Unstoppable Body and Mind

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**Unstoppable Body and Mind**

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!

Latest Episodes:

Episode #120 -Play is Medicine Oct 18, 2023

Show notes

Did you know play and fun may be the missing piece to your healing?

Our society tells us we must work hard to get what we want, and we may discredit things that seem too easy.

But there are many scientific benefits of play.

We can learn faster (It takes only 10-40 repetitions in play, vs 400 repetitions).

Play, happiness or joy release endorphins (pain relieving qualities).

Play improves brain function, flexible thinking, improves memory and stimulates growth of the cerebral cortex.

Play is restorative- and it is the opposite of the fear-based survival states.

But if you’re not used to playing and find it hard, you can grow your capacity to be in the “rest and repair state”.

Listen in for more explanations of play as medicine, and how you can start to add more play to your life!

For a limited time, book a 55 min Clarity Session with me for just $39.

Bring a struggle in your life (chronic pain, relationships, business, emotions, health), and leave with understanding to improve it.

New clients only, one per person

https://calendly.com/thebetsyjensen/39-clarity-session

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

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

Please subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might love 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

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 120, Play is Medicine. 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'm talking about one of my favorite concepts, and that is that play is medicine.
Play is important. Play and fun are part of healing. We tend to have this idea that we need to work hard, that healing is going to be hard, that things aren't very valuable if we don't work hard to get them, and we tend to even discount if things are easy.
Like, it's not going to work if you're just having fun, resting, feeling good. You have to work hard to get the results you want. But the opposite is actually true with healing, especially healing chronic pain and disease.
When your nervous system is already dysregulated and in a high alert state, working hard and pushing can keep you dysregulated. You just need to have the balance of work and play for healing. I'm going to tell you a few of the scientific reasons that play is important.
When we learn in play, we actually learn much more quickly. Dr. Karen Purvis says that scientists have discovered it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain. Unless it's done in play, in which case it only takes 10 to 20.
So 400 repetitions, doing it the hard work way, versus 10 to 20 repetitions when you're doing it in a fun, playful way. Your brain learns better that way, and it actually changes the chemicals in your body. This is a quote from Curable.
Joy, play, relaxation, spontaneity, acceptance of the present moment, and gratitude all have the ability to release pain-inhibiting chemicals in the body. In play, we actually release endorphins, so we feel less pain. Play also improves brain function and encourages flexible thinking.
Play improves memory. It sparks creativity and imagination. It keeps us feeling young and energetic.
It stimulates growth of the cerebral cortex, and play is restorative. So instead of just trying to tell your nervous system over and over that you're safe, in play, you're actually showing your nervous system that you're safe. In nervous system terms, you could think of play in the parasympathetic calm state.
When you're feeling safe, when you're feeling connected and inspired, when your basic needs are met, when you're not focusing on fear and worries and unmet needs, you can be in the state of things are going to be okay. Life is working out for me. And even being in that state momentarily, it's the rest and repair state, has healthy benefits for your body.
We need to not just decrease our anxiety, but increase the amount of time that we're in this parasympathetic calm state, feeling content, satisfied, happy, joyful, grateful, and we can do that through play. If you're not used to resting or playing, it can seem boring. It can seem pointless, like you should be doing something.
If you're used to being in that high alert state of flight, where you're perfectionistic, and you don't feel like you can rest, and you want to always be doing things, it can be actually uncomfortable at first to lean into resting and playing. I've had people where they actually start to get pain signals because they're resting and their nervous system is not used to it and wants to keep going back to that high alert state to give them something to worry about. So realize if you haven't been in that safe-feeling, playful state very much lately, that first of all, that's understandable.
Don't be too hard on yourself. If it's not easy to just start having fun, let your guard down and start wanting to play. I have a million screenshots saved on my phone, and this quote is from Adam Grant.
Resting is not a waste of time. It's an investment in well-being. Relaxing is not a sign of laziness.
It's a source of energy. Breaks are not distractions. They're a chance to refocus attention.
Play is not a frivolous activity. It's a path to connection and creativity. I love this because when I look at the description of the parasympathetic calm state, it is the place that you're actually using your prefrontal cortex more than the survival states, you know, where you're using your primitive brain, your amygdala, limbic system.
So in the parasympathetic calm state or when you're playing, you have a better ability to connect, to learn, to be inspired, to be in the present moment, to connect and to be creative. In pain reprocessing therapy, like in the book The Way Out by Alan Gordon, they talk about avoidance activities. Even that name kind of makes it sound bad, like you're not doing it right because you're avoiding.
But especially when your pain is high, you're not going to be able to process all of the emotions or the physical sensations. You're not going to be able to do somatic tracking as easily, which is being neutral about sensations. So especially when your pain is high, you need to distract.
You need to avoid. You need to just go watch a show or lay down or take a break from work and stretch. We're not meant to process all of our feelings and emotions all of the time that won't help us heal.
We have to have these times that we're also feeling good, having fun, thinking pleasant thoughts. Especially if you're in the nervous system state of freeze. That is the overwhelm, shut down.
You're likely to have a lot of negative, sad, depressed emotions like shame and helplessness, hopelessness, overwhelm, despair. And you also have a very low capacity for processing emotions when you're in shame. You're so dysregulated and you're having so many of these negative emotions, it's too much for you to process.
You're not going to process your way out of them. A lot of times you'll hear you have to feel it to heal it, but when you're stuck in freeze, you could just keep feeling it and feeling it and feeling it. And because of the pain fear cycle, your pain is actually getting worse.
So please understand that part of healing is not just working hard, but also leaning into things that feel good. There's a book called Letting Go by Dr. David Hawkins, and he talks about when you're in a very stressful situation, that it's actually good to take some purposeful distractions. So you're not just mindlessly going to the pantry and eating whatever's there, but maybe you do get your favorite chocolate bar and have some pieces of it.
Here's a quote from Letting Go that talks about how we can mindfully push emotions away until we have the capacity to deal with them. When the emotion or we could talk about pain, sensation, is overwhelming, we want to disassemble it and let it go in bits and pieces. He says, It's all right consciously to push away as much of the emotion as we're capable of at the moment.
It's also all right in this circumstance consciously to utilize escape mechanisms, such as going out in a social situation, playing with a dog, watching television, going to the movies, playing music, making love, or whatever one's habit is under the circumstances. So this is how you can reduce the intensity of the feeling or sensation so that you can process it when your brain is more online. One example I noticed where I had resistance in my life to feeling good was when my mom passed away.
And I remember within the first few days, I was also doing some normal things of life, as you do, taking my daughter to school, and I heard a song on the radio that I liked, and I started to dance to it and smile. And then I remembered, no, I can't. I'm in grief.
Almost like it would be not honoring my mom if I felt good when there's this bad situation. And you might see some of that in yourself. Maybe it's because you've had pain so long or because of the things in the world or someone else that you love is sad, and so you don't really feel okay about feeling good in your life or doing things that bring you joy or have fun.
But although it's counterintuitive, although it may not feel natural at first, play and fun and joy and happiness may be the missing piece to your healing. Now, if you're like a lot of adults that I talk to, they don't even know what they like anymore. They don't have really good ideas of things that are fun for them.
Often the people that I coach with chronic pain, the thing that they really used to love, they're not able to do anymore because of their pain and restrictions with activity. So it can be a challenge to start to have ideas of what's even fun for you. This is part of the process.
It's like this playground you get to experiment with and see what you like. It can be intimidating at first. That's normal.
So here are some ideas for play. Laughter, so sharing a joke. Playing with a pet or child.
And I just remember when my kids were young and they would want me to play with them, how draining and exhausting that was for me at that point. I was not in the parasympathetic calm state. Felt like I had a lot of things to do.
So if it seems more taxing to you to play with a child or a dog, choose something that sounds easier from this list. You could remember what you like to do as a child. So maybe you were into art or construction or science kits or more social activities.
You could go outside. Even if you're not able to walk outside, sitting outside, putting your bare feet on the earth, those types of things can feel fun and playful. You could dance or listen to music.
And even if you're not physically able to get up and dance, even closing your eyes and visualizing yourself dancing can be very powerful. And also just prioritizing play, giving yourself some time to be lazy and figure out what comes up for you, what ideas you have. I like to think that there are hundreds of different ways that you can regulate your nervous system, that you can rewire your pain, and that you can process these emotions.
And what we get to do is figure out for us what feels most downstream. I got this concept from Abraham Hicks. They talk about upstream and downstream.
So if you put your canoe in the river and start paddling upstream, you're not going to get very far, and it's going to be really tiring. And it will look like you're working really hard and you'll feel really accomplished because you've done so much, but also you're not going to get as far. And downstream would be you put your canoe in and you get a lot further because you're going with the flow.
It's not as hard for you to make yourself do these things that are supposed to be beneficial for you. So what's upstream or downstream for me is going to be different than for you. Something that's downstream for me is dancing, like partner dancing.
And for other people, that would not be pleasant or relaxing at all. You can really start with thinking of what's the next easiest thing. When I first started this work, I would think, okay, I'll relax by buying a new instrument, taking lessons, and learning a skill.
Like, that's what I was thinking I would do to relax. But this I'm talking about just playing, spending time, doing something that you enjoy without a result or outcome that you're looking for. Sometimes there are just things you have to do, and they're not very fun.
So I do like to ask myself, how could I make this more fun? Or how could this be more playful? So sometimes I might set a timer, or I might turn on some music.
Use your powerful brain to ask it questions like this, and you may be surprised at what answers you come up with. I promise you that going downstream and working with your nervous system and doing more things that are playful and fun and bring joy, this will help your healing faster than working hard and trying to do it perfectly. If you feel like fun might be part of what you're missing in your healing journey, then please look up my coaching and my programs.
I'm offering a $39 clarity call with me. If you want to talk more about your situation and how play may help you in your healing journey. 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.

