react with fight or flight and then come back to neutral.
But what often happens is the trauma, the traumatic incident is not processed. And so that can lead us to stay stuck in these survival states. Peter Levine, who is an expert in somatic healing of trauma, somatic experiencing, says that trauma is what happens in absence of a compassionate witness.
So there could be an event that has been traumatic, but was processed with someone and doesn't stay stuck as trauma in the system. When we talk about things staying stuck, that can also be a little confusing. So the best explanation I've heard of that is by Dr. Amy Apigan.
You can look at my podcast number 99 to hear the full explanation. But basically, the nervous system controls the muscle tension, the gut, blood flow to different areas. So there can be a nervous system response, a trauma response that has a certain effect on your body.
She gives an example of when you're pre-verbal, so under six months, and you don't have another way to calm down your nervous system. If your needs aren't met, that you may start to try to decrease the discomfort by raising up your shoulders and activating those shoulder and neck muscles, ears up by the shoulders. That's a common sign of stress and where people carry a lot of their stress.
And as well in the hip flexors, there might be a muscle tension that's produced in the hip flexors to try to get into that fetal tucked up position. So trauma in our nervous system can present in different ways in the body. As adults, that's why somatics can be so important in releasing these trauma response patterns.
So there can be what we call capital T traumas or little t traumas. So basically, there are some things that are generally traumatic to all of the human population. You know, abuse, neglect, and little t traumas could be things like falling off your bicycle, hearing bad news, witnessing violence.
There can be these things that still overwhelm your nervous system, and if they're not processed, lead to some of these protective patterns in the body. There was one time I met someone new, and he was talking about when he was in elementary school, that's when the Challenger space shuttle exploded. And I remember that.
I think I was in fifth grade, and I remember it being sad. I remember it being traumatic. But the way he was describing it in his present adult life, that was still something that was unsettled for him.
It was still something that caused him fear. It was something that changed the course of his life. It was never processed for him.
So when we got into conversation, that was something that he brought up as still affecting him. For me personally, I did not have a lot of capital T trauma growing up in my life. I didn't even have anyone close to me die until a couple of years ago.
And I was in a really good home with a loving family. What did end up being traumatizing for me was the trauma response that I went to being raised in a religious culture where I felt like I needed to always be better. And this wasn't necessarily, I'm just realizing, as an adult, I just started to realize my parents really did love me for who I was.
But I think I took on this feeling of, I'm not good enough, shame, I need to be better, perfectionism. So I would alternate between flight and freeze, feeling hopeless, not good enough, discouraged. And those were the main trauma responses that my nervous system, I think my nervous system was just maybe a little more sensitive than some.
And so things that could have been less traumatic for other people ended up being more than what my nervous system could handle, putting me into these survival states, basically living in survival states. And that's when I finally got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, because years and years of not having proper blood flow to my digestion or proper functioning of my digestive system, because I was never really in that parasympathetic, calm rest and repair state, I was mainly living in survival states. It took its toll on my body.
And I mean, fortunately, in a way, I'm actually really grateful for it because it brought me to this mind-body approach and to the information about healing and about really changing the way I was putting pressure on myself and keeping myself in survival states. So I often use the analogy, being in a survival state can feel really physiologically to your body like you're being chased by a tiger. And even when the environment around me was not dangerous, I kept that feeling going of being chased by a tiger because I was never satisfied with doing enough.
I thought I needed to do more. I was perfectionistic, which is just impossible to be perfect at things. I was a people pleaser.
Oh yeah, I went into faun a lot too. Oh, lived most of my life in faun actually. So faun is another version of shutting down the nervous system in order to make other people happy, in order to hope that everyone's gonna like you.
A common thing my family would say is, what would the neighbors think? And so that is representative of living in faun. What are people gonna think?
I need to act a certain way. I should be different than I am. And really just starting to shut down part of myself in hopes that more people would like me if I wasn't me.
So those survival responses can be helpful in the short term. But when we're living in survival states, that's where it really starts to affect our body, our relationships, our health, all areas of our life. Often we talk about the trauma that happens to us in our childhood, while our nervous system is developing.
But of course, trauma can happen at any point in someone's life, and that traumatic response can affect their nervous system at any point. And we also know that there is intergenerational trauma. So meaning if your parents or grandparents or your long line of ancestors have generally been stressed or had certain reactions to certain things, that can actually be inherited.
