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Older people tend to struggle more with chronic pain than younger folk, but Sharla was younger when she began searching for relief, and responded to prompts by a family member to explore the insights of pain science.
Her journey, was unique, including in the US and Indian perspectives. She had probed multiple other paths but the insight from Alan Gordon’s book ‘The Way Out’, resonated
She found a pathway that made sense to her, and gave her the skills to master her neuroplastic pain.
Sharla has raised 4 children while living about 15 years in India, as well and in the US before and after the India years. She tells her story about learning self-care for neuroplastic pain as a community college teacher.
Her story focuses on how she learned to retrain her brain based on ‘The Way Out’, by Alan Gordon, where ‘out’ means out of chronic pain.
She used his recommended: pain characteristic evidence, somatic tracking (curiously observing sensations in your body), changing how she thought about the pains, and adjusting some daily practices that enriched her life in other ways as well.
She highly recommends his book because it was really helpful for understanding how her body works.
Sharla is a teacher, writer with a family, and shares her story about what she learned from Alan Gordon’s 2021 book, ‘The Way Out’ – (of chronic pain). Her father kept giving her books about pain science and she resonated with neuroplasticity , a key concept in the book, so tells her personal pain story from a self-care viewpoint.
She raised her 4 children in Corvallis Oregon and Bangalore India. While teaching them, her brain also learned pain.
Neuroplasticity is important for the college success skills she teaches, i.e. students need to appreciate they’re not limited to what they know now, but their brains can change, build new neural pathways. The most used pathways get stronger, while the less-used become weaker.
Gordon’s book is extremely readable and practical for the average person.
She read the book in a time of stress and anxiety and wondered if the concepts might also reduce her anxiety rather than her back pain. She tried some of the strategies in the book and found they reduced her anxiety, and her back pain!
Gordon describes The Boulder Back Pain Study, published in September 2021, where 98% of the 151 participants improved and 66% were pain-free after Gordon’s Pain Reprocessing Therapy. Cool results she thought. She also cracked up over the title of another study Gordon described, which had the words ‘chronification’ and ‘pain shifting’ in the title. Functional MRI imaging showed that when injury pain became chronic, the location of pain activity ‘shifted’ to a different part of the brain.
Gordon defines neuroplastic pain as a brain mistake, which constructs a protective pain experience based on a misinterpretation of normal sensations. It’s real pain, but the cause is not linked to new injury.
She moved to India just after her closest Grandmother passed away, and she’d had a recent miscarriage. She thought her back pain was lifting boxes during the move. It continued off and on, and sometimes she had neck pain which she associated with bumpy roads, bad posture, or playing candy crush too long. Her brain definitely learned pain but there was no specific injury.
She wore a neck brace in the car and found she couldn’t play violin with her daughter without neck pain. It was really hard to believe her pain was not caused by bad posture, chairs, roads, because its hard to believe a pain isn’t caused by something wrong in the body.
The book authors recommend looking for evidence that her pains might be neuroplastic, so she went through the evidence list in the book. She checked: originated at time of stress, common personality traits, delayed pain, triggered by stress, increased in times of high anxiety, pains moved around, and lack of physical diagnosis. Her physical therapist assured her there was no injury.
The book is very rich and deep, but she finished her story focusing on the 90 techniques it recommends for helping your brain feel safe.
She made the evidence sheets; practiced somatic tracking (meaning observing what’s going on in your body at a particular time without being judgmental); sent safety messages to her brain; treated the process lightly, without an agenda; avoided behaviors associated with the higher pain levels; and the big one for her, reduced overstimulation. Her cell phone; social media; looking at work messages except at work; planning to manage uncertainty; catching her fears; and embracing positive sensations; all were her new focus!!
If you want to retrain your brain, she found Gordon’s book really helpful to understand what pain science had revealed about how her body works.
The transcript for this video can be viewed as closed caption on YouTube. It can also be accessed via PDF by clicking the link below.
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