What you need to heal from chronic pain!

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Unweaving Chronic Pain Podcast.

I cannot wait to be able to go on this journey of Unweaving Chronic Pain with you, from Unweaving the Misconceptions to Unweaving It From Your Life

Now, in today's episode, I want to get right into it and I want to discuss who this podcast is for, cover a brief introduction to who I am, and then get right into the good stuff and tell you the necessary components needed to unweave chronic pain from your life. Really how to ease that burden.

So who is this podcast for?

Well, if you've been experiencing physical pain for more than three to six months, that is considered chronic pain.

Maybe you've tried things like massage, chiropractic, physical therapy, acupuncture, energy work,regular therapy, rest, pain meds, injections, maybe even surgery, but you have a very little to show for your results. Maybe you've noticed your pain worsening in the past few months, and maybe the past year, I mean, 2020 in this whole past year has definitely been playing a role there.

If you're noticing your life is shrinking because of your pain, if exercise is becoming more and more difficult, family time is suffering, work is suffering… if you are suffering, then this podcast is right for you.

More importantly, if you know you want more out of life than just managing your pain and having to dictate what you can and can't do, then keep listening.

If you want to be able to live your life, experience your life, nurture relationships with family, friends, your clients… if you're a business owner, maybe you have a bucket list of dreams, or maybe if you are running a business, you have the desire or have the desire to run a business. Maybe pain is limiting your growth or your ability to even get started in the first place… or maybe there is just one tiny spark of hope that you know you have more to offer to those around you, yourself, or even the whole world.

You might not even know what that is yet, or you may know exactly what it is, but your pain is limiting you and constantly squashing it down. But deep down, you know that piece of you is still very alive waiting for the day it can shine.

If any of this sounds like you, then please join me on this journey of unwaving chronic pain.

Because what if?

Just what if?

Your chronic pain was actually an invitation, an invitation to heal, an invitation to transform your life.

Just what if chronic pain actually was the greatest invitation you ever received?

Would you be willing to receive it?

Or does the pain just need to keep getting louder until you're ready to listen?

So, hi, I'm Dr. Andrea Gruenberger Moore and I help women shift their relationship to chronic pain so it can become the greatest gift they ever received.

I help women stop pain from ruining their lives and instead allow it to become the catalyst for living a life they may not even yet be able to dream of.

The process I take women through not only reduces their pain but completely shifts and transforms their life to be one that allows the freedom to live a life that is full and thriving.

I have over 10 years of experience and have helped hundreds of women along their journey. And for the longest time, I personally felt broken. Broken because of my chronic pain, broken because of my ADD, like issues, the depression and anxiety I was suffering from. But not quite broken enough for conventional medicine to care or do anything to help me.

So after reaching out for help over and over with no productive results or sometimes practically being laughed at in a physician's office, I decided it was time to take things into my own hands.

I received my doctorate in physical therapy, completed two orthopedic residencies and received my board certification as an orthopedic specialist. This was all helpful but still didn't address my chronic pain.

So I became a functional nutritional therapy practitioner which helped immensely. It still wasn't enough though. So I added life coaching, energy work, somatic healing, acceptance and commitment therapy and extensive trainings in chronic pain.

All of these components now play an important piece and part about how I look at and how I help empower women who are struggling chronic pain. Because when I found this perfect combination for myself and was able to heal my chronic pain, I realized I had to share this gift with others.

So when I say chronic pain just to clarify, what I'm referring to is any ache pain sensation in your body that has been persisting for more than three to six months. It might be intermittent, it might be constant, you may or may not know what's causing it. But most importantly, the level of sensation you experience is disrupting you from living the life you want. Even if it is the tiniest, you know, it is just a one quote unquote.

If it is disrupting you, this podcast is for you.

I've met women who brush off their pain because it just isn't that bad. But again, if it is stopping you from engaging in life the way you value, then this podcast is for you.

Now, let's get more into things.

Let's discover what the components of healing pain are.

So first, the biggest, most important thing that needs to be understood about pain is that it is complex. Trying to treat it in any other way is a huge disservice and can undermine your ability to heal.

If someone is saying a solution to chronic pain is simple, then their understanding of chronic pain is fundamentally flawed. This doesn't mean to have less hope though. In fact, it's the opposite.

By truly understanding the complexities and acknowledging them, we can actually accelerate healing because when we think that it's just going to be one quick fix and that's going to cure us and it doesn't, it actually sets us up on this vicious cycle of failure. And on top of it, not helping can actually worsen chronic pain.

