Are You Unintentionally Training Your Body to Stay in Pain?

Are you unintentionally training your body to stay in pain? If you feel like you've done all the listening to your pain, all the journaling, all the like, what is it that you want? pain And it's still not going away? It might be because you are doing something that is actually making it beneficial for your body to stay in pain, and, of course, this is not on purpose. So I want you to listen into this episode to discover if you might be doing this thing and the one simple shift that can help train your body that it is safe to release your pain The One Simple Shift. Welcome, welcome. 

Welcome to episode 66 of the Unweaving Chronic Pain Podcast. I am your host, dr Andrea Moore, the Pain to Possibility Coach, and I am on a mission to help people liberate themselves from chronic pain so they can get back to living their life full out. If you have found this podcast to be helpful, the best way to say thank you is by leaving a review on Apple Podcast. This is how others can find the podcast and get the word out. If you know someone who could benefit from this, please share it with them and help them free themselves from their chronic pain. Thank you so much. Hello, hello y'all. I don't know how the weather is for you, but it is like already summertime here. School is now out And, honestly, sometimes I just don't even know what day it is. It's very confusing. 

I am also curious to hear in your profession whether you are a coach or do something else entirely different. If things tend to come in waves, because it's always fascinated me in the clinic, you know it would be like all right, i guess it's shoulder injury week or month. All right, now we're onto the knees, now we're onto the backs, and it's always really fascinating. I see the same thing in my work today And this week. Well, i'd say the past two weeks, the theme has been all about this one thing that people are doing that unintentionally is actually training their bodies to stay in pain. It's actually teaching their body that it's beneficial to stay in pain. Obviously they are not doing this on purpose, because everyone wants to get out of pain right. Yet there's this very, very common thing that is popping up amongst many of my clients and then I came up in my group program as well. So I just really wanted to make an episode about it, because it's really common and I think it'll really help you out if you might be doing this as well. 

Before we get exactly into it, i wanna just back up and tell you a little something about the human body. The human body needs care. It needs to be fed, it needs to get sunlight, it needs to drink water, it needs to go to the bathroom, it needs to be bathed, it needs to be loved, it needs to be touched, it needs movement, it needs social situations and social relationships. Honestly, it's really fucking needy, and that's what we are. We are humans and our body has a lot of needs in order to make it work. We are not robots, and this is really important because our culture has made attending to these needs as an inconvenience. 

Think about it just, even from the time we're in school, as young kids, needing to go to the bathroom. Right, attending to your body's need is something you have to ask permission for And, depending on your teacher, and in certain situations, is denied right. It's like no, i'm sorry, you can't attend to your body's need until I'm done lecturing. It's like the teachers wishes or the rules take precedence over your body's needs. If you're a kid and an adult, it doesn't matter here Getting out, getting into the sunlight, getting outside. Often those needs are overridden by no. You need to be in school in fluorescent lighting which is terrible for us, by the way and stuck in your office cubicle with no natural light for hours and hours upon hours a day, because that's more important than getting outside. We now live in so many areas where trees are being cut down. I'm so upset actually, like literally in my neighborhood in the past month, so many trees have been cut down and it is killing my soul. But anyways, i digress right. 

The point is our comfort and our conveniences in life are often serving to override our body's needs. This comes to social relationships too. Even in school, all the time I got yelled at for talking too much, for wanting to be with my friends, for basically talking too much, that there's really nothing more than that other than I was constantly the complaint about me Andrea talks too much. Jim was my worst grade, by the way. That was the only reason I never actually got a 4.0 was because Jim would ruin it every time, because I could never keep my mouth shut. And Jim was social hour for me, because I didn't get to talk at any other point and I like to talk. In case you haven't noticed. That's why I have a podcast. 

Anyways, the point is right, but we're social beings, we're meant to talk, we're meant to interact, and these rules of society, like I get that it's not okay to be talking while a teacher is talking, right, but it's like our structures are set up in the way that it makes it so our natural bodies needs are always overridden by other things. Patriarchal crap, okay, and just a lot of like convenience things too right, it's like, oh now I gotta be super productive at work, so I can't stop to take a bathroom break, i can't stop to take a long lunch, i can't stop to go take a walk outside, because I gotta be productive. Right, there's so many things that play into it. I could go on and on and on. So what happens is we learn not to attend to our body's needs, or that attending to our body's needs is straight up inconvenient. And I mean I am just as guilty of this. Literally before I sat down to record this podcast Like I'm going to call myself out right here I was trying to finish something else up and I had to pee really badly, but I was like can't pee until I finish this, can't pee until I finish that I'm sitting here like wiggling in my seat, like hold on, just let me finish this one thing, right, like I do it too, we all do it, but it's just noticing, right, like, how often it is that we override our body's needs because we're doing something more important that we're deeming more important in a world where there are so many societal restraints. 

