Overcoming Overcoupling Reactions in Chronic Pain

0:00:00 - Speaker 1
Have you ever had a moment where you looked back and realized that your reaction to a situation was maybe a little bit larger or dramatic than the situation deserved or warranted? If so, you are clearly not alone. This literally just means you are a human. However, when it comes to pain, we can also have reactions in our bodies that make pain bigger and more painful than it needs to be, as well as also have emotional reactions in response to pain that end up amplifying the pain itself. In this episode, we're going to deep dive into something called an over-coupling reaction, because when we understand what is happening, it is one of the most crucial steps to bringing in the awareness that allows us to shift it. 

Welcome, welcome, welcome to episode 82 of the Unweaving Chronic Pain podcast. I am your host, dr Andrea Moore, founder of the whole self-integration method. I am on a mission to help people decode their chronic pain, to unlock radical alignment and authenticity in their life, a new life where just pain relief isn't the best you can hope for. Instead, we are shooting for a life in radical alignment with what you really want, no matter how big, how bold or how threatening to the patriarchy. If you want to come along for the ride then keep listening into this episode. 

Now, in this episode, it's a bit of a different episode, because this is actually a recording from a course that I did in the past. It was one that I wanted to revisit and put into the podcast because I thought it was so valuable. This was recorded live and so you actually get to hear participants' responses in the moment, because I left in the ones that were so powerful. I did delete out, however, anything that felt like it was giving some personal details. Now, at the end of this particular master class, I took the participant through a guided process. I unfortunately wasn't able to include it in this episode just because the way the recording was, some personal details ended up being recorded in and I couldn't edit it in a way that respected privacy. That being said, if you want to experience what it's like to move through a process that helps to take an overcoupling reaction and shift it, then I want to offer a special invitation to book an energy up level session and as long as, within that questionnaire that pops up when you book that you are writing overcoupling episode somewhere within that, I will know that you are hearing this special offer and we will make it. So during that session, we are identifying an overcoupling reaction and I'm going to let you know exactly how to work through it and make sure you have the process to work through it so that you can shift it in your body. 

Now let's move into this master class on overcoupling. We're going to really be emphasizing, using curiosity and compassion, to understand the message that your pain is sending, because we talked about how, last week, our brain is always trying to protect us. That's what the brain's job is keep you alive. The reason that we go to tools like somatic tracking and the triple A process is because it helps get us out of our analytical and cognitive minds and into our bodies, which is really the only place that healing can occur, and it allows us to unburden what our bodies have been holding on to For some of us, our entire lives, for some a really long time, and for some it might be more recent. It all is something our bodies are holding on to and, as we've discussed, we really cannot use logic. This is why we have to come into our bodies, and a way to think about it is that it wouldn't work with a toddler or a terrified puppy. Chances are it's not going to work with the parts that are holding on to these burdens to heal them. Just like we can't logic with a toddler, or logic with a rescue puppy that we found to try to convince them that we are safe and that they don't have anything to worry about now, like it just doesn't work. It takes a lot more time and space and just a different level of comfort and felt sense to so to do this. First let's look at what a true threat is and then we're going to define what over coupling is. So for the purpose of this work and we are operating out of an assumption that those watching and listening to this and everyone here on this call do have a certain level of privilege, as in we have access to the internet, and I want to also acknowledge that we are not using the dictionary definition of the word threat. There are some things that are incredibly serious, traumatic and need to be attended to. That for the purpose of this work, we're not going to consider a threat as defined here. 

Something not being a true threat does not mean we ignore it, as we'll discover in a second. It just means it's not an imminent danger to our survival, just a really important differentiation. So an example of something that could be something like global warming, right? Is it extremely problematic? Yeah. Is it a true threat according to this? No, because it's not an imminent like right, we're not going to die right now because of it. It doesn't mean be like, pretend it doesn't exist. That's also not the solution here. So I categorize a true threat as something that could have an acute and significant impact to our survival or safety. So really anything that was going to imminently put our survival at risk. 