There is a study that they did with mice where they shocked the feet of the mice while they were smelling cherry blossoms. And then later, when those mice had babies, their babies produced cortisol when they smelled that same smell of cherry blossoms that had been associated with that stressful event of their parents. So even though the babies never received the shock to their feet, they had a stress response just from that smell in the environment.
So being in a survival state doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong or that anything has gone wrong. It's actually a sign that your nervous system is working. It's maybe even a little hypervigilant.
But being in a survival state in itself doesn't mean that anything has gone wrong. It is just a sign to you. It is a sign that you're in some kind of fear.
You're believing that you're at some level in danger. So it could be from chronic pain and you're feeling pain, and then you go into the flight mode of, I really wanna fix this and I wanna figure it out. And you start Googling and you start asking a lot of people and that survival state of flight, which may have been very helpful when you were trying to find out other information and trying to solve a problem, becomes less and less helpful and even promotes more of the pain that you're feeling because when you're living in survival states, again, it's affecting the muscle tone in the body, the oxygenation, the inflammation even, and your immunity.
You just set yourself up for things to happen in the body when you're living in a stressed out survival state or going between them or getting stuck in them most of the time. Now, what we also know about trauma is that there can be what's called post-traumatic growth. And that means that because of the experience that the person has gone through, they are able to reach higher levels of growth, of expanding their window of tolerance, of being able to cope with more and more because they've had the trauma and then processed through it.
So it can be very scary for people. Sometimes they'll hear about trauma or they'll read the book, The Body Keeps the Score, and they're reminded of the trauma that they had. And it can feel very overwhelming, and very hopeless, but the person who's gone through trauma, there's actually so much more that they have learned than a person who hasn't gone through those experiences.
You see examples all of the time of people who have had horrible childhoods, and sometimes they end up really repeating those patterns and staying stuck in those behaviors and perpetuating abuse. But there are other people that have had horrible childhoods and who have risen above, who become motivational speakers, who help millions of people because they have gone through those trials. They've been through some of the toughest experiences, and so they can effectively teach people where they would not have had those resources to draw on if they hadn't gone through that.
It's like when there's a forest fire and then the ground becomes even richer and more dense with nutrients and has this place now for fertile growth because of the loss that it had gone through. So this is not to try to minimize anyone's trauma or to be Pollyanna about it and say, yeah, it's great that happened to you, and just be thankful for that, whatever. If that does not resonate with you, that's not the main message I'm trying to portray here.
But there is that other side of trauma that allows for more growth than would be possible if that wasn't there. Now, getting out of survival states requires a lot of compassion for yourself, a lot of understanding. So what I really want you to hear from this episode is that your nervous system is doing its best to try to protect you.
And if there was something that was scary, it came up with ways that it figured were the best ways for you to adapt, either by activating your nervous system, to fight or to run away flight, or to go into a freeze response, to shut down, to fawn, and pretend to be someone you're not. The more you can see your nervous system as trying its best to protect you, and it may be hypervigilant, and it may be overly fearful. And the best way to work with it is to understand it, to work with your nervous system, and not fight it, and not expect it to just be different because you've practiced regulating a couple of times.
These neural pathways, again, since it's subconscious, since it's immediate, since it's been going on for years and maybe decades, those neural pathways are strong. And so just understanding that you start to be this observer of your nervous system, observer of what's going on, allowing it, accepting it, and understanding it. And then from there, you can work to regulate your nervous system more and change it in a loving way.
As Deb Dana says, the nervous system is good at detecting the subtle difference between an invitation and a demand. If this talk about trauma and post-traumatic growth has piqued your interest into delving a little more into the nervous system, finding out more about how the nervous system affects your body, how to get out of these survival states if you notice that you're going into them, then please download my free nervous system modules. I'll have a link in the show notes, and you can start to watch these videos.
There are four videos about your nervous system and how it affects your body, how to regulate it. I will send them to you, and you can start integrating this work into your life, and they're completely free. So go ahead and check out the show notes.
And if you've been liking this podcast and haven't yet given it a rating or review, please pop over to iTunes, give it a five-star rating, a little sentence or two for a review. I read all of them, I really appreciate them, and it helps the podcast be found by more people. So keep learning about that nervous system and regulating it for better help, and 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.
Wednesday Feb 01, 2023
Wednesday Feb 01, 2023
Today I talk all about somatic coaching- what it is, what it looks like, and who it can help.
Somatic means body, so somatic coaching uses perceptions and sensations and attention to the body in order to enhance the coaching experience.