Episode #119- High Alert Oct 01, 2023

Show notes

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.

Episode # 118- Pain is a Danger Signal Sep 20, 2023

Show notes

New pain science teaches something different than what I learned in Physical Therapy school 20 years ago.

Pain is not directly related to the amount of injury present in the body.

Pain does not indicate tissue damage, but rather pain is a danger signal.

Research into chronic pain shows the brain actually processes it differently once it’s lasted past 3-6 months.

There are 44 areas of the brain associated with chronic pain, and the main one is the center of learning and memory.

Just as pain can become learned, it can become unlearned - through pain Reprocessing therapy (PRT)

Listen for more info and research about how pain is a dangerous signal, and how it can be unlearned by PRT.

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 118, Pain is a Danger Signal. 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. This episode is about a basic concept in pain reprocessing, that pain is a danger signal.
And if you are suffering from chronic back or neck pain, stay till the end and listen, I have something special for you. So basically this idea, this concept, that pain is a danger signal, is something that I recently learned. And I was a physical therapist for 20 years.
I worked with people in pain, a lot of people in chronic pain, but I never knew there was a distinction between the types of pain. When an injury is new and just healing, like if someone sprains their ankle and it's healing, that's different. It's actually processed differently and different parts of the brain light up than when pain becomes chronic, which generally they consider three to six months.
That's the normal healing time. Actually, a bone's normal healing time is six to 12 weeks. So within about three months, even a bone has healed.
So we know our body can heal, it knows how to heal, and we also know from brain scans of people with chronic pain that it's processed differently in the brain. And we also know now that all pain is produced in the brain. So the signals from the body come up to the brain for processing, and the brain determines what is important enough to send pain down to in the body.
So imagine that someone is being chased by a tiger and sprains their ankle. They are not even going to feel the pain of the sprained ankle as they're running from the tiger for their life. But when they are in a safer situation, they will feel that ankle pain so that they stop walking on it and tend to the injury.
So we know that pain is not related to the amount of injury, and actually many studies of pain-free people have now confirmed that. There have been studies of over 3,000 people who do not have back pain, and they find that things like disc bulges and herniations and degeneration and facet impingement, spondylolisthesis, so many different things that they used to say were causing pain are actually found in pain-free people. One study found that 64% of people with no back pain had disc bulges, protrusions, herniations, or disc degenerations.
So the majority of people have these things in their body, they're not causing chronic pain. I even found one study studying healthy, pain-free athletes. Oh, young athletes.
So people performing well without pain, and they're young, 89% of them had a hip labral tear. So usually we're not doing MRIs or imaging on people who do not have pain. But when they have, they start to find that there are normal abnormalities within the body that not everyone gets pain from, and especially chronic pain.
Chronic pain is actually involving many different areas of the brain, 44 different areas. About half of these areas of the brain are involved in increasing pain, and about half are involved in decreasing pain. So chronic pain is much more complicated than acute pain, how it presents in the brain after the neural pathways have been learned.
And one of the main areas associated with chronic pain in the brain, the anterior insula, is associated with learning and memory. So you can think of chronic pain as habits learned by the brain, pain patterns, muscle memory, basically, but through pain learned in the brain. Just like Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to have a response.
I didn't know this, but apparently Pavlov untrained his dogs from that response as well. And you can actually unlearn your pain through the steps of pain reprocessing therapy. When you learn that pain is a danger signal and does not mean that tissue is injured, it's like a smoke alarm that's going off when the toaster is cooking toast rather than when there's an actual fire.
So when the way we react to it can be different, we can help the brain unlearn pain. One thing we now know about chronic pain is the brain will produce more pain when the emotion of fear is involved. There are a few studies showing this.
And the first involved a hot probe and showing people some pictures. There were pleasant pictures and scary pictures. First of all, they noticed when people looked at the scary pictures, they would report greater pain with the hot probe.
And sometimes they would report pain even without the hot probe, but only when they were looking at the scary pictures and not with the pleasant ones. So we can see that the brain can produce pain when it senses danger and there's fear. Another example is a placebo car crash study that they did in Germany.
They made people believe that they were hit by a car, though they really just broke some glass and made it seem that way, but people were never actually hit. But 20% of the people did develop whiplash. And four weeks later, 10% of the people still had whiplash symptoms, even though they were never hit by another car.
And what was interesting about this group is that they were the ones that had the most emotional stress and distress in their lives at the time of this experiment. So basically, their nervous system was already stretched thin, plus something stressful, and their brain produced real symptoms of whiplash and pain in their body. One last very interesting case was a construction worker who jumped down and a nail went all the way through his boot.
He was in severe agony. They had to sedate him in order to cut his boot off. And then to their surprise, they found that he had no injury, not even a scratch.
The nail had perfectly gone between the toes, and there was no tissue damage whatsoever. Up until that point, though, he had very real pain. His brain looked at the situation with the nail through his boot and made the assumption that he would need to get medical attention and sent a lot of pain to that area to prevent him from walking on it and causing more damage.
But all that was really happening is the toes were getting some safe signals from the body of some pressure, but no damage. But the brain interpreted those signals as dangerous and created pain. Neuroplastic pain is when the brain interprets normal signals as dangerous and produces pain.
Usually, what we see happen with chronic pain is one of two things. It happens kind of spontaneously. People wake up with it.
Often, it's during a stressful time in their lives and they develop a new symptom. Or maybe you have had an injury. You were playing basketball and hurt your back, and you might have noticed and linked certain movements with pain.
So long after the tissue has healed, the brain can still create pain through predictive coding, and when the brain believes the area is still injured or needs protecting or guarding, it can still produce tightening and pain in that area with those movements or other random times. Usually what we see with chronic pain is it starts in one area and then ends up spreading to other areas or jumping from one area to another. When we can start to see this as more nervous system and fear-related and normal signals being misinterpreted as dangerous, then we can help the brain to rewire, to form new neural pathways and to unlearn this pain response, basically producing it less and less and less.
This is what pain reprocessing therapy teaches about, basic ways to do that, sending the brain messages of safety, different ways to somatically teach that to the brain and body. But it really starts with an education and this paradigm shift and starting to realize that pain is not reflective of the amount of damage in your body or injury. In the Boulder Back Pain Study, they found that people whose pain decreased the most were the people who changed their belief the most about pain being related to injury.
So that is, when they have a sensation of pain, not necessarily assuming it means that something is damaged or hurt or they've overdone it, learning new strategies to respond to with those sensations. And then by responding in different ways, the brain produces pain less and less until it becomes extinct. They showed in the Boulder Back Pain Study that rewiring chronic pain is possible for people who even have very severe structural changes.
There was one woman who had scoliosis, so her back was shaped like an S, over 73 degrees of scoliosis, and she was able to get out of chronic pain, and she didn't have to even do anything to straighten the spine. She stopped seeing her pain as dangerous. She was able to convince herself and her nervous system and brain on the body level that the sensations from her body are okay and safe, not dangerous, and then the brain produced that pain less and less and less.
If you are interested in learning more about pain reprocessing therapy, and especially if you have back or neck pain, I have an extra special offer for you. Although pain reprocessing therapy works on all the different types of body pains, if it's chronic, shoulder pain, knee pain, ankle pain, I am putting together a group just focused on people who have back and neck pain. First of all, that's very researched.
There's a lot more research on backs and necks because that's much more common in America for chronic pain. And because I've had back pain, some chronic back pain issues myself, I've dealt with a lot of people with back pain as a physical therapist, so I have a lot of the Western medicine knowledge about that. And I also have some special techniques up my sleeve, like kinesiotaping, which I think helps relax the nervous system.
It's like a moving brace for your body. So I have some specific information for people with back and neck pain who want to apply the pain reprocessing approach and get rid of their chronic pain. There will be group calls each week for our small group of just 10 people starting next week.
So I get these ideas and I act on them. So hopefully, you're listening to this podcast in real time, or maybe I'll be running another group like this in the future. It's called Happy Back and Neck Club.
And definitely, this is going to be my best priced offer if you're listening to this and get in on the offer now. Basically, I will be offering six months of group coaching calls involving training, especially months one through three to have some of the basics of pain reprocessing and the research that we know with Baxonex, as well as all of the support with the group calls. There'll be a private Facebook group for our little group.
And you will also get a three-month one-on-one coaching package with me included in this club. So this is 12 weekly sessions. Or if you want to even front load them and do two a week, you can get the amount of support that you're needing at the time that you need it.
You can listen to episode 79 about Kathleen and her chronic back pain recovery. And she was one that I coached for three months of one-on-one sessions. So three months of one-on-one sessions is super powerful, as well as the group coaching and the time that you're going to give yourself for six months to integrate and apply this information as you're rewiring your brain and neural pathways and your nervous system.
The one-on-one sessions are going to be an hour with me on Zoom where we can do somatic work, deep diving into some of your questions. And if you haven't experienced one-on-one coaching, I've been doing a lot of these single clarity sessions for people lately. And even in one session, they're reporting less pain, less anxiety, more joy in their lives.
So imagine what three months of one-on-one coaching could do for you. To get this program going, it is a very special, amazing low price of just $1,500. And if you purchase by Friday the 22nd, I will throw in three extra one-on-one sessions.
So 15 one-on-one sessions with me, $1,500 plus the whole group container. It's an amazing, amazing deal. So please jump on that if it's calling to you.
I'd love to have you in the group. There will be more information in the show notes, so be sure and check that out there. All right, guys.
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.