So the core piece to addressing pain is really all about addressing the thing that pain is trying to tell you about. So when we break it down that way, it might actually start seeming pretty simple, right? Sure. I mean, it's as simple as saying, hey, if we just give everyone enough food, we'll solve world hunger. I mean, it's true, but to carry that out becomes incredibly complex.

The reality is that when you're able to interpret the message and follow through appropriately, your life will completely shift and the burden of pain can be lifted.

But how to do that?

We're going to go over some steps.

First, you need to be able to understand the message because unfortunately, the message often isn't obvious. Often just understanding that message in itself can be a multi-factorial journey. Similar to if you've ever had your car's check engine like, come on and it took the mechanic a long diagnostic journey.

For example, I once had a car that made this thunking sound every time I would start driving. It sounded like the wheel was going to fall off and it would scare the crap out of me. But every time I took it in, they could not reproduce the sound. And all of their tests would come up negative. No amount of describing it helped them figure it out.

I started to think I was a little crazy and had passengers to make sure that I was not the only one hearing this sound, which I wasn't. I think it took four times of me going in before a genius woman. Yes, of course it was a woman who thought of this

Realized it was only an issue when the car was cold. I hadn't put this together because most of my car rides were so short that my car never fully like would warm up. So to me, it seemed like it was happening at all times. But the car dealership was a little further away, just far enough away for it to get warm but not quite far away from me to notice that the sound would be gone. So she was able to ask all the right questions to get this very simple knowledge out of me that no one else had thought to ask. And the second she understood that piece, she was able to get in, find the issue and fix it.

Even in cases where a message seems clear, addressing it can be complicated if you aren't asking the right questions.

Again, the fix to my problem was super simple, but it took a lot to get it fixed and addressed in the first place.

So in order to decode the message, you have to be able to listen to it first. If you can't even hear it, then you're definitely never going to be able to interpret it or understand it.

So really when it comes down to it, before we can even understand the message, a person needs to have the ability to actually listen in, to listen into their body. Once they can do that, then the work of decoding it and truly understanding it can start.

So how do you even listen to the message?

Because often, again, that in itself can be a journey.

In order to listen to the message, to truly hear it, one of the number one requirements is the ability to sit with a pain that you are currently experiencing. And this is crucial. You have to be able to sit with it in order to hear the message.

And I want to emphasize that this in itself is a skill that can take time to develop. It doesn't happen naturally. We weren't taught how to do this. And we will be digging into this piece much more. We'll be digging into all of these pieces that I'm speaking about today, much more in future episodes.

So even once you can listen it, it also means you need to understand how to sit with a pain or sorry, once you are able to sit with a pain, you want to be able to do this in a productive manner. This means learning when you are spiraling versus listening and healing.

Oftentimes when people try to start sitting with their pain, they end up spiraling and it's not productive and it doesn't feel good.So again, this is where it's a skill and a learning process.

Going down rabbit holes and spirals aren't really, really common.

And again, we'll be discussing more on how to differentiate and notice that this is happening and shift this into a more helpful way of sitting with pain so that way you can sit with a pain and not get lost in it. So so far we know that being able to listen effectively and then decode the message or crucial components of this healing work.

Next, I want you to imagine that you were getting dropped off in the Sahara Desert in the middle of nowhere. And in this fantasy scenario, or not fantasy, imaginary scenario, I don't know who fantasy it is to get dropped off in the Sahara Desert, you knew this was going to happen, okay?

So like maybe you had signed up for one of those crazy reality TV shows. It was a choice, just like you're choosing to take a journey to un-weave your chronic pain in this scenario. You are now choosing to get dropped off in the middle of the Sahara Desert or whatever crazy reason. Just stay with me here.

So if you want, you can just go at it by yourself and be like, all right, drop me off. I'm not even going to prepare, I'm not going to bring any resources, nothing. I'm just going to find my way out.

And well, I mean humans are pretty resilient and somehow maybe it's possible to make it out alive without any resources. But we said we had a choice. He said you knew this was happening. So why not be prepared? We already know this journey is going to be incredibly challenging. So why not choose to get dropped off with resources and tools that can help you out?

And knowing that at any point, again, because we had the luxury of choosing this journey, it's like this ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book here, we can call on resources when you need this, okay?

No one said you couldn't have like some phone that worked in the middle of the Sahara Desert to call, call up some friends for help.

If you really want to be efficient, you'll bring a guide with you.

Think about those who climb Mount Everest. They all have guides to bring them up the mountain. You do not need to do this alone.

