Daily Gratitude: Another post on “pain”.  One reason people have trouble embracing the neuroplastic or mind- body approach and understanding of chronic pain is that doctors are kind of “caught in the middle”. It goes way back. Patients want “answers” but they also want fixes – quick fixes. Usually a pill or a shot or even surgery to help them feel and get better – yesterday!  Instant gratification at its finest. So, doctors everything they can to find an answer for you. They do lab and xray and fancy studies. They try to find anything they can to figure out what’s  wrong so you can have an answer (a diagnosis) and they can prescribe a treatment plan.  The majority of patients would NOT accept a diagnosis of neural circuit (or neuroplastic) pain disorder because they would think the doctor was saying it was “all in their head”. As an aside, I feel sorry for the poor old brain because it is the cause of all pain (even when there is some structural abnormality involved, the pain sensation is generated by the brain). It’s not the brain’s fault it happens to reside inside the skull – aka the head.  Anyway, what people who specialize in neuroplastic pain medicine have discovered is that in back pain, for example, the presence of abnormal X-ray findings does NOT automatically correlate with someone’s pain.  I’ve seen many a person with totally normal radiological studies that were completely incapacitated by their back pain. And then I’ve seen the most horrible looking back X-rays in an infantry soldier working full time carrying over 50-100 pounds on his back.  My own recent experience cemented that for me. As part of the evaluation for my fractured clavicle they got X-rays of my shoulder.  This is what the report says: “End-stage glenohumeral (shoulder) osteoarthritis”. So I looked up what this meant: “final phase of a progressive joint disease where the cartilage in the shoulder joint has worn away, causing bones to rub directly against each other. This leads to severe pain, significant loss of movement and function, and a grinding or clicking sensation.”  So what you’re asking? Well I may have some clicking at times but I have great use of my shoulder (well at least I did before this injury and intend to after it’s healed too). I do weight training and have no problems with my daily activities.  This is a perfect example of how the findings don’t always correlate with your symptoms. You have to look beyond the obvious, digging deeper into the well – the well of the mind! If you do, you’ll have a much better chance of recovering than if you just stick to X-ray or lab findings.  Don’t blame your doctor though. Patients don’t accept this so they have learned to look for something everyone will believe 

Daily Gratitude: Have you ever fallen prey to this? “I hope I can finish this __ (you can fill in the blank).” You keep saying and thinking this – over and over and over. But you never really sit down and figure out what it will take to “finish this”. You know it will be a lot of hard work and that’s scary. When people are scared they tend to freeze (that’s why it’s not just the Fight or Flight response but the fight, flight or freeze response. When I “decided” I had to keep walking at vol state this year, all I could do was “hope” that when I was doing the 60 minute miles that maybe I could get there. By the way, I put “decided” in quotes because I didn’t really decide anything. Jan did. I just went along with it. Anyway, hoping I could make it to the rock was not going to do it. I knew I had to rest and preferably sleep but I didn’t know how much time I could take doing that so I was pretty much immobilized- what if it’s too much down time? What if it’s too little? What is the Goldilocks amount of time so I could rest enough yet not too much. All these things were running around in my head. Nothing was being accomplished. I didn’t have any plan. Enter Ray K. He took the info I gave him which was just a bunch of estimates clouded by emotions and he ferreted out what he could and told me how to accomplish this even walking so slowly. In essence he made the decisions for me. Bottom lines are: you need facts to make decisions and you need to remove emotions from the decision making process. That’s hard but doable. You can talk to that side of your brain and tell it that you’re not ignoring your emotions. You just want them to wait in the wings while the decision making side of your brain takes over “for just a little while.” I find talking to the parts of your brain like this helps you separate the facts from the emotions. Try it some time.

Gratitude is a powerful process

Daily Gratitude: Today is world gratitude day!! When things aren’t going so well, what do you think about? When my race was spiraling downward in July, I wasn’t thinking of gratitude. I was thinking discouragement, despair and disillusionment. That’s always a recipe for not achieving success. The universe was sending me signs that plainly said “be grateful” (the dog hit by a car, the cute kittens, the adorable little puppy) but I had my blinders on. Later I saw all these blessings for what they were. But our goal is to see them when they appear and to be grateful for what we have when we have it and not have to wait until later. Had I paid attention to being grateful, my energy and spirit would have been lifted so I could better address what wasn’t going so well. This takes practice and effort. It’s why I encourage all of us (including me) to focus on our gratitudes every single day. Stuck in traffic? Be grateful you have a car and a place to go. Something simple. Having to wait in line to check out in the grocery store? Be grateful you have the money to pay for your groceries even if you’ve had to cut down perhaps. There are people out there who can’t even afford a tenth of what you have in your cart. Take one day and devote time to this and see if your energy and outlook change.