Most therapy and coaching just involves talking, and using our conscious mind.
But about 95% of our thoughts are subconscious, so many of our behaviors and nervous system responses are not in our conscious awareness.
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Wednesday Jan 04, 2023
Wednesday Jan 04, 2023
In this episode I take you through a 5 minute somatic tracking meditation to calm your nervous system, and rewire your brain to create less pain!
Somatic tracking is the process of going into the sensations in the body and describing them neutrally.
This gives some space between the stimulus (sensation) and the typical response (some form of fear that leads to more pain).
When we can describe the sensations with different words, imagine the color or shape or texture, and just watching what is there instead of reacting to it, it actually trains the brain that the sensation is not important. So it does not continue to produce it.
Listen in for a quick description of why we do somatic tracking to reprocess pain and emotions, and for the short meditation that you can use when you just have a few moments to practice!
Want help applying this into your life? Check out my group coaching membership, Alignment Academy!
Join a community of like minded self healers- full of support, inspiration, and fun!
https://betsy-jensen.mykajabi.com/alignment-academy-membership
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
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If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Monday Dec 05, 2022
Monday Dec 05, 2022
Today's Episode is about Pain Catastrophizing- what it is and how it affects your symptoms.
People with high levels of pain catastrophizing are more likely to develop a new acute pain, more likely for their acute pain to turn chronic. And who catastrophize more before surgery are more likely to have complications and a slower recovery.
Here are the 13 questions on the Pain Catastrophizing Scale. Rate from 0 (not at all) to 4 (all of the time) when you feel pain:
- I worry all the time about whether the pain will end.
- I feel I can't go on.
- It's terrible and I think it's never going to get any better.
- It's awful and I feel that it overwhelms me.
- I feel I can't stand it anymore.
- I become afraid that the pain may get worse.
- I think of other painful experiences.
- I anxiously want the pain to go away.
- I can't seem to keep it out of my mind.
- I keep thinking about how much it hurts.
- I keep thinking about how badly I want the pain to stop.
- There is nothing I can do to reduce the intensity of the pain.
- I wonder whether something serious may happen.
A score over 37 means you tend to catastrophize how you think of your pain.
What is the solution for pain catastrophizing?
Mindfulness- being in the present moment!
There are ways to interpret your pain differently, like through somatic tracking or sending yourself messages of safety
Somatic strategies to calm the nervous system will help decrease pain catastrophizing.
So listen in for this quick summary of pain catastrophizing and how to rewire it!
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Transcript- Automatically Generated:
This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 107, Pain Catastrophizing. 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 pain catastrophizing, what that is and what the research shows about it. So pain catastrophizing is a way that they measure the way you think about your pain.
What they found in research is that people's views on pain, the way they think about their pain and talk about their pain actually influences how much pain they have. This totally makes sense with neuroscience because of the pain-fear cycle. If you want to learn more about that, you can listen back to episode 69, the pain-fear pain cycle.
And I talk a little bit about pain catastrophizing there, but I wanted to make a quick little episode about pain catastrophizing today because I think it's so helpful just to hear the kind of statements that they use in the pain catastrophizing scale so that you can be aware of when you're catastrophizing about your pain and decrease that to decrease your pain. The pain catastrophizing scale is given to patients where they rate from zero, which is not at all, to four, which is all the time. How much they think about these types of thoughts when they have pain.
It's only 13 questions, so I'll read them to you. Here are the 13 statements on the pain catastrophizing scale. I worry all the time about whether the pain will end.
I feel I can't go on. It's terrible, and I think it's never gonna get any better. It's awful, and I feel that it overwhelms me.
I feel I can't stand it anymore. I become afraid that the pain may get worse. I think of other painful experiences.
I anxiously want the pain to go away. I can't seem to keep it out of my mind. I keep thinking about how much it hurts.
I keep thinking about how badly I want the pain to stop. There's nothing I can do to reduce the intensity of the pain. I wonder whether something serious may happen.
These sound like normal things that people who are in pain, and especially in chronic pain, would think. But what the research shows is that people who score higher on pain catastrophizing also are more likely to get new acute pains. They're more likely for their acute pains to turn chronic.
And people who catastrophize more before surgery are more likely to have complications and delays with their healing. So notice with yourself, do you tend to think these type of thoughts? And how frequently do you think them?
Even if they seem true, even if you could prove them, they are not helpful to think. They're actually amping up the danger signal and dysregulating the nervous system to think these kinds of thoughts. So what is the solution to catastrophizing?