The reality is no matter what you may be thinking and no matter how hard it may be to hear this message depending on your story, you did not get to this place of being stuck with chronic pain alone. There were known and unknown people, events, situations, societal programming that have contributed.

It is your responsibility to choose to take the journey. Nobody else can do that for you. But where you are right now isn't your fault at all.

So in order to go through this journey, you can choose to do it on your own. Or since you're listening to this, it sounds like you've decided that getting assistance along the way will be a more efficient method.

Again, no matter how you got where you are, you have full permission to receive guidance and help on your journey.

So what are some other resources that could be helpful on your path to understanding the message of your chronic pain and following through with what it is truly trying to tell you?

One of the most important resources to starting this journey is actually going to surprise you. What it is, is actually having a deep, deep knowing and understanding of your values. This might sound simple, but again, when you're in chronic pain, it's possible that this can also feel incredibly scary.

I will be dedicating an entire episode or more to this soon, but for now, all I need you to know is that there are things out there that make life worth living. Whether you're able to fully articulate them yet isn't necessary, but you probably do have a sense that there is a life you deserve, that you want to embody, that there is just more for you out there, even if you don't know what yet, or you don't know how to get there.

So again, if you're dropped off in the middle of the Sahara Desert and all your memories were wiped and you didn't know there was anything different, it's kind of hard to start looking for anything.

You don't even know what to look for. You have no reference point. So having this reference point of our values, of what's important, of what we're searching for, aiming for, is so incredibly necessary on this journey.

The other incredibly important thing is support, support, support. I cannot say this enough.

Again, no one said you couldn't be dropped off with a whole team of people to help you. Guides who are experts at navigating the territory.

Just for a reference, for every person who gets the glory of saying they climbed Everest, there are 10 to 15 support people helping them on the mountain. That's not including their family, friends, mentors, coaches, etc. that supported them just to be able to get to that base of the mountain to start climbing in the first place.

They are not doing it alone. If you feel like you need to go on this journey alone, let's rewrite that right now. You again have full permission to receive help and support.

This podcast is designed exactly to start providing that support for you. I still have one more incredibly important resource I want to share. But before I get to it, I really want to emphasize that this podcast is designed to start providing you with that guidance. But it is obviously not in place of medical advice. This is not in place of your doctor. So definitely reach out for more support if that is something you need.

If you already know that you're ready for the one-on-one support and guidance on this journey, feel free to reach out to me.

So far, we've discovered that pain is complex and treating it as anything but complex is a disservice. Pain ultimately is a messenger and it takes developing the skills to sit with pain and listen to our bodies to be able to decipher that message. And then ultimately, we need to address whatever the message is trying to tell us. These are all essential. And I wanted to touch on one more crucial thing.

Chronic pain didn't develop overnight.

And therefore, it isn't going to go way overnight. And along the journey, we absolutely can and should incorporate tools for short-term pain relief. Empowering ourselves to be able to affect our pain levels in the moment can be incredibly useful on this journey.

I just wanted to touch on this because I see this one either getting completely overlooked or more commonly, it becomes the sole focus. And when it becomes the sole focus, people get stuck in a pattern of relying on short-term pain relief as their only tool and become desperate for it.

Almost becoming addicted to the next thing that might grant them even just a few hours of pain relief, which is due to not having the skill to sit with any amount of pain. We want both the long-term and short-term. We want to address chronic pain with both long-term and short-term tools.

So getting stuck in that loop of needing short-term pain relief, especially when it's from another practitioner, like you cannot wait to get to your next chiropractic appointment, for instance, it gets stuck.

It doesn't move us through our journey. It's more like spinning in circles. And I am still a huge proponent of appropriately placed intentional tools for short-term pain relief.

Since we know these things are going to take time, so why not allow ourselves to be more comfortable in the process? And again, we're going to go way more in depth about this.

Alright, so that about covers the very large overview of components that are essential for pretty much every person's chronic pain journey. I am so excited to be guiding you through this on the podcast.

The best place to find me is on Instagram @drandreamoore, or you can contact me through my website at drandriamoore.com.

It is spelled D-R-A-N-D-R-E-A-M-O-O-R-E

The doctor is not spelled out, it's just D-R.

Links will be in the show notes as well.

Also, I offer free pain strategy sessions, so if you want to expedite your journey and give yourself full permission to receive the guidance you deserve, please do not hesitate to reach out.

I so look forward to being on this journey with you.

Thank you so much for listening in today. Bye!