And so the examples I gave here is a car speeding directly at you that's a true threat. You got to move out of the way. You are currently having a heart attack or a stroke True threat. Get to the ER right. A chainsaw coming at you that's a true threat. All right, these things are true threats as in like, if we don't do something, it's a problem. In the case of a true threat, you usually do not need to wonder. If it's a true threat, you almost always will know when spring into action Almost always. There's usually not time to even think about it, for right now we're going to look more at the over-coupling response, which is often what we are thinking is a true threat or our brain is thinking is a true threat, but really is something called over-coupling. Okay, so we're going to define over-coupling next. I wanted to give an example of over-coupling before I give you the official definition. 

A few years ago I went to go get a massage and I walk in and no one was there the massage therapist, like it was just like an empty building. And this was after an insanely hard few months. There was so much going on in my life and I cannot tell you how much I was looking forward to this and I literally had a complete breakdown over the massage therapist not showing Like embarrassing ugly, crying like near-panic anxiety attack, like feeling like I was going to die, like it felt so awful. Like I was in my car, like talking to because of the massage studio they have, like a off-site scheduling, like I was literally on the phone, being like no one was there. Do you have no idea? Like what I? Like I don't have to apologize to a poor lady. She's probably like, oh my God. And when I was able to kind of step outside into observer mode, I could notice that, wow, it was like halfway through this, me sobbing uncontrollably to this poor woman that I was like OK, this is not actually a threat. 

This is not that big of a deal. This is an over-coupling reaction. Right In that moment it felt like the biggest, worst thing that could have happened and my nervous system was reacting as such. Ok, but it was not a true threat. So what is over coupling? I'm sure we've all been there, and over coupling does not mean anything's gone wrong, it's just noticing when we are doing that. So over coupling is when our brain links two things together that really don't belong together or don't need to be linked together. 

Another really great example that a lot of people can relate to if you've had food poisoning, an over coupling can now occur when you think of that food that gave you food poisoning. If you're someone who's like, never been able to eat it again, or if you've drank too much alcohol and you never have, you have that one alcohol that you'll never touch again. For me it's Bacardi O. Never, ever, ever, touch that again. Thanks. High school experience and really dumb self. All right, so basically right. And you think of that and you just like this visceral response in your stomach. Whether it's to a food or something like that, we were like, oh my God, I can't, like I still can't even talk about it right now I still feel that. So, basically, your brain is perceiving one stimulus which could come in through any of your senses Touch, taste, smell, for example. It can come in through a sensation in your body and through an experience as well Do you have a question, Candice. 

Go ahead. 

0:09:29 - Speaker 2
So I have providers that are like constantly asked okay, how are you feeling? I feel touched and thought to myself oh, you're worse. What did you do? What happened Did you? How did you sleep? How did you? How much brain is the computer? What new exercise did you do? 

And so it feels like I'm constantly being asked like, well, what caused this? And so sometimes I'm like, oh, maybe it was the new exercise I did, but I don't really know. Maybe I'm PMSing, maybe it's because I slept on my right side because of my left, and I feel like and it sounds like you're kind of saying this like it's really not helpful to try to figure out, but at the same time like, yeah, I want to figure out what's right for my body. But then it's like all of a sudden I've decided quadruple covers are bad for me and I can never do them again. They caused my back to get worse in that moment. So I have a hard time with am I supposed to try and figure out what worked well and what didn't, or am I not supposed to try to figure it out? 

0:10:22 - Speaker 1
I love this question. I'm glad you asked because it really is actually it. Within the chronic pain world, there is a movement away from asking any of those questions because when it comes to TMS, when it comes to mind body pain, they often are not helpful. Now, like everything well, not everything, but everything within chronic pain, things are complicated, things happen to you once and we want to make sure, of course, that there are certain things that are being ruled out as, like a direct contributor, but for the most part, yeah, it's usually not helpful. It usually just creates more hypervigilance and if you're noticing, you're like, is this, is it this, is it this? I feel like I can feel that increased sense of like fear in your system. That alone is going to increase the reaction and that's what we want to be paying attention to. So, yeah, so we can. 