Episode #117- All About Me Aug 11, 2023

Show notes

This episode was part of a video I created to "Meet the Moderator" in the Tell Me About Your Pain Facebook Group. They had me answer some questions about myself and my healing journey, and I wanted to share that with you here. If you are want to spend some time learning with me, while you get to know yourself and how to rewire your symptoms, be sure and join my Virtual Retreat September 2 and 3, 2023. It will be an all day event both days- going through all of the modules and workbooks that I created for Alignment Academy- live! There will be time for Q& A and coaching on your questions. It's $149 or free for Alignment Academy members, so now is a great time to sign up! For weekly calls and community support integrating this work into your life, check out Alignment Academy: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-academy-membership Please subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might love 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 117, All About Me. 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. This episode is a Q&A that I recorded for a Facebook group that I moderate.So I'm a moderator of the Tell Me About Your Pain, Alan Gordon's Facebook group, and they asked each of the moderators to answer a few questions about ourselves. I thought I would use some of my questions and answers for you to also get to know me a little better on this podcast. So here we go.Hi, everyone. My name is Betsy Jensen, and I am here to introduce myself as a moderator. So first question, tell us a bit about yourself.Okay, my name is Betsy Jensen. I live in the US in the beautiful state of Utah, and I have four kids, three boys and a girl ranging from 21 next month down to 15. And I am divorced.I have two cats and one dog, a golden retriever. So cute. And I have been coaching for the last three years as body and mind life coach.Before that, I was a physical therapist for 20 years. Can you summarize your mind-body syndrome or pain journey in a few sentences? The condition that brought me to mind-body syndrome was actually an autoimmune condition called ulcerative colitis.As I mentioned, I was a physical therapist and really had some pains here and there, but didn't struggle a lot with chronic pain that was debilitating. But the digestive system for me was affected, and I had a lot of stress in my life, and most of the stress was generated by my own thoughts and pressure that I put on myself. Now I know the adaptive behaviors that my nervous system came up with, like flight, perfectionism, and fawn.I lived in most in my life, so it makes sense that my digestive system shut down. So at the time of my life that I discovered the mind-body approach, I was getting divorced. My symptoms were flaring.I was changing a whole bunch of things in my life, including moving out to an apartment with my kids all alone. You know, there was just a lot going on, and I was also very, very open to coaching. I had already been listening to coaching for a couple of years, and the mind-body approach just made so much sense to me.I had always believed in a mind-body connection, and I actually majored in psychology. So I've always really liked the mind-body approach. A few people told me that ulcerative colitis was psychosomatic and referred me to John Sarno's book, The Divided Mind, where he specifically talked about ulcerative colitis.It was before I learned about curable or Dr. Schubiner or Alan Gordon. So in that sense, you know, I just had so much belief. I was actually quite relieved and excited to hear that there was something I could do with my thoughts, creating different results in my body, because I already believed that from coaching.So I started with the mind-body approach, loved it, healed my ulcerative colitis, really changed a lot of stressful things in my life. You know, during that time, my divorce got resolved and, you know, I started yoga, all of these healing, life-changing ways of looking at things, where I wasn't putting so much pressure on myself. And then I learned about curable and, and I started noticing that I loved talking about this stuff to anyone that I could talk to.And when I would work with people for physical therapy, not everyone was receptive to that, but when they were, I just felt energized and excited to talk to them about it. And, and it was, it helped me so much in my life. So I was eager to share.And so then I started really thinking, maybe I could coach on this. Maybe I could be a coach and this, the life coach school who I listened to does a coach training. And right about that time at my job, I manifest all this money.It was back pay of about two years worth of working an extra five hours a week that they didn't know that I was working. And we figured out all at this time that they owed me all this back pay and they paid me. And I took that as a sign to just do that life coach training.And then started specializing in working with people with chronic pain. And it's just been amazing. I mean, it's just, I loved physical therapy, but this is so much more effective and it changes people's lives in all areas, not just with pain.So it's like looking at the whole person. I love it. Okay.How are your chronic symptoms now? So now I just call my symptoms, my barometer. So I do have symptoms.I wouldn't even know how often it's kind of more dependent on, you know, my stress level and how much I'm pushing myself or going out of my window of tolerance because I keep expanding in my life. So I keep, you know, doing things that are scary and sometimes my nervous system freaks out. But I see my symptoms as just that information, that it's time to recalibrate or soothe, do things that are helpful for my nervous system, rather than it being, you know, like, oh, the disease is back.What have I done? You know, or, or something mechanical has happened, right? So my chronic symptoms now, I wouldn't say they're, they're chronic.I'd say they're more just an indicator, like a gas gauge of, you know, how good of a job I'm doing with my self care and boundaries and being kind to myself and those kinds of things. What were the biggest influences on your journey? So the biggest influence was finding out about Dr. Sarno, Divided Mind.At that same time, I was finding out about Joe Dispenza and his book, Becoming Supernatural. And at that same time, I was also getting into the secret. So the Law of Attraction.And it's amazing to me how much neuroplasticity follows those rules of law of attraction. What you focus on, you create more of. And PRT principles go right along with what they teach about.If you focus on pain, you create more of it and it's good to focus on different things and distract. It's fascinating. So I'd say those are the top three biggest influences when I started on my journey.And then I found Cureable and Dr. Schubiner and Alan Gordon. And those three references and people have been so, so helpful just with the information that they give, the approach, the way that they explain it. It doesn't sound all woo and fluffy, like, you know, just about repressed emotions, although that can be part of it.There's a real science based explanation for this now, which I just love. What tips would you give to those who are new on their symptom free journey? So new on the symptom free journey is an exciting time, but it is also kind of a delicate time.So I would just say to become really familiar with this process of ups and downs in trauma healing and nervous system stuff, they call it expand contract. So there's this normal ebb and flow of life, and it's easy to think that you're doing it right when you're feeling good, and then think that you're doing something wrong when you're not feeling good. So trying to just get really neutral with those times that you're low and you're frustrated, and this too shall pass, and these things are temporary.That's what I would advise those people who are new. What tips would you give to those who have been on this journey a while, but who aren't where they want to be in regards to their chronic symptoms? So I would say, first of all, good job for sticking with it this long.And there's probably some reason that you have stuck with it this long. Something resonates with you. But there's also probably some reason that it's not quite fully clicking.And with some people, it clicks really quickly and with others, you know, your nervous system just takes time to rewire. So if you've been a high intensity, high guard kind of person, on high alert, then it may be hard for your nervous system to just accept that you're safe. So if you're not where you want to be, my main advice, I would say become the detective for the opposite, like crazy.And what I mean by that is like, imagine a detective from the movies that is keeping track on their little notebook of every little clue. Be like that with times that you feel good, because you want to start showing your brain that there are times that you feel good to look for those times and to find them more and more often. Okay, so detective for the opposite, like crazy, just start to be your own evidence.Any little crumb, any little clue that you're like, you know, I was talking to my sister on the phone and we got laughing. And for a little millisecond, I forgot about my pain and it didn't hurt. So be detective for the opposite, like crazy, get a notebook and just like write down every little clue because your brain wants to forget and wants to not remember that.And the other thing I would say is sometimes it's not a matter of doing more. It's a matter of doing less. So really get curious about any pressures you might be putting on yourself, any expectations, any blocks.If you're very hard on yourself or critical, if there's a lot of frustration, just know that any of those can be part of the pain, fear cycle. Fear is not just anxiety or worry. It can be disappointment, frustration, anger.So just notice any of those little tweaks that you can find, those subtle little things, little beliefs that you might have that it's still structural. Those little tweaks can make a big difference. And if you're having a hard time spotting them yourself, please, please look for a coach or a therapist who has been trained in this or another specialist who can give you some feedback and just getting some outside reflection.If you haven't noticed a change in yourself, getting that outside point of view, fresh eyes can be really, really helpful. Why did you choose to become an MBS or pain coach? Well, I just feel like now that I look back at it, my whole life was leading to this.I loved learning about the body and mind body. Even before I went to physical therapy school, I've worked with people in pain for a couple of decades. And then like I already described, I'll keep this one brief because I already talked about it.But when I started noticing that when I would talk about it, it was energizing to me, then I was like, okay, this is, this is what I want to pursue. If people want to connect with you or your business, how should they do this? Okay, so I would definitely follow me on social media.So Body and Mind Life Coach, you can find me on Instagram and on YouTube, Body and Mind Life Coach, and here on Facebook, it's Betsy Jensen. I'm always putting out new content there, and I have a podcast as well, Unstoppable Body and Mind. If you like listening to podcasts, I also post the videos of the podcast on YouTube, if you'd rather watch them.And my website is bodyandmindlifecoach.com. I do have a group coaching monthly membership that is a great option for getting your coaching needs met either through the weekly group calls or through written coaching. And I do have a few one-on-one spots depending on availability.You can see all of the details on my website. What would you like to say in conclusion? I would like to say that although this journey can be hard, it is so rewarding.And the things that you may think of as weaknesses right now, like being very sensitive and having a lot of emotions, those can actually be your strengths. So as you learn to tune into your body, do this work to change those personality traits associated with chronic pain, learn to have boundaries and stand up for yourself and not do things out of duty and starting to really know how to care for yourself and value yourself so that you can then give to others, not giving from an empty cup. Doing this work will change your life in so many ways that you don't even know.It's not just about getting out of pain, but changing these behavior patterns and these thought patterns will result in better relationships with others, the ability to make more money, more creativity, inspiration, connection with other people. There's so many benefits to doing this work. So you're in the right place.Don't be shy to hop on with celebrations or questions, and we will answer within the guidelines that we have. That's what we can do in this group. And I'm just grateful to be a part of this group with you guys.If you are listening to this when it comes out, I want to make sure you know that coming up soon, September 2nd and 3rd, I am doing a virtual retreat. It's going to be a Saturday and Sunday where we will spend the day going through all of the modules that I've created for Alignment Academy. I'll be teaching them live to answer your questions and make time to go through the workbook.So basically spending the weekend with me on this virtual retreat, you will go through all of the modules and workbooks that I have for my Alignment Academy. It's teachings on pain reprocessing, understanding pain, the nervous system, emotions, processing emotions, how to feel emotions on purpose, how to connect with your body, and how to develop your intuition. It is going to be very insightful.You can use this time to really get to the root cause of your chronic pain and understand it differently. This event is totally free for Alignment Academy members. So if you've been wanting to join now is a great time.You can check the show notes for more details. 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.