Now, if you are a mom trying to care for children and support your family and do your job and try to manage your pain, like it's impossible, like there's too many things. So I want to just acknowledge how there are so many restraints against attending to our body's needs, even if we want to. I remember when I was working at the clinic, i knew that I needed to set more time aside for meditation, for being able to just be with my own thoughts and not be in this go, go, go, go, go brain all the time, like I needed to find some way to get into my body. But it felt impossible, especially once I had a child And I'm like every spare moment, right, i'm trying to take care of my baby. Am I supposed to just go? and it's like the whole thing of like, oh, take a bath? Yeah well, how are you supposed to take a bath if you have three kids? and not that I have three kids, right Right Running around and you can't afford daycare because it's freaking astronomically expensive, so anyway. So I want to acknowledge that there are a lot of restraints now because of that, that like add on to that and that make it so attending to your body be always, almost always, goes on the back burner. 

So I'm not discrediting that, i'm just bringing awareness to this issue of that we as a society do not value attending to our body at all. It is not taught, it is not encouraged. In fact, if anything, it is discouraged. And we are told it is inconvenient, right, everything's about how can we make this more convenient, right, how can I spend? do a two minute cold plunge so that way I can get benefits all day long, so I don't have to attend to my body all day long? I'm just picking on cold plunges, right. But it's like how can we make this more fast and more efficient? And here's the thing What is a great way to stop you pain, and not only pain, it might also be something like an illness or debilitating anxiety or depression. Right, it could be other chronic symptoms as well. These things often force us to stop and pay attention to our bodies. 

Now, maybe your body has chosen this strategy because in the past maybe when you were a kid, when you were sick or when you were hurt your body learned that was when your parents showed you love and affection and care and your parents slowed down enough And you got all of a sudden you got this bonding time with them that wasn't available before. That's not going to be the case for everybody, right? Or maybe you just had a really bad illness once, or you didn't just get injured one time And that was the time again that you stopped and slowed down. So your body learned oh, injury equals stopping and slowing down. And I believe this is the case for myself. Like I got in a car accident, had a really bad concussion, and my body was like oh, this makes you stop Finally. I didn't know how else to make you stop, but this worked. This just kind of happened out of nowhere And now I have learned this is a great strategy. 

For whatever reason, your body has learned this is a good strategy. I don't feel like it's super relevant to like analyze exactly where it came from. It's just recognizing. Are you right now in a state where pain is the only time you pay attention to your body, or the vast majority of the time you pay attention to your body. Right, it might not be the only time, but it's like, is it pain that is is paying the thing that gets you to stop and attend to your body the most reliably? And if so, you may have trained your body that this is a fantastic strategy for you to take care of yourself. And guess what? Until your body trusts that you are going to take care of it in the absence of pain, it's probably not going to let up. Your pain is likely going to stick around until you can show your body that it doesn't need this strategy anymore Because, like I said at the beginning, the body has needs, and if the only time you are really stopping and slowing down to attend to those needs are in pain, the body is getting what it needs, and this is now a beneficial strategy. 

So I want you to stop and ask yourself if pain was gone tomorrow, like, truly ask yourself this, like really really be honest with yourself. If you woke up tomorrow and pain was no longer an issue but nothing else in your life had changed, would you take the time to spend time with your body, attending to your body, loving on your body, fueling your body with not just movement and sunlight and nourishing food and water, but also with spaciousness, time to be out of your head and just totally embodied time, doing activities that fuel you, that fill you up, that recharge you, that nourish you, whether that's going for walks or just laying on the ground or, you know, spending time by water, whatever it is for you, you know, pursuing a Art that you love or something else. Right, there's a million things that you could be doing. Right, it's like would you take the time to do those things? Truly, because here's what I hear a lot of or see a lot of, is that people are like, yeah, of course I would finally have time to do those things, but then why aren't you doing them now? if you would have time to wake up tomorrow, if you are no longer in pain to do and be able to do those things, then why aren't you doing them now? 