It's mindfulness. So episode 70, I talk about mindfulness and give you some examples and give you some examples of different ways to think about your symptoms. But one good example of mindfulness is somatic tracking.
You may have heard the term somatic tracking. It's very similar to a way I learned as a life coach to process emotions and what they do in somatic experiencing to process trauma. And basically, it's going into the body, just describing what is going on in real time with general neutral words.
So instead of saying, I have a lot of anxiety right now, or I have a migraine right now, you might say, I have a tightness in the chest and a rapid heartbeat, or I have a pulsing sensation in this part of my head. So you just describe it neutrally. You see, if you visualize a shape or a color to it, is it moving?
Is it warm or cold? These types of things bring you to the present moment. You're not thinking about the future.
You're not thinking about the past, and you're able to calm the nervous system. When you get into more of that relaxed rest and repair state, you're actually able to decrease those pain signals. Your brain is not on high alert and creating more and more of them.
Now, I'll give you a few suggestions for thoughts you might want to try on instead. You could notice if you're catastrophizing, just be the observer at first. You could label, oh, there's my brain catastrophizing, and then you want to send your brain messages of safety.
You want to be in the present moment. You want to describe things neutrally, just as they are. So you could say things like part of me is feeling scared.
My brain interpreted this signal as dangerous, but I'm safe. It takes time for my nervous system to heal, and that's okay. I'm learning to take care of myself.
I am here. This is happening. I'm working on getting physically and mentally stronger.
This too shall pass. There may be other thoughts that are soothing to you. One of my favorites is just you are safe.
You're safe. It's amazing how often I tell that to myself because my primitive brain likes to be very reactive. It's always on the lookout for danger, and my survival responses are constantly kicking in.
And when I feel that dysregulation in my body, I tell myself, I'm safe. I look around the room. You can actually look and name objects that you see.
You can think of things that you smell and taste and touch. Tuning into your senses or many of the other somatic approaches that are out there for calming the body and the nervous system can also be helpful to come back to the present moment when you're catastrophizing. If you want help with pain catastrophizing or any of the other pain reprocessing or emotional processing techniques that I teach, I would love to be your coach.
There are some different options that I have for a group membership, for a few limited spots of one-on-one coaching. And if you'd like to check that out more, just feel free to click on the information in the show notes. And right now, I'm offering a free 60-minute consultation with me so that you can talk to me about your specific situation and see if coaching might be a good fit for you.
Thanks for listening. 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.
Tuesday Nov 15, 2022
Tuesday Nov 15, 2022
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!
Want help applying this into your life? Check out my group coaching membership, Alignment Academy!
https://betsy-jensen.mykajabi.com/alignment-academy-membership
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
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.
And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
I know some of you are not on my email list or following me on social media (Why not?!?)
But if you aren't, you may not have heard yet about my amazing "Founder's Special" for Alignment Academy.
Alignment Academy is my group coaching program with 2 calls per week, modules, and resources for healing.
Normally it's $99 per mo, but for the first 49 it will be a fixed rate of $49 per mo for as long as you are in Alignment Academy.
9 spots are gone in just the first few days, so be sure and click on the link for more information if this is calling to you!
Alignment Academy information:
https://betsy-jensen.mykajabi.com/alignment-academy-membership
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Predictive coding is like a brain's subconscious shortcut.
Predictive coding is the #1 reason for chronic pain symptoms. Especially for people who tell me they feel calm, but their pain is related to a movement, food, time of the month, etc.
I give you a few examples of how predictive coding works in our bodies to produce symptoms, and how it can be reversed! Be sure and listen to find out more
Want help with applying this into your life? Check out Alignment Academy (my group coaching membership). Click here:
https://betsy-jensen.mykajabi.com/alignment-academy-membership
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
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Transcript-Automatically Generated:
This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 104, Predictive Coding.
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's topic is predictive coding, which I have to say is probably the number one way that people keep themselves in chronic pain, is by looking at what I would call predictive coding, the way that the brain predicts what's going to happen and actually generates pain based on beliefs. When pain comes and goes, and it seems related to stress, it's very easy to see, oh, there's an emotional component.
But sometimes people will tell me every time I bend over, I feel this pain, or it's just when I'm typing, or it's a certain food that I've eaten, or when the weather changes or bright lights, or it's that time of the month. And they tell me about this predictive pattern that they have seen for months and maybe even years. But what they found in neuroscience is that our brain is very efficient.