Full show notes at the publisher

Episode #116- Emotional Self Connection with Molly Claire Jun 19, 2023

Show notes

I'm excited to share this episode with a special guest- Life Coach and Host of "The Masterful Coach Podcast", Molly Claire

When she agreed to be on my podcast, I had no idea how much our work has in common.

Molly helps women in coaching, motherhood and family life become more self connected and empowered.

Like this work, she helps her clients reach a state of greater well being.

I didn't even know that Molly had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which brought her to realize she needed to change some things within her.

She learned connection with herself, and how to stop the cycle of overgiving. And now she no longer suffers with CFS.

Listen until the end, where Molly teaches a tip for emotional self connection that is so simple and easy to practice.

And if you want to find out more about Molly Claire & her coaching, check her out here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mollyclairecoaching/

Website: molly@mollyclaire.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mollyclairecoaching/

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

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

Please subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might love 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

Episode # 115- Shelby’s Healing Journey and Energy Hacks Jun 03, 2023

Show notes

I love this interview with one of my favorite people, Shelby Hansen. She shares her healing journey including overcoming decades of hip pain to run a pain-free triathalon. Shelby is a coach for moms with Chronic Fatigue, and she shares with us some energy hacks that anyone can use to feel better in life. You can find Shelby on her website https://shelbykhansen.com/ And download her top 3 Energy Tips here: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63dc400c8e06d4dae9492ea0 For weekly calls and community support integrating this work into your life, check out Alignment Academy: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-academy-membership Please subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might love 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 115, Shelby's Healing Journey and Energy Hacks. 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. All right, everyone, welcome. I'm so excited today to have a special guest, my friend, a fellow coach, she's been a client, all of the things, Shelby Hansen.Welcome, Shelby.Thanks so much for this opportunity.I'm so happy to have you here. Every time we talk, just feels so good. You've been doing this work for a while, your story is amazing, what brought you here?And you coach women that have chronic fatigue and have special tips about energy that I also thought might be helpful to everyone. Not even if you just have chronic fatigue, but you had a poor night's sleep or you, however it might fit in, if it's more of a freeze type of symptom, which I'm sure we will talk about later. So anyway, I just really wanted to have you on the podcast.I'm glad you agreed to come and share with us your story and your wisdom. Absolutely. Oh, yeah.Well, can I just start about how I found you? Oh, I would love it. So like Betsy said, we're both coaches and I was on a Facebook group and she had talked about doing this book club for The Way Out and that was back in October of 2021.I was newly certified as a coach and I had just had, or maybe it was November. I don't know. I just had a jaw surgery in October of 2021 and the pain was not going away.I'm not somebody that takes a lot of pain medications. So I took a pain. My pain had started to kind of subside and then it got worse a few weeks after the surgery.And I took one of the medications and it didn't touch the pain at all. And I was like, what is going on? There's something.I knew there was something emotional happening, but I didn't know what it was. And so I saw that you were talking about chronic pain, which I've been coaching women that experienced chronic illness and now specifically chronic fatigue for a long time. And chronic pain goes hand in hand with so many of those conditions.And I was like, I got to find out more about this chronic pain. So I joined your book club. And during that time, I was sitting in my chair.I was 20 pounds heavier than I've ever been. Hadn't been really working out. And you were talking about having us imagine doing an activity that would cause pain and I imagined running because since I was 14 years old, I would experience pain in my hip when I would run.And so, but it would only happen after I had run or while I was running and I hadn't run in months and I was sitting there, closing my eyes, imagining myself running on the beach and my hip started to hurt.In real life, I hadn't even moved at all. And I was like, what did Betsy just do?Your brain, what did your brain just do?Right.I mean, yeah, it is like magical sometimes and seems really like a cool party trick, but pain is just this creation of your brain and we can reroute those neural pathways and feel different things and mess with your brain and see those things.That's when I knew in that moment, I was like, this is neuroplastic. I'm not neuroplastic, I've never heard this term before. Whatever's going on is neuroplastic because I had been, like I said, since I was 14 years old, in cross country.I remember the moment it happened and unlearning that is actually what helped. But I'd been to physical therapists, I've been to all of the doctors. They told me I had hip bursitis, I'd had x-rays and podiatrists, like all of the things, done the physical therapy and nothing could touch it.Yeah. And so it wasn't like it hurt all the time, but it was related to activity. And so then that belief formed of like, oh, the activity causes it and then the life adapts around it.Oh, I just don't run anymore. So, yeah.Exactly. So then when you open up your Alignment Academy in February, I was like, I'm all in. So and when I did that too, I went into it with this really aligned goal that I wanted to be able to complete a triathlon that summer.That's right. Which was a lofty goal, I would say, right? For not even like, I don't think you could even run a mile at that point without me.No, I couldn't. I couldn't.Yeah.I couldn't even run a mile like just like breathing.Yeah. And so, and this was like February, I think we started and you were like, this summer, I'm going to do a triathlon.Yeah.Yeah, I remember that.Yeah, I'm going to back up just a little bit. So I had a kidney transplant when I was 30, how old was I, 34? Yeah, 34 years old.So I went into kidney failure when I was 31 years old. And so I had previously done triathlons, but I hadn't run one since my transplant. So, and obviously like I have been diagnosed with medical PTSD.It was a very traumatic time in my life. I had a difficult healing after the surgery. So there was just a lot going on physically for me.And also COVID didn't help with that because being somebody that's immunocompromised and then we were also moving because my husband's active duty military, there's just a lot of things that were going on. I lost my support groups, my support system, and that was what led to a lot of that inactivity and just being really disconnected from my body and being heavier. So back, a little bit before I started working with you, I mean, for the Alignment Academy, I decided that I really wanted my focus that year to be my health and I wanted to feel healthy.And I was looking at that vision, I'm like, what would it be like if I felt healthy? What would that look, physically look like?Oh, I love that question. Because so many people haven't even answered that for themselves. They can't even imagine it, but they want to feel healthy, but what does that even look like?Yeah. And so for me, I was like, I would know, like, check the box that I'm healthy if I was running triathlons like I used to. And I know I've told you this before, because as high achievers, people pleasers, like overachievers, like these people that just push, push, push, that are the ones that experience chronic pain.It's really easy to set a lofty goal and then like body to shut down and not want