Those kinds of questions can, like unintentionally create an over coupling and I've seen that many times. You know someone will come up back and I'm talking about in the clinic, maybe less chronic pain, but more like a true physical thing. It's like, oh yeah, I was like shoveling all day and guarding. No, that was fine, that was fine, but when I went to do this one, like tiny minute motion that they like was like oh, my wife asked me to like unload the dishwasher and I had to reach up fast. What did it? I'm like, yeah, sure, that's exactly it. Like, come on, right, it's like this we aren't often very good at linking things, is the truth? Like, sometimes are there obvious links, sure, but most of the times we're actually like really bad at linking what was what, and oftentimes it's just more complex. It's usually not one thing, like if it was that reaching up, for instance, it was like, well, that was reaching up after hours of doing something that you know, maybe you shouldn't have been digging in the garden like two weeks after your back surgery. Like people are funny, but anyways, like it's yeah, so it's just complex. So I'm glad you asked that, though, but yes, that can. So that can create this link between a sensation and then a behavior of like oh, this therapist just asked me that, oh, I did happen to do this exercise, and that can create that link in your brain, especially if then, that person asking has a certain bias themselves, that they might be unintentionally influencing them like, oh, you bend over. Oh, our backs aren't supposed to bend over, right? There's like that type of thing where it's like actually our backs are great at bending over, they're literally designed to bend over, but yeah, we have this narrative in the medical community that that's somehow our spines aren't supposed to do this very motion they're built for. So when you have this type of bias, that I can create this overcoupling response. 

So, really, when it comes to what can be coupled anything, literally anything. I mean that's like Pavloz's dogs right there, right Like ring a bell and you salivate. So two or more of those like sensations, behaviors, meanings, emotions, thoughts can all be linked. So it's a sensation can be linked with a meaning. So someone feels pain and then that meaning is my days, immediately my days, ruined, or like that's it, I'm done for the day, right. It's that like thought that we link to, or two things can be like two of the same things could be coupled together so you could have one sensation of feeling like pain could actually be then coupled with like a tightening up in your neck, right, so you could have two physical sensations coupled. Or you could have meanings coupled. So I expanded on this last one and said my day is ruined, which could immediately then lead to a meaning of, I'm worthless. So it's like we can get some complex coupling that occurs. It's just helpful to start to notice what is being coupled because, remember, the brain's job is to keep you alive. That's it, it's all it cares about. It does not care about your joy or living a full human experience, it does not care about your thriving, it just wants you alive, which is incredibly useful, because we cannot have joy or a full human experience if we are dead. So thank you, brain, for keeping us alive. We need that first and foremost. However, it's useful until it is not right. So what your brain does to help accomplish this is based on a learned history or even passed down through trauma or DNA Within over coupling. 

The response is often instantaneous, like we often don't even realize it's happening, but what happens is like one thing happens. So maybe again, it's like you feel a sensation and then it's an immediate response by your brain of like yikes, this is bad, this is a threat, and if this one thing must be present, that means that is coming up next. Right, like, okay, I feel pain, now my day is ruined. So it's like. Then your brain's like all right, that's a threat, your day being ruined is a threat. You can't go out and forage for food if your day is ruined and you can't move. So I'm gonna actually amplify the fight or flight response, turn up the threat detectors. It doesn't end up doing exactly what it's trying to do, which is to keep you safe. It actually ends up doing the exact opposite often in these scenarios, when it's not a true threat. 

A quick note here there can also be undercoupling reactions. For the purpose of this, you're not gonna go into them, I just want to take note of them. This is when you're that like you feel a complete dissociation reaction, like you feel out of your body, and these are really common with chronic pain. However, they're a little bit more complex and I actually think it's more useful to work with over coupling. First, there's always both. No one ever is just like all undercoupling anyway. So there's plenty to work with with just over coupling. But within, like my bigger program, we talk about how to work with the dissociation response, and that's in my program, which has like lifetime access and lifetime support, just because things can get pretty complex and not everyone needs that. It's really just figuring out what your body needs, right. So everyone is gonna have both to some degree and these responses in themselves are not a problem. 

An over coupling and an undercoupling, like either one. Both are going to have their use and can both be incredibly helpful in like daily life and keeping you alive. We want to dissociate when it comes to some really traumatic experience Super helpful. It's when we stay dissociated that becomes problematic. We want certain things to be over coupled right, like we would like to have an over coupling reaction. If we learned that gas station sushi gives us food poisoning, you just probably shouldn't eat that again, it's probably a helpful one to stick around to remind you hey, don't buy that from a gas station, or you know what I mean. There could be just something that's like okay, wow, this like pattern of behavior is in a certain human isn't safe. Because it's not. We wanna make sure our body holds onto those things. Right, it's just we have to have the observer ability to like make sure. We want to keep a response. 