There are many things that we subconsciously assume that change our body. Think of the example of food poisoning. You could have food that you ingested and then you got very, very sick.
So in the future, just thinking of that food has a physiological response on your body. Your stomach may tighten up. If you actually tried to eat that food, you might physically not be able to even swallow it, or you might get sick.
Your brain and your body want you to remember that time that felt so horrible. So any traces of that now, your brain can actually create, recreate some of those symptoms. When a car next to you moves, you may feel your body feel like it's moving when the car next to you moves.
Nothing actually moved, but because of the environment and what your brain has put together as this is what this means, your brain creates a sensation in your body. What they found in neuroscience is that our brain is very efficient. So it can very easily form some subconscious thoughts about what happened and what is going on.
And then our reticular activating system, this part of our brain that's designed to back up our beliefs will actually cause us to only find those things in reality that back up our beliefs and remember those and forget the rest. So an example is someone might tell me that their back pain is related to their periods. And every time they have their period right before they have back pain, for example.
And then when I question them a little more, sometimes they'll say, yeah, when I was on vacation, that one time I didn't have it. Or out of the last four months, three out of the times I had it and one I didn't. And that is actually showing that it is not something structural, right?
If it was something structural, it would happen every single time. And so just by that alone, you can see the brain tends to kind of overgeneralize to see the patterns it's familiar with. It happens at this subconscious level.
So we're not even consciously aware of it, but it's like Pavlov's dogs. When he would ring a bell repeatedly right before he gave them food, they came to associate the bell with food, and physiologically their body changed. So if I injured my back at one point and bending over hurt, then my brain would associate that bending with pain.
And there are a lot of people that would verify that, yes, bending, there's these structural things that happen, and so that increases your pain, and your back has this damage. So there are a lot of fearful things that you could also hear about bending. So long after the injury is healed, typically three to six months is the longest it takes an injury to heal.
And after that time, it's fair to assume that there are a lot of predictive coding pathways that your brain has generated. Right? It wants to be efficient.
Your brain saves time. It's like a shortcut by having this predictive coding. So after your injury has healed, you may still feel that pain with bending forward.
And if you felt that pain for 10 years, every time you bend forward, you have a lot of evidence gathered of times that you've bent forward and it's hurt. And again, your brain might have even had sometimes that it hadn't hurt, but it will quickly not remember them or not even realize that they ever happened. We know our bodies will subconsciously prepare for movement.
For example, if we're going to go from sitting to standing, our blood vessels constrict before we go to stand up so that our blood pressure regulates. So the same thing can happen, for example, with our muscles, when we have a pattern of, I've had this before myself, that's how I know, when my back has been very tight, and then I know, you know, with a certain movement, that that's when I feel pain, I prepare to go from sitting to standing, and I actually, before I even do it, feel my back tighten up and then go to standing. So it's like the brain believes there's this area to protect, it has to tighten up, and in doing that, it is actually causing pain.
It's causing the pain that I feel that reinforces that there is damage that it needs to tighten up to protect. One example of predictive coding in the body that happens physiologically is that when we drink water, we stop feeling thirsty. Now, it would take 20 minutes for ourselves to actually register that the hydration level has changed.
But our brain through experience and through what people have told us is that when we have that thirst signal, that when we drink water, that will solve it. So instead of drinking water for 20 whole minutes until we stop feeling thirsty, we actually drink water, stop feeling thirsty, and then the body goes on doing what it needs to because that task is taken care of. You could think of predictive coding and the reticular activating system, like when you buy a new car and all of a sudden, you notice all the same cars that are out there that are like yours that you had never noticed before.
So this can happen with pain, with these patterns. I know for me, I associated drinking coffee with my stomach hurting or drinking caffeine with urinary urgency. But once I started questioning that maybe this is just some predictive coding that my brain is using as a shortcut, I started to see examples of when it wasn't true.
And this is what we do when we think there might be some predictive coding. We want to really lean into detective or the opposite. So this is where you look for any examples of how your belief is not true.
So if you say, you know, every time I drive for more than an hour, my back hurts, but then you notice, you can sit in the passenger seat for two hours, and your back doesn't hurt. Or you notice that you can sit in the movie seats for two hours, and your back doesn't hurt. So you start to look for, like a detective, you know, making its strongest case.