to complete that goal.Well, can I even say, like, I love how you said you were really in alignment with it, because I think if you had that goal, like, I remember hearing that goal and kind of my own brain was saying like, that's a lot, like, I don't know that she should have that kind of goal, like, that's what my brain told me.Good thing you never said that.I know. But you were so in alignment with it. I was like, of course, I'm going to support that, right?Like, but if you had had a lot of fear about it, like, this is what I need to do to be healthy, and I have to achieve it. Otherwise, I'm not successful, you would have had different feelings about it. And that triathlon would have been more like a lofty goal to really show, like you said, shut yourself down, and not achieve anything, versus like for you, it was totally aligned, meaning like, good to you, right?How would you say that?It did, because when I made that goal, I've been developing my relationship with my body, and like listening to that intuitive part of me. And so as I saw that vision in my mind of doing a triathlon, I also stopped because I did feel a little bit of that escalation in my nervous system, in my body. And I was like, oh, like I let my brain make this decision, I didn't consult my body yet.And so I took a moment, and I literally like, I talked to my body all the time. I'm like, body, depressing you.I love that.I was like, body, do you want to do this? Like, do you want to run a triathlon? And I was open to any possibility that like, whatever feeling I was going to have.And I just felt this like pulling forward, like, yeah, that sounds fun. Let's go do it.Yeah. In Deb Dana's book, she says like, stretch, not stress. So I think if it's like in that stretchy, like a pull forward, it wasn't in your comfort zone, but it was like calling to you versus like when you stress the system too much, too soon, that's where it causes more dysregulation and more pain.Yeah. Well, one of my coaches, too, she says that like, rather than pushing towards your dreams, like rather have your dream and let your like be pulled by your vision.Yes. Yes. Like, yeah, not like pushing towards it, but like inspired by it and yeah, exactly.It's all about, you know, that energy, the emotion behind it, you know, if it's lack based, then it will be like, oh, I have to do this in order to be better and feel better versus like, oh, okay, I just want to do something that is like, what is possible for me?Yeah, exactly. So I entered Alignment Academy with this goal and I was like, you know what? From what Betsy is saying, I really think that I could run this, like complete the triathlon.I think I could do it pain free. And so that was my, whenever I buy coaching, because I love coaching, I always think about what is it that I, what is my end goal and like the vision part, not the pushing part. But I'm just like, yeah.Your intent.Yeah. This is my intention. My intention out there, so yeah.So that was a big part of it was just like, okay, starting really, really slowly and really small to see like, what is it that my body wants, getting the feedback from my body, getting the coaching when there was times when I felt a lot of pain and I'd be like, Betsy, what's going on?Even though you have that belief, like when you start feeling pain and you've increased your running, there's a lot of like, you know, understandable concern. And I love like, I think back then that Alignment Academy was like a small group and it was a six month program. And so you gave yourself like six months to achieve that goal.It wasn't like, I'm going to run a triathlon by the end of this month, you know, and I have to just like, hurry and force myself. Like, you were starting from really not even being a runner at all without pain. And then, you know, having that goal or that like vision for six months.Yeah. Yeah. And, and as I would run in different places, try different things, like it was so fascinating just, just getting the feedback from my body.Like, okay, this being the detective for the opposite on times when it's like, I had this whole run and I felt amazing the whole time. What was different than this time when I barely could even hold it together? And recognizing with that nervous system stuff going on.Right. Because I remember sometimes like, I think you started on a treadmill, but then like going outside, you know, there's like hills and roots and branches and there's this concern of safety and your body naturally like tightened up in certain places and you felt pain.Yeah, I remember too, I was running through a park one time and it was so funny. I would feel pain as soon as I thought that somebody could see me running.Oh my gosh. I was like that connection.Yeah, because I had never made that connection. In fact, it was one of the things that really helped to heal the pain was that I was so concerned about what other people were going to think about how I looked when I ran. How slow I was, like all of that.I was so concerned and it was totally just putting me into fight or flight while I was running.What if someone sees me? Yeah, you might have even subconsciously like sensed someone around you and all of a sudden then you have pain. And then what's funny is like, how would you have looked with pain anyway?Like our brain creates like our fear anyway, you know what I mean?And then like, it was so funny because I'd feel myself go into alignment and then it stopped hurting. And then I would feel myself go out, it would start and I was just like, oh my gosh, like I just felt like, you know, with one of those cogs in the wheel that it's just like, you know, it's not well oiled and it's like, it's like going and then it stops falling off the bike. But then it gets gone, I was like, this is so weird because I am just doing the same motion and I am having a really weird experience.Yeah. And even saying alignment, like some people might think, oh, physical alignment. Like that's how I used to think, right?Oh, because your step was the right length and you have perfect symmetry and your hips are strong. No, it's the mental, physical, spiritual, I don't know, whatever, the alignment of your emotions and your nervous system, the regulation or dysregulation of your nervous system. When things are safe, you don't have pain, you're flowing, it's easy, it's fun.You would tune into nature. I know you would like...Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. Part of that was like, I thought somebody was like paying attention to how I was running while I was running and then my ankles would start to hurt and both of my hips would start to hurt and then I would envision being out in a field and when I was like a little toddler, just running through grass just for fun and then the pain would just be like... But then I would go back to freaking out about something and it was just like back and forth.But really, like you said, being in nature, tuning into what feels really, really good, like that is what helped me to really regulate and tuning into what my body was desiring.Yes.She didn't want me to hold still. She didn't want me to be on the couch and not exercising because that didn't feel good either.Yeah, that's true. Our bodies love movement, but when we're so focused on the like, okay, I've got to move in this certain way so that I don't get hurt and I have to have this strength and I have... You know, that focuses on that fear versus when you're in that flow state, that parasympathetic calm state, the ventral state, you're not even thinking about the fear and the pain and you don't have it.You're tuning in to other things and that's such an important point of this work. It's not just decreasing the fear, but like replaci…

Full show notes at the publisher

Episode # 114- Personality Traits and Chronic Pain May 05, 2023

Show notes

Did you know your personality traits are a predictor for whether you will have chronic pain or mindbody symptoms?
Traits like perfectionism, people pleasing, and wanting to be liked keep the nervous system in dysregulated states and wreak havoc on the body.

For me, my personality traits were the biggest thing keeping me dysregulated and in a state of dis-ease before I found this work.

Listen to find out more!