chances are it's because your life either isn't set up to do that or there actually is a lot of Resentment built up towards your body. There's now a distrust of your body. That happens because of pain, and if pain Went away, it will not repair those things. Trust takes time to gain back and trust goes both ways. Your body has to trust you and you have to trust your body. So whatever is stopping you right now from attending to your body and showing it love, giving it what it needs, nourishing it is likely the same thing that is going to get in the way, even if pain or two magically disappear. So check in right now when the idea comes up of hey, i'm actually going to take a break from work and Actually allow myself to go for a walk during the day, or get out inside and get some sunlight if a walk doesn't feel like doable, or take a break in whatever way feels good for you. Right? Even if your answer is, well, it's because of pain, i'm gonna have you step back and ask again What is it really because of? and if pain is this thing that's stopping you right, then pick another activity where pain is not the Primary reason that's stopping you. 

There is something else underneath, because there is always something we can do that nourishes and tends to our body, even with pain, and that might be as simple as Going to the bathroom when you feel the urge, and not forcing your body to wait. That could be eating a Nourishing meal, you know, maybe for you, for whatever your body's rhythms are maybe it's more at set meal times, maybe you like to follow the morning, just listen to your body and eat when you start feeling those first hunger signals. Whatever works for you. There's no right way to do that. Even just taking the time to find out for your body What, what does work, what does feel nourishing, taking the time to just get outside in the sun, to ground, to be on the earth, Those are things that you can do, even with pain. So what is really stopping you from doing them? 

And if you're someone who is like, well, i do all the self-care, i actually go and do all those things, then one amazing that you're doing that for yourself. And so then my question is is are you doing that because it's supposed to get rid of your pain? Are you choosing to do those in response to pain? because if so, then again that is training your body. That pain is Necessary for you to do those things. If you are going out and you're grounding and you're walking and you're eating good food And you're hydrating and all of these things you're doing because that's gonna get me out of pain. Then your body's like, well, pain is what got you to do those things. So therefore, pain is necessary to keep doing those things. So is it possible to do those things solely out of care, love, compassion and respect for Your body, because it is a human body and it deserves to have those things, no matter what. It doesn't have to do anything to prove it's worthy of receiving those things, receiving that nourishment, of receiving that care. 

And so I want to step back Into and go back for to those who may have a lot of Resistance to caring for their body because it feels like their body hasn't earned the right to receive those things. And that might be. That could be. That could be in sneaky ways, like it might be Something that doesn't feel body related, like, oh well, i can't do that until I have finished XYZ business task, or I can't do that right now until my kid is older and You know I've achieved some certain milestone in life. Then I'm gonna have time to do it right. Like it might present like that. Or it could be really outright of like no, my body doesn't deserve to be cared for because my body is not. It's not a good body to me. My body treats me like shit, so I'm gonna treat it like shit right back could be anywhere on the spectrum of that. 

So, when identifying what comes up when you think about Showering love to your body, what comes up in response to that? Is there a lot of resistance, a lot of pushback, a lot of like, oh, maybe it's just this feeling of like, oh, nausea, or just like a gut punch, because this, right here, this response is what holds. The answers were so much gold wise. So, no matter what your answer is, even if it's an answer of like wanting to cuss out your body, this is amazing, because now you know what is in the way. This is what we work with. This is what we then apply the inner work to of understanding What is behind that Response. 

That's like with a process that I'm taking people through and teaching people how to talk to their nervous system to better Understand that response, because often what people want to do is they hear that response. Maybe they're, maybe the response is like my body's a piece of shit, it doesn't deserve it, and then they know that that's the quote-unquote wrong response. So they're like nope, i'm not supposed to have that. And now I have a shame for having that. And and right now There's all these layers of resistance to even just acknowledging that that's how you responded, because that's not how you're supposed to respond, and oh no, that's what's causing my pain. And then we get so up in our heads about that versus being like all right, let's just take that response and let's work with it. Let's really get curious about it. As I teach people in my pain to power program, approaching things from a wonder driven mind, from a place of like wow, what is behind this response? This is fascinating that I'm responding this way to wanting to treat my body well. Let's dive into it. And in my Pain to Power program this week actually, we went through the AWARE process, which is an acronym for the steps we use to speak the language of the nervous system. 