So I just wanna make it that we don't. Just because we have these responses does not mean you need to like, address all of them or get rid of them. It's fine if your body's holding onto some of these, it's just which ones are impacting you in a way that's not serving you. So, working with over coupling the most important thing to note is that there is a part of us with this over coupling response that is reacting to a stimulus as if it were a true threat. That part needs to be treated with compassion and curiosity. If there is judgment towards this part for believing that something is a true threat if I in my massage example, if I sat there and I was like, oh my gosh, what is wrong with you? You are such a spoiled brat for having this response to this situation which my mind probably went there. Let's be real anyways, I can't work with that part that was really seeing this as a true threat. It's going to feel really judged. I don't know about you, but if I'm feeling really judged, I'm not going to be willing to open up and have a conversation and get vulnerable. These parts are the same way. If we have judgment, which we often will, it's also just noticing and making space for that, and we'll talk about how to do that. This work is not about working with these parts to fix them or to make them go away or to stop having that reaction. If it's from this energy of you need to stop thinking that that's stupid or wrong, we can't really work with them. From that energy they're not going to be open. We want to get to a place of compassion. When we can sit with them compassionately and with curiosity, they'll often naturally shift and grow because of that. If a part feels threatened like there's a part of you that feels very threatened by a dog coming up, again understandably, so right, if there's a random dog coming at you, of course, of course it's scared, it's going to try to protect you, to create this, and it creates this overcoupling reaction. 

Parts can be threatened by, again, really obvious things like a dog or something that's hot or sharp or whatnot, or it might feel threatened. There might be parts that feel threatened by you acting a certain way or showing up a certain way or even making a certain movement, even if it is a natural human movement. They will often send the message that there is a threat and if you're here watching this course. It's often they send that message through pain A part that feels there is an injury, for example which is why week one was all about starting to see that there's not an injury if we've been in chronic pain for this long. It's so important because as long as a part's convinced there's an injury or you're going to make something worse, it's often going to work very hard to keep you sedentary and still, if it knows the way to do that is through pain. It's a really effective way to do that. It thinks it's keeping you safe. 

Pain itself can be from over-coupling reactions occurring and your body is just holding on to so much it's almost like an overflow. Or we can have over-coupling reactions to our pain itself. You can get a little meta. You don't need to think about it too much, but both are often true. Again, you don't really need to be like which is which. That's where the somatic work comes in, is not needing to logically figure it out. It's just letting your body guide you, because all you really need to know is that there's a part that feels your very survival is dependent on it having a certain reaction and it's not going to be logic out of having that reaction. That's really all you need to understand. 

This can even include things like people pleasing, perfectionism or acting a certain way to ensure you fit in, or pain itself. 

All of these can be intentional choices parts are making and working hard to use to keep you safe. 

If it feels like people pleasing is going to keep you safe, it's going to hold on very, very hard to people pleasing patterns and make it so. 

Setting a boundary, for instance, feels basically impossible. Sometimes parts are also working really hard to hide your authentic, aligned self if it feels that your authentic, aligned self is a threat to your survival. And often, if you're up to something in this world or you have beliefs or you just think a little bit differently, it can feel like being your authentic, aligned self is a threat to survival, because often that is again passed down. People who are kind of different historically didn't go so well for them in whatever way, whether that's just showing up as a woman in this world in a way that is like a lot more powerful than this world is used to, or a man that's showing up with just completely different ideas that are a little bit out of gender norms or patriarchal norms, or someone just having their full gender expression in the way that feels authentic to them, in whatever way feels wonderful. That can be really dangerous, again, because of things that our body's holding onto Go ahead. 

Leah. 

0:22:40 - Speaker 3
I was just going to say that the threat there would be rejection. 