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

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

Please subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might love 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

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 114, Personality Traits and Chronic 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. Today, I wanted to talk to you about common personality traits that are associated with chronic pain.
Now, this is definitely something that I was not taught in physical therapy school. My knowledge of chronic pain was basically you just treat all pain the same way. As if it's damage in the body and you try to perfect the body and prevent further damage.
And when I say chronic pain, it could be, you know, a bad back that flares up every few times a year, or it could be other symptoms like irritable bowel syndrome is a common one, digestive issues like reflux, issues like migraines and fibromyalgia, as well as things like brain fog or tinnitus or fatigue, those can all be signs of neuroplastic symptoms, basically mind-body symptoms, meaning that the thoughts, the emotions, the nervous system, are the things that are giving the brain the information to produce pain, rather than that it's an injury that needs to be taken care of medically. So most people that are coming to this work have already tried the medical procedures. Their pain has lasted longer than three to six months, and it's resistant to medical care.
So that is kind of how we describe chronic pain. And what we find is that there are some common personality traits that we see with people who tend to have symptoms display in their bodies. These personality traits are things like perfectionism, people pleasing, wanting to be seen as good, wanting people to like you, a strong sense of duty.
They're often things that are not bad in themselves. They're actually usually very nice people, kind people, empathetic people that end up having chronic pain or mind-body type symptoms. As children, we develop these survival states and did not have any tools to know how to regulate.
And so over lifetimes, patterns can form of giving of yourself at your own expense, making sure everyone is happy before you can feel happy, or never letting yourself rest when you have achievements and you've achieved them, still criticizing yourself, thinking you should have done it faster or with less help, or as soon as you achieve something, you're on to the next thing because it's not fulfilling for you. For me, I think the personality traits were the biggest thing keeping me dysregulated, because I had a pretty great childhood, caring parents, attentive parents, and no big T traumas. But I developed this sense of trying to be very good.
I was raised in a religious setting, so wanting to be good, wanting to not make mistakes, worried that if I made mistakes, it would have eternal consequences. I was very scared. It promoted a lot of fear in my young developing nervous system around getting things wrong, about what other people thought of me.
And so that kept me dysregulated. When I got married and had kids and was a working mom, I felt like I was never doing enough. I couldn't be good enough by the fact that I was working and a mom and just continually being a very harsh critic on myself, pushing myself to do more, and really not knowing how to do any kind of self-care and starting to feel guilty if I did take time for myself.
So it was a real recipe for disaster, and no wonder that my digestive system was not doing well because when you're in these survival states, your digestive system shuts down, right? It's not as important to digest your food as it is to run away from a tiger. But in my case, there was no tiger chasing me.
Many of the things in the environment were actually safe for me, but I kept myself in a dysregulated state all of the time because of these personality traits, these survival states that I had used to cope and did not know any differently and did not have any tools to regulate myself out of. Dr. Schubiner describes internal pressures. Internal pressures meaning the pressures that we put on ourselves that keep us in these fierce states and in states where we're more likely to produce that neuroplastic pain.
He says people who are at higher risk for having mind-body syndrome are people who put more pressure on themselves, who are more self-critical, self-blaming, who feel more obligations and have a strong sense of duty. They worry excessively, take responsibility for external problems, they're overly conscientious and caring about others, and especially to the exclusion of doing things for themselves. So I checked every box on there for myself.
That's exactly the way I was living my life. It was actually well-meaning and well-intended. I wanted to be a good person.
I wanted to be there for everyone. I wanted everyone to like me, but by setting myself up for these unrealistic standards, I was actually really harming my own body and creating a state of dis-ease constantly. I like to remember that these personality traits developed as protective survival responses.
Sometimes you'll hear them called trauma responses. When you look at these personality traits of chronic pain, you can see them in the survival states. So this is what I mean.
The kind of person who might tend to go more towards fight and have chronic pain would be the kind of person who would be angry or frustrated with themselves, critical of themselves, also tending to find imperfections in others, feeling like a victim, and blaming. So this is actually a survival state, and this is what your nervous system has developed as you were growing up, as your nervous system was developing. So as you were growing up as a child, this was not a conscious decision.
The autonomic nervous system happens automatically. It's below our conscious control. So our response to an unsafe situation as a child could have been to go into fight.
Now, for someone who tends to go into flight, that response is this perfectionistic response. Like, if I could just do things better, if I could do things perfectly, then I'd be safe. Then people would like me.
If I could figure out all of the problems and fix them, if I could work a little harder, if I could push a little more, it's this frenetic energy of doing things and doing them at your own expense. That's the energy of flight. I have to keep doing more so that I can be safe.
With freeze, you tend to go into more isolation, thinking that if I can hide, I'll be safe. This is where shame lives. So people who are overly critical of themselves are often in shame, thinking something is actually wrong with them.
And fawn is a survival state that I guess I didn't even really realize that I've been living in probably most of my life. Fawn is a people-pleasing state where you would feel safe if people like you. So I would rather shut down part of myself than show up as myself and risk being disliked.
And so I was always gauging myself based on other people's opinions of me, external circumstances. It made it very hard for me to make decisions. I would always want to ask a lot of different people and get a lot of different responses, so it was confusing.
And in fawn, you tend to be more empathetic. You can read the room. You come in and you can just feel what other people are feeling, and you can imagine how it is for them.
And you're, again, so into other people's emotions and managing their emotions for them that you're forgetting about your own self. And people pleasing for me just became so innate because I was always looking for external information to know if I was doing the right thing or not. Again, our nervous system is just always on the lookout for danger.
And if we've had some events in our childhood that we don't want to repeat, our brain is actually on the lookout for anything that resembles something like that. So we can be on guard and looking for danger all of the time. And when the nervous system senses danger or threat, it doesn't mean that there's a real threat, but the nervous system senses that there's a threat, it will decide to put us into a survival state and these old familiar patterns, these old personality traits that cause us to disconnect from ourselves, to live in the future or the past, and to be in this frightened, fearful state that when we're in it long term, it does affect all of the systems in the body, the heart rate, the blood pressure, the breathing rate, the blood sugar, the fat storage, your immunity, your inflammation, your water-sodium balance, all of these things are managed by the autonomic nervous system.
It's automatic, but this is just for survival mode. This is to get us to survive, but not necessarily to thrive. For me, unlearning these personality traits was the biggest part of my healing.
And I had to build the tolerance in my nervous system to feel safe showing up as me, not asking for advice, taking time for self-care, and placing emphasis on how I felt over how other people feel. There were times, and there are still times, that it's very scary. And so be so compassionate with yourself.
If you are noticing some of these personality traits and you want to get rid of them because you don't like them, just please know that the first step is understanding them, accepting them, really seeing what this protective response has been and why you developed it and that this makes sense and that your brain and your nervous system is just trying to protect you. And we want to teach it that it is safe. We don't want these primitive responses in the driver's seat of the car driving us, the nervous systems coming along for the ride, but we want these primitive responses to be in the passenger seat or in the back seat.
And when you learn the tools to regulate your nervous system, then if you do go into these survival states, you know how to process through them, you know how to move through them and get back to regulation with most ease, rather than what we typically do, which is fight and resist, which actually makes our symptoms worse. If you identify with these personality traits, and if you have been doing this work and want a little extra help, or if you want a community of people who know what you are going through and are going through similar things, check out Alignment Academy in the show notes. And for more information, check out my website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com.
All right, you guys, 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.