You want to look for every shred of evidence, every time that you feel better than you think you're going to, any time that it possibly might be a different pattern than what you expect. Doing this does two things. First of all, you start building this effort and building this evidence for yourself that you can look back on in times of doubt.
You could even write it down, get a notebook and be a detective. The other thing it does is it shifts your brain, that reticular activating system that is used to being focused on looking for pain and what creates pain, it shifts it to looking for when you're feeling better, things that feel good when you're distracted. So shifting your focus there, it's like a gratitude journal.
When you start focusing on just three things you're grateful for each day, by the end of 30 days, you have a whole shift in how you see the world and your happiness level, because you start to look for things to be grateful for each day, and then that becomes the habit of your brain, the habit of that way of thinking. So looking for, ah, that's interesting. This feels slightly better.
Ah, when I was distracted, that's usually when it happens. When I was distracted, that felt better. And when you notice pain, notice those stories that you have around your pain.
There have been so many stories of people that have evidence, they have medical evidence of this research study or this person, what they said, that this causes their pain. And when they start believing differently, I've experienced it myself with foods, with exercises, with movements. When you start to believe differently, amazing things can happen.
So just have some curiosity. I urge you to be that detective for the opposite. And notice any times you see yourself getting stuck on some kind of belief that you just believe is true for you, it might just be predictive coding.
All right, thanks you guys. Have a good 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.
Monday Sep 19, 2022
Monday Sep 19, 2022
In this episode I talk with Lifecoach and former client, Dr Katrina Ubell.
Today we talk about Katrina's journey as a weightloss coach, and getting out of chronic pain.
And we talk about Katrina's new book, out tomorrow- September 20, 2022!
Get the sneak peek on "How to Lose Weight For the Last Time- Brain Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss", and how it relates to coaching on chronic pain.
For more information on Katrina Ubell and her new book, check out her website here: https://katrinaubellmd.com/
To hear my original podcast episode with her on her "Weight Loss for Busy Physicians" Podcast in Oct 2020: https://katrinaubellmd.com/how-i-cured-my-chronic-pain-and-acid-reflux-with-betsy-jensen/
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Tuesday Sep 13, 2022
Tuesday Sep 13, 2022
Today I interview Torie Henderson- Lifecoach for exhausted, overwhelmed moms.
She talk about how teens can trigger survival brain, but the concepts here can apply to close family members or friends too if you aren't a parent of teens!
Torie also struggled with chronic pain- vulvodynia starting at age 21, then lower back pain and TMJ. She talks about how she learned not to carry stress in her body.
Join to listen to the insidious ways we cause ourselves nervous system dysregulation when we have teenagers or chronic pain.
AND if you want to practice nervous system regulation with us, be sure and join our "Relaxation Challenge" September 26-30!
Each day we will go over different techniques together so you can try them out for yourself and see what works for you!
****The Relaxation Challenge will be on Torie's "Supermom is Getting Tired" Facebook page, and you can sign up here:
Facebook Group - Supermom is Getting Tired https://www.facebook.com/groups/Supermomisgettingtired/
Torie Henderson is a master certified life coach, teacher and owner of LifeCoachingforParents.com. She has helped thousands of overworked and exhausted Supermoms release self pressure so they can more fully enjoy their life as mom. Torie is host of the Supermom is Getting Tired Podcast and is devoted to helping moms release the burdens and the guilt so they can enjoy raising their great kids all the way into adulthood.
Website https://LifeCoachingforParents.com
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/LifeCoachingForParents/
Supermom is Getting Tired Podcast https://lifecoachingforparents.com/podcast/
Time for The Talk - Sex Education Class https://timeforthetalk.com
Leading Your Teen Group Coaching Program https://LeadingYourTeen.com
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Wednesday Aug 17, 2022
Wednesday Aug 17, 2022
This episode is all about how your brain functions in survival mode, and how survival brain actually changes your thinking.
The idea from the podcast was from a clip on Youtube by Jacob Ham called "Learning Brain vs Survival Brain." So since it's back to school time, I thought about how these survival states even affect our ability to learn.
In survival brain you do not like ambiguities and are prone to black and white thinking. You have a hard time seeing another perspective and you are afraid to make mistakes.
In learning brain you are able to see the big picture, and accept nuances in thinking. There is more receptivity, creativity and ability to connect.
And learning brain is the parasympathetic/calm state which is the "rest and repair" state for your body- where it performs at ultimate health.
So check out this episode for more about detecting survival brain and how to get to the learning brain state more often!
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
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543