0:22:46 - Speaker 1
Even abandonment or even just literally being thrown out of your tribe, right, like again, if you're just thinking of evolution, or I mean in some cases, like you can go into like burned at the stake, right, or like literal death just for being different, I mean that's, and some of that could really pass down generation to be generational. Yes, and I have a podcast episode that is on. I think it's called ancestral trauma. Okay, and that's something that I also go into a lot more in my bigger program. There's so much stuff to talk about it was so hard to pare it down for this. So these parts are often at the core of it, taking on a role that's just too big for them and we have to right size the role they're working with. So many, many times not always, but many times the parts we're working with are much younger or are parts that are older, but they're just taking on a role that's too, that's bigger than they're capable of. It just goes beyond like the natural laws of like what we're capable of as humans. So, whether it's a child part that feels responsible for meeting their own survival needs because they grew up in a household where it wasn't certain when they would get fed, for instance, or a teenager who's maybe taken it upon themselves that they need to be the ones to save their parents' marriage, or a part that feels like they're responsible for solving world hunger. That it's like this is on me. I need to be the one to fix this. These are all just inappropriate roles. Nothing's gone bad or wrong. We don't need to judge these parts, but these, these are roles that they cannot fulfill, not in the ways that they're trying to at least, and just like we would not shame a toddler or a fearful dog for their reactions or being unreasonable. Right, we want to ensure that we're treating these parts with the same care and compassion. You don't want to yell at the teenage part for thinking that you know she could be the one to fix her parents' marriage and be like what were you thinking that was so wrong of you, gosh? Like of course you're not responsible for that. Right, that's not going to come over. 

Well, we have to right size the role so these parts can understand where they fit into this world and our human experience and and understand where they're taking on things that are just not meant for them and how, how we care for them. So to do that we have to first understand more about the part we're working with. So how do we do that? So, to help get clear on when it's your protector part that's running the show, we really have to start noticing thoughts and feelings that are present right. So we learn about these parts using the triple A process and then we're going to expand on what we've learned so far in the triple A process to add more questions of inquiry and curiosity. So we want to be able to notice and sit with these parts without judgment or spiraling into them. So we kind of sit with them as an outside observer, as almost we could take these parts out in front of us and talk to them, which is why that somatic tracking and triple A process is so important, because that helps give you that distance right to kind of look at it as if this part was outside of yourself. 

But to start, we want to start bringing awareness to what this protector part is even reacting to in the first place, or or, and then why it's reacting to that. So when it comes to pain, for instance, we can start to look at okay, if I feel pain, what's the reaction, what's then coupled with that, and then we work with that part all right. So oftentimes we can work with pain itself as a part. I'm often I find it is much more beneficial, especially if you're having a coupled reaction with pain, to look at the coupled reaction first, because it's almost like layers protecting the pain itself. Often I find when you work through these layers the pain will just it like doesn't need to be there anymore, and then sometimes we do work with the pain itself. That's really. It varies person to person. There's like no perfect right to linear process that works for everyone. That's why it's all about coming to you and learning how to work with your body and what works for your body, because this is individual. So we are going to move through this together. 

0:27:14 - Speaker 3
I have a quick comment that when I was consoling my younger self or my pain or whatever it was, I realized that it really wasn't about my pain, my weakness. I was really crying hysterically about something else, something personal, and that was a surprise. I thought it was my weakness that I was sad about, but when I had that compassion it was something else. 

0:27:48 - Speaker 1
That is so beautiful and I just love your willingness and openness to go there. Yes, it helps. Yes, so just so, celebrating that. All right, that is the end of the recorded section of the masterclass that I'm including in this podcast Again. 

Unfortunately, I did have to cut it a bit short just because some personal details were revealed. I couldn't quite edit it out properly, but I really again want to invite you to book an energy up level call so you can be taken through the process that I took the participants through. That will help you shift this over coupling reaction and I'm so curious to hear from this episode were you able to identify some that have been occurring for you that may be amplifying your pain or maybe amplifying some discomfort in life or just emotional triggers in life? You know how we just respond to things that are just bigger than it needs to be. Right, your husband doesn't take out the trash and it just feels so big and huge and dramatic and like a personal attack in your body. That's an over coupling reaction, and the good news is is that working with it doesn't mean that you now have to put up with the trash not being taken out. In fact, when we can work with these reactions, we can approach our partners in a way that is much more team oriented and is actually more likely to have them do the very thing we would like them to do, if it is, of course, aligned for our relationship. 

On that note, if you were able to identify any over coupling reactions in your life, I would love to hear about them. Feel free to DM me on Instagram, at Dr Andrea Moore, and just let me know what came up for you. If this episode was helpful, please feel free to share it with a friend and, especially, leave a review on Apple podcast. This really helps others find this podcast, so we can help share this message with the world, so others can decode their pain and help unlock a life that is full of radical authenticity and alignment. Thank you again for listening. See you next week. Bye. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page