Because here's the thing no amount of logically understanding what is behind that response is going to shift it in your body. You can analyze your response all day long and be able to verbalize exactly why you're having it and exactly why you think you're unworthy, and all of that stuff, and none of that's going to change anything. It would be equivalent to reading book after book and research after research on how to best ride a bike and how to ride it most efficiently, and know how every gear works or whatever the heck makes bikes work Right, and you could watch all the videos in the world, it wouldn't matter how freaking phenomenally. You could verbalize it to somebody else and tell somebody else how to read a bike Right. Read a bike, good, lord. Ride a bike. In fact, you could probably teach somebody else how to ride a bike, but until you do it for yourself, you will not know how to ride a bike. 

Knowing is not the same as understanding and embodied understanding. And this is so hard when our brains and chances are. If you listen to this podcast and you resonate with what I say, it is because you have the same kind of brain as mine, which is a super fucking analytical, logical. It wants to know the science, it wants to understand right. When you have a brain like that one, i love you because I love brains like that. Right, nothing's gotten wrong. But when we have a brain like that, it really does take a lot to release that part of us temporarily and allow ourselves to go into our bodies, and there can be a lot that is protecting against that. That's a whole nother episode, though. So again, i just want to emphasize that no amount of the logical knowing is going to shift anything on a nervous system level, because your nervous system doesn't speak at a cognitive, conscious level. It's just not how it's your nervous system, it's not the cognitive part of your brain. 

You can speak to the cognitive part of our brain like that, but guess what? That conscious mind, that cognitive part of our brain, only accounts for at most 5% of, like our being Right. It's a subconscious mind that controls all the systems in the body. It is a subconscious mind that then actually goes up and impacts the rest of the brain, including the conscious brain. It doesn't operate like our conscious minds. It doesn't have like a past, present, future distinction. It often works in metaphors. It any like picture that it sees becomes reality. So it operates on such a different level than our cognitive, conscious, literal, logical minds. So we have to learn to speak its language if we want to shift the way that we are feeling towards our pain, towards our body, towards life, towards anything, because it is our subconscious that is holding that, it is our nervous system that holds all of that. So we have to learn to speak its language, and learning to speak his language is exactly what I teach in my pain to power program. 

Moving back to one other thing about pain that's really important to know is that if you have been in pain for more than six months, more especially if it's been more than a year, pain itself is really going to sever that connection with our bodies. So it's like not only was that connection probably not super strong in the first place, or not really nourished or nurtured in the first place because society, but then we build up layers of disconnection and distrust and those were that resentment that I was talking about towards our body because of pain in itself. Pain is coming on to be like hey, listen to me, because the other ways I'm trying to communicate to you aren't working. You're not listening to them again because we haven't been taught how to hear them. There's no blame or judgment there, it's just, literally, we don't know how to listen to our bodies because it's trained out of us, in fact. 

So pain is coming on board to try to be the thing to get your attention, your body's like all right. Well, now I've learned, for whatever reason, that this is the way to get you to pay attention, but the problem is it doesn't often have the intended effect, right? It's almost like somebody in a relationship who's super clingy because they don't want to lose that person. Often it doesn't have the intended effect. How many times does what we think is going to work actually end up having the exact opposite effect, right? It's like when parents want to protect their kids from hearing the truth about a living situation, or they want to protect their kids from XYZ, or a partner wants to protect their spouse and not share what's going on in their mind. That never goes well And oftentimes we have really good intentions and it doesn't pan out the way we think it's going to pan out. And this is exactly what happens with pain a lot of times. 

Is that pain is the body's good intention of trying to get your, get your attention, to pay attention to it. That was a lot of attention, but it doesn't have the intended effect because in fact, it just makes you want to turn away more from your body Again, because the body doesn't work rationally, it doesn't have that like logical ability to think that through, because it doesn't work on the same level as our logical minds. It's just learned hey, the more pain I'm in, the more you pay attention And that gets reinforced, right, think about how you may have reinforced that in your life. And again, there's no judgment of that, it's just noticing like, oh, wow, yeah, it's only when I have a really terrible migraine and I finally stop. It's only when my sciatic pain flares up so bad that I finally get up off my computer, stop working and go take a walk instead Both actual examples from my clients. And it's like how often do we do that? And for me it was on a much more global level. It's just that I was in such a go-go-go adrenaline doing all the things that it was when I got my concussion. It was like ugh, finally you're slowing down. 