Episode #113- How Skiing Helped My Back Pain Apr 04, 2023

Show notes

In this episode I tell you a real life story of my back pain and a flare I had this weekend. Since chronic pain has more to do with fear and nervous system dysregulation, I decided skiing sounded like a nice thing to do when my back pain was uncomfortable. Listen for how this counterintuitive approach helped me through the pain with less resistance and more curiosity. Click here for more information on somatic coaching & Alignment Academy: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/somatic-coaching 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 113, How Skiing Helped My Back Pain. 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 what happened over this weekend. So there was some back pain involved and the way I handled it.The history of the back pain is that probably 15 years ago or so, I was snowboarding and went off a jump and landed weird and hurt my back. And ever since then, maybe one or two times a year, I have some back pain. And usually it lasts for a few days.As a physical therapist, I always attributed it to like my SI joint and probably the lowest facet joints. And it feels like, you know, it gets kind of stuck and immobilized. And then the muscles around it get tight.And anyway, so there's this logical answer that I had for what was going on, and I would always attribute it to something physical that I had been doing. So obviously, with this work over the last few years, I've really changed my perspective and I look at things completely differently. So I actually had some back pain that I recorded a podcast about, and I checked on that, and it was just about a year ago.It was in May of 2022 that I recorded that episode about my acute back pain. It's just like once or twice a year, but not in any predictable way. And this time, I was just very curious, and here's what happened.I started feeling uncomfortable in my back when I was dancing on Saturday night. So I had gone to this dance, and it was at a trampoline place, so I'd done some jumping on the trampoline, I'd done some dancing. But at this point, when my back started hurting, I could still dance.I didn't really think anything was physically wrong. I didn't think there was damage, I didn't have fear. I was able to lean into this curiosity and identify several things that were less than perfect in my mind.I look for the emotional things that could be going on, the stress level in my life, and especially this type of pain, where these neural pathways are very formed and developed. And the way I see it is probably it's like a trauma response in that area of the body or a survival response, telling that specific area to tighten up certain muscles, and then that creates the immobility and the asymmetry and the pain and the SI joint stuff. So anyway, that's kind of my physical therapist mind.If you didn't get that, it doesn't matter. But instead of thinking of it as a physical thing causing the physical pain, thinking of it as the emotions and the nervous system being dysregulated and stress causing the body to actually, yes, tighten up in certain areas. And so when you feel the muscle, it is actually tight.But instead of attributing the source of the pain to damage and then having a fearful response that amplifies the pain, I was able to look around at what was going on. And there was something, there was not to get into too many details, but just like some simple things about comparing myself with dancing and a guy that I was interested in, not giving me a lot of attention that I wanted. So and then some bigger things going on just in my life and with family and business.And anyway, it was very easy for me to see that it made sense that my back started seizing up in this predictable pattern. I also want to mention, and I'm not an expert on this yet, and I do want to study more about it, but there's a lot coming out with fascia right now. That fascia, which surrounds all of the muscles and nerves and joints and connects everything in the body, we used to just think it was kind of a sheath and because they would study cadavers and it would just be like this dry outer covering.But now they know that this actually transmits neural information. So messages from the brain can be transmitted into the body, not through actual nerve pathways, but through the fascia. And that could account for some of these predictable tightenings, like I said, in a certain pattern, like with my lower back or with someone else, it might be their hip or their neck or their shoulder when they have stress, right?Sometimes people do really worry though that they've injured themselves and thinking of this pain as an actual injury and like wear and tear and maybe I've torn something or it's herniated. Here's what I have to say about that. What we know is that when they started studying pain-free people, that the majority of pain-free people, especially if you're over age 40, they do have damage and wear and tear in their body.So they have herniated discs and they have stenosis and they have rotator cuff tears and meniscus tears. And the amount of arthritis that you can see on an X-ray or MRI will not predict the amount of pain that someone will have. So when there is wear and tear on our bodies, it's not necessarily painful if pain-free people also have that same amount of wear and tear.There was one study that I found that they studied young athletes, so people who are young and athletic, so they're performing well, they're pain-free, and 89% of them had a hip labral tear. So we might not even know when things in our body are getting damaged. And when we find that hip labral tear, when they're in their 40s or 50s, they could think they just did it when it actually happened when they were a young athlete.So I know it's kind of mind-bending, and it's different to think of things this way. But if I ever start to worry about the pain indicating that something just got damaged, I really just question that, because there is so much research showing that these structural changes are normal and do not cause pain in everyone. So we cannot blame chronic pain on structural changes that are normal, just like wrinkles and gray hairs as we get older, we have degenerative changes inside of our body that do not cause chronic pain.But anyway, I was able to stay and dance as long as I wanted to, and then went home at night. I was having problems when I would roll over, and it would just tighten up and spasm and seize. I describe it as kind of like grabby.So my back was kind of like, I would go to move, and the muscles would just grab and spasm. So I did notice that during the night. And in the morning, I usually go to...This was the weekend, so it was Sunday morning, and I usually go to a dance class on Sunday mornings that I really like. And I also sometimes like to go skiing. It's near the end of the season.And so what I chose to do is just listen to my body, and the dance class sounded like a little much. There's a lot of like, you know, moving and body rolls, and that sounded like a little scary for my back. And again, I'm trying not to lean into fear here, but at the same time, I was really just asking my body what sounded good.And it did sound good to be more active than to lay around. And skiing actually sounded really good to me. So what I did, and this is just, you know, I was a physical therapist.This is my bias. Maybe it's a placebo effect. I don't care.I love it. It works for me. But I did some kinesio tape on my back.So KT tape or kinesio tape, kinesiology tape. It basically is like a moving brace that is, uh, that supports your muscles wherever you're putting it on your back or other body parts. You can put it on specific ways.The way I put it on was like for lower back SI joint. And I just think of that as like supporting my muscles. So although I know that this is my body, and I'm not worried about damage, and I'm not in that fearful state of like, you know, I've done something bad and how long is this going to last?I have the belief that this is, you know, at most going to just last a few days, and I'm just going to do what sounds really good to help it right now. So I taped it, and that decreased my pain immediately by like 50%. And I have that expectation from tape, because that's how I always used to describe it, is when you have, you know, kind of those spasmi, graspy muscles, grabby muscles, or whatever these, I'm just making up words, I guess.But when you have these, you know, you go to move and the muscle like clenches and gets really painful and sore, when I have the tape on, it feels like it supports the muscle. So I taped, I decided to go skiing. And again, I just want to point out that to someone else, skiing might sound very scary, even without sensations in their back.That might sound super scary to someone, but I've been skiing for years, decades. So for me, it sounded relaxing to get up in the mountains and to enjoy the movement and exhilaration and the distraction really of going skiing. So I went ahead, went skiing, and throughout this process, I was really noticing detective for the opposite moments or times that my back did feel better.If there were any times that I would get up to go walk and it wouldn't catch as much, I would try to notice like, oh, okay, this feels better. So I was cognizant of what was going on with my back, but I also wasn't urgent or fearful or monitoring it in a really judgmental way. So I started noticing with the very first run that it seemed to, like I was engaging the muscles in my body, and it was almost like that area wasn't as much of a presence.I wasn't focusing on it. It was less painful as I started just moving my body and engaging in this, you know, flowy motion of skiing. And I ski at my favorite resorts that I grew up skiing at, and it's just like home for me.You know, I just, I love that whole experience of being there. So I just was really trying to be in the present moment, and I noticed after the first run, it felt like my pain had decreased another 50%. So I went ahead and went up on the lift, did a second run.And then I noticed, okay, I'm trying not to get too graphic here, but I think it is important to tell this part. So I think that because when my nervous system goes into these survival states, for me, especially digestion can be an issue. So if I'm going into freeze, it's more of the like gassy feeling and more like blocked up.And if I'm more in fight or flight, it's more like loose and urgent and frequent. Okay, does that make sense? So again, not to get too gross, but I did have this sense when I was feeling my back in the morning that like my bowels had something to do with it.And I even, you know, usually use the restroom in the morning and wasn't really able to, but had this kind of like bloated, gassy feeling. And again, instead of thinking of like, well, what have I been eating or like what caused this? I just, it was just so clear to me, like your nervous system is dysregulated.This is classic, you know, nervous system dysregulation for you is shutting down that digestive system. Again, that's why I felt like the skiing would be so helpful and important for me is because that is just such a peaceful place for me.I was able to use the restroom. And that felt really good. So anyway, that's all I'm going to say about that.But just keeping in mind, your digestion is closely tied to your nervous system. And some of those uncomfortable feelings in the body, it's hard to tell exactly what is going on, especially people who've had chronic pain, their interoception, which is their ability to tell what is going on in their body, from the signals from their body to their brain, can become less accurate. So again, just something I noticed.And after that release, I did feel better. And throughout the day, just kept feeling better and better. Now, the tape was still on.It's tape that you can wear for several days. So I still, like, I bathed with it, and the next day was still wearing it. And throughout the next day, Monday, I probably noticed my back maybe 10 times.And the rest of the time, it was feeling pretty good. I still had the tape on, but I wasn't in any rush to force my nervous system to, you know, not have that assistance. It felt good to still have it on.It was like a little tender still. If I touched it, it was sore to the touch, for sure. But it wasn't like painful, other than a few times I noticed it.And probably five of those ten times that I noticed my back were at yoga, because I did decide that it sounded good to do a hot yoga class. And I did notice my back with certain movements. And then I also noticed that I could relax and quickly either just keep going with the movement or modify it or take a little break or whatever, and the pain would go right away.So the next day, so this is Tuesday now, I still have the tape on. I'm starting to feel like, you know, it's probably about time to take it off. But again, I'm just listening to my body.I've gotten some coaching about the stressors in my life and ways that I was magnifying those stressors and making things harder on myself. And so that has really helped. And through this whole process, it was just interesting because each time it happens now, it's just clearer to me that this mind-body stuff is going on, and it makes this whole process of when there is a flare or an aggravation, just to be very compassionate with myself, to really take this as a chance to tune into my body and notice what I am gravitating towards or wanting to do from what's inspiring me.And I will say that's taken some time to develop, so if you are starting out, you might feel a lot of pressure from what other people are saying. You've gotten a lot of your information from outside sources, and so you'll know the difference when it sounds like a should, and I'm doing air quotes, like should, like, you know, I should meditate for 20 minutes, or I should journal in this certain way for this amount of time, like versus if you ask yourself, your internal, your wise self, your higher self, your intuition, your body, however you like to think of it, what sounds good to you, sweetie? Like what, how can I help you love?I like to talk to myself in this loving way like that. What do you need, hun? And then if there are any shoulds, have it come from that place, right?From the wise self, from that calm self. And usually it's things like you should take a break or you should not be so worried, right? So those are the only kind of shoulds to listen to from your calm internal self.But when you find that urgency or that desperate-ness or this, it's actually a nervous system…

Full show notes at the publisher

Episode #112- How to Know if You’re in Freeze Mar 26, 2023

Show notes

In this episode I talk all about the nervous system state of freeze.

This is the nervous system state of shutdown when the system detects a mortal threat.

The nervous system chooses this state as the best option for your survival, so it is not a conscious choice.

Here is an example of what you may feel in freeze:

Feeling space, foggy, unable to think clearly, forgetting details, disoriented, forgetting where you’re going, losing track of time, continual exhaustion, numb, no energy, feeling overwhelmed, disconnection, feeling trapped, hopelessness, helplessness & shame.

If you identify with feeling these emotions, you are going in to freeze.

Listen in for more details about how to know you're in freeze and how it affects the body!

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

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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

Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 112, How to Know If You're in Freeze. 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. This episode, I'm going to talk about the state of freeze, the nervous system state so that you can identify if you are in freeze.
For me, I feel like I tended to be someone who was a little more anxious, more of the sympathetic activation, meaning fight or flight, primarily flight, high achiever, wanting to get things done. But then lately in my life, especially since my mom passed away and I've started to learn about trauma responses and the nervous system, I really have started to identify with freeze. I think part of it is also I'm growing my coaching business, so I'm putting myself out there in different ways.
There's been a lot of overwhelm. So freeze is a nervous system state. I feel like I really become an expert in over these last few years.
Now, in general, for all of our survival responses, they are to try to protect us when there is danger. So if there is a threat that we think we can handle, then our nervous system will choose fight or flight. And this is a choice by the nervous system and our subconscious mind.
We are not thinking this through. This happens physiologically at the body level. If the threat is more than we feel that we can handle, the body and the nervous system can choose to go into freeze or shut down.
We see this with animals in nature. If they're being hunted, and there's no way they could outrun the predator, they might have the nervous system response to freeze so that the predator might not notice them, and they might survive that way by just becoming immobilized. So the body closes up and the systems shut down.
So our primitive system decides what nervous system state is best for us to adapt to survive. And when it chooses freeze, these are the types of things that you will feel or notice in your body. Your head can feel spacey or foggy, unable to think clearly.
You could forget details or feel disoriented. You could feel blank or checked out, forgetting where you're going or losing track of time, continually feeling exhausted or numb, no energy, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like you're on autopilot or disconnection, feeling lifeless with a flat affect. Think of the walking dead.
You're immobilized or feeling collapsed, dissociated, emptiness, trapped, hopelessness, helplessness, burnt out, depression, isolation, feeling like you can't defend yourself or say no, wanting to hide and numb out. This is where shame is, so feeling ashamed and like something is wrong with you, feeling abandoned or unwanted or not good enough. It may show up as the silent treatment or giving up quickly when you're trying to advocate for your needs.
You could see difficulty taking actions or making decisions, procrastinating, fear of achieving or trying new things. And you still could be highly functional in a functional freeze state where you're a hard worker, an overachiever, performing well, just feeling numb on the inside, like you're watching yourself in your life, but not experiencing it. Freeze can have a mix of two states, the dorsal and the sympathetic.
So it can have some conflicting energy, like a horse that's given a direction to run and stay still at the same time. So you may think things like, there's so much to do, but I can't do all of it, but I need to do it all, but I can't do it, and I need to do it. So you can have a lot of energy, but also feel stuck.
Eventually, if the nervous system continues to be overwhelmed, it could go to immobility, to a shut down state, where you get tired and fuzzy, you can't think. It's like, I can't do all the things I want to, so I'm just gonna go back to sleep. And the more you try to get unstuck, the more stuck you may feel.
I have experienced this so much. As I said, with growing my business, it's crazy to me. Now I can watch all that's happening.
And so say I'll have a new idea, and I'll think about doing it, and then I'll think about the website that I have needs to be updated, and I need to figure out how to post three more things related to that. And so soon, I have overwhelmed myself. I get very tired, and I have this chaotic feeling in my brain, so I feel like maybe I should just rest, take a nap, distract for a little while, go get a cup of coffee.
And so I literally create freeze in myself, thinking of something that I need to do, and then all of these things that my brain thinks I have to do first, or that also need to be done, and soon I actually feel tired and overwhelmed and can't do anything. And that, again, is the protective nature of freeze to keep you from doing something where you could get hurt, right? So it's this quote unquote safety reaction, but it's keeping you immobilized.
If you feel like you're swimming upstream of a major current to get things done, then you're probably in freeze. The other thing to notice is that when you are in freeze, you will tell a story of how bad things are in all of the areas of your life. I call it the freeze goggles.
So when you have the freeze goggles on, it's like everything you're looking at just seems kind of dreary and hopeless and bad. So I had an example where I was getting coached, and I was telling my coach how I was bad in all the areas, not a great mom, horrible coach, every example I could think of where things weren't going how I wanted. And we talked about my yoga class, and I had had 10 people that night in yoga, which is usually what I would want, 10 people or more.
And I still told her, yeah, but I teach the same thing all the time. It's probably so boring for them. It's not creative.
I bet they hate it. Right? So that is the idea of those freeze goggles.
Even when something could potentially be something that in other frames of mind you'd be excited about, when you're in freeze, even something good, you can see the bad part about it. And it feels very real. So whenever I'm in freeze, I've started to really be able to notice it now.
And then I'm better able to just remind myself like, okay, this feels real, but it's not as bad as it seems. And there are several other specific strategies for coming out of freeze. So the story you would tell if you were in freeze is you're hopeless, you're stuck, you're powerless, because this state immobilizes the nervous system.
That's what it's designed to do. When you're chronically in freeze, you can have a low capacity for emotion and connection. You will often find yourself in situations where you feel trapped, unheard or helpless, and until you start to notice and recognize what's going on with freeze for you and supporting the nervous system to regulate it, you'll continue to have these same patterns.
Physiologically, the way that freeze affects your body is by decreasing the heart rate, decreasing the blood pressure and temperature, decreasing your muscle tone and facial expressions and eye contact. There's decreased social behavior, sexual function and decreased immunity. And there's increased fatigue, brain fog, and focus on the body sensations.
There's also increased fuel storage. So you could have the best diet in the world, but if you're in freeze, your digestion is not going to work properly, and you will be more likely to hang on to the food as storage because your nervous system is in the survival state of freeze. What I experienced is something I see oftentimes with my clients is that they were more on the activation side, the high achievers doing things with a lot of frenetic energy earlier in their lives, and then maybe have moved more into this freeze and overwhelm state as they've gotten older or had kids or had more stressors in their lives.
So you may feel like you go into an out of freeze or you may feel like you're predominantly in freeze and stuck in freeze. So with this podcast, I wanted to just help you get an understanding of what freeze feels like so that you can make sense of what's going on with your body, with your physiology, and how to move out of it. So for coming out of freeze, I'm actually doing a workshop.
I'll have a link in the show notes, but it's coming out tomorrow. So go ahead and click on that link if you want to be involved live or have access to the replays. A special workshop all about coming out of freeze.
I'll have some other workshops available this week as well. If you register, they'll also come with an exclusive coaching call with me to answer all of your questions on Friday, March 31st. So if you're listening when this comes out, go ahead and click on the show notes.
Or if it's after, you can always find the replays there as well. All right, you guys 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.

Episode #111- Pleasure on Purpose Mar 20, 2023

Show notes

In this episode, I talk about one of my favorite things to teach- having more rest, pleasure and fun in your life.

Most people with chronic pain are devoted, high achieving, hard working, people pleasing givers who have a hard time taking time for themselves.

But this concept is research based, and actually shows that when your pain or emotions are high the best thing to do is to distract rather than try to work through it and process.

We often think we should be working on healing all of the time, but sometimes our nervous system just needs a break, and avoidance behaviors can help you get more regulated.

So instead of meditating or journaling, you may watch a funny show or read a book (NOT about pain).

Then when you are regulated and your sensations are at a more manageable level, you can do the cognitive or emotional processing at that point.

When you do distracting activities with intent, they can be soothing for your nervous system.

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

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