And the other thing my concussion did for me that I definitely noticed as I was trying to heal was that it gave me the easiest excuse to say no to things I didn't want to do, which I did not know how to do before. Right, like before, i just somebody asked me to do something, i just said yes, because that's what I'm supposed to do, because I'm a people pleaser, right, got to make everyone else happy. And so when I had my concussion. A side effect of that is my body learned oh hey, making you feel terrible is a great way to make you say no and listen to your bodies. No, because I didn't say no to everything, i just. It was very easy to just use my concussion as an excuse to say no to things I didn't want to do. So my body's like, oh hey, this is a super awesome strategy here. 

So when I started healing, there was a lot of resistance to it because all of a sudden I was being asked to do things again One I would straight up lie at first because I didn't know how to say no, right. But then my body was like, ooh, this healing is kind of unsafe because now you're starting to take shit on again because you're not saying no as much, all right. So it was like this impetus to learn how to set boundaries, which are still really hard, by the way. I still really struggle with that and people pleasing and, you know, saying no to things, especially when they're kind of like they seem little. Right, i can say no to big things, that's not a problem anymore, but to the little asks that I really don't want to do, ooh, that's still a tough one. 

It's always a work in progress, but here's the good news is that my body now doesn't feel the need to create pain to make me say no, because at least it has learned that I will say no to a lot of things. I'm not perfect about it by any means, but it's enough. It's enough that I've built the trust that it knows that, okay, you are saying no like you're actively working on it. You're like moving through it, that I'm attending to the difficult things that are coming up, like when I have a challenge of saying no, that it's like I'm actively working on it and attending to what's coming up. So it's like pain doesn't need to be produced because I'm attending to what's coming up. 

So the good news is here is that you can start building up trust, but you don't need to be perfect at it at all. All you need to do is start showing your body with consistency that you are listening to it and that you are attending to it, and not because it's just in pain. That's not the reason you're attending to it. You're attending to it because it's your body and you care about it. Now, again, if just that brings a lot up and you're like, but I don't care about it and I want another body, then awesome. This is all where you meet yourself, where you are And we work with that first, and that's a fantastic place to start. 

My invitation to you is to start noticing where am I attending to my body because I'm in pain or because I think it's going to get me out of pain, and where, instead, can I start giving it love or care or nourishment? because it's my body and that's the only requirement it needs to get those things. And so then, where can you bring those in to daily life? And this can be a two-minute practice. It doesn't need to be over complicated. 

It might mean, every time you're washing your hands after going to the bathroom, that you are just taking the time to look into your own eyes and just do a self-check-in of like, hey, what's up with you right now? body, like, i want to know. Or maybe it's a question you ask yourself first thing in the morning of what do you need today? What would feel amazing and loving for you today? body. Or maybe you're even scheduling a date with your body of like, oh man, i love being in nature and I haven't done it in a while, so I'm going to set aside this extra time to just go out and be in nature in a way that feels wonderful for you. 

Or, again, maybe it's taking that break from the go go go and whether it's getting outside or lying on the floor or whatever feels good for you of just taking the time before your body has to tell you to do it, by flaring up pain, for instance. And again, this is all going to be really dependent on everybody's different body patterns or pain patterns and things like that. But if your pain happens to flare up after a period of time of working, it's like, can you attend to it before the flare up? And then sometimes it's just an energy shift behind why you're doing something. So maybe, again, you already have a lot of care activities for your body, but the energy behind them is to get out of pain. Where can you then work on the shifting the energy so that it's doing it because you want to care for your body period and that you would continue to do this even when you're out of pain, because it's something your body loves? 

I'm so curious to hear what comes up for you. Please let me know how this resonated. If you have any questions from it. I really, really love to hear from you all, and if you want more guidance on how to talk to your body and how to work with these things that might be coming up. This is what my pain to power program is all about and what one on one work is all about, so feel free to reach out, dm me on Instagram If you want to know more and join the waitlist for the next pain to power program, because we are currently on week three, so we're not taking any new enrollments right now, but if you want to make sure you are on the waitlist for the next time it is released, dm me. 

I'll let you know how to do that. And or if you have any questions about working with me one on one to work with this, then also shoot me a DM or contact me through my website and we will go ahead and get you started All right. Again, if this episode was helpful, please leave a five star review on Apple podcasts and share it with someone else you know who might benefit. Thank you so much. Bye. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page