Ever felt like you were going mad because of chronic pain? You're not alone. Join me, Dana Jones, as I reveal the untold story of my journey with chronic foot pain. With my quest to 'fix' my pain, I ended up spending thousands on treatments and supplements. But in this pursuit, I discovered the symptom imperative - a concept rooted in our instinctual need to solve problems, and which plays a significant role in chronic pain management. Join me as I unravel this concept and share how introspection helped me find the solution within.
Growing up, I learned that pain was the ticket to my mother's attention. This led me to develop a pattern of suffering in silence and misunderstanding love. As I share these experiences and their impacts on my relationships and pain management, I want to remind you that it's okay to unlearn and relearn. Moreover, simple steps like maintaining a calendar or journaling can be therapeutic outlets that help manage pain. Together, let's navigate the emotional undercurrents driving chronic pain and walk towards recovery. You're not alone in this journey, let's learn, empathize and grow together.
Ever felt like you were going mad because of chronic pain? You're not alone. Join me, Dana Jones, as I reveal the untold story of my journey with chronic foot pain. With my quest to 'fix' my pain, I ended up spending thousands on treatments and supplements. But in this pursuit, I discovered the symptom imperative - a concept rooted in our instinctual need to solve problems, and which plays a significant role in chronic pain management. Join me as I unravel this concept and share how introspection helped me find the solution within.
Growing up, I learned that pain was the ticket to my mother's attention. This led me to develop a pattern of suffering in silence and misunderstanding love. As I share these experiences and their impacts on my relationships and pain management, I want to remind you that it's okay to unlearn and relearn. Moreover, simple steps like maintaining a calendar or journaling can be therapeutic outlets that help manage pain. Together, let's navigate the emotional undercurrents driving chronic pain and walk towards recovery. You're not alone in this journey, let's learn, empathize and grow together.
Welcome to the Pain Free Athlete Podcast. I'm your host, dana Jones. I am a certified personal trainer and I'm here to help you achieve your fitness goals without pain. In each episode, I'll share tips and strategies that will help you stay safe and pain free while you're working out. I'll also interview experts in the field of fitness and pain management. So if you're ready to learn how to stay active and pain free, then subscribe to the Pain Free Athlete Podcast today. Hi everyone and welcome to the Pain Free Athlete Podcast. I'm your host, dana Jones.
Dana:
So today I wanted to talk about this concept that's called the symptom imperative and in the TMS world this is a common term and I guess I'll get around to kind of describing it. But I guess I'll just come clean. The past few weeks have been pretty challenging for me. I've been having some random pain episodes and it's been pretty entertaining, to say the least, when I'm not caught up in the actual pain and I have tried to stay calm and know, because I know what it is. But you know how that goes I'm still. I actually I'm gonna physically pat myself on the back because I didn't Google any of the shit that's wrong with me, but I definitely just am kind of sitting here and kind of feeling stuck. So I don't know what you do when things pop up, but for me there's always this tendency to want to solve things, and I'll give you an example. So you know, things have been going pretty good. I've been feeling pretty good about myself and you know, we're rolling along about I don't know.
Dana:
Probably about a month ago and I started well, actually longer than a month ago I started getting a pain in my foot and I haven't done anything new and I'm getting like this sharp pain in the bottom of my foot. Oh, you know, oh, I know what that is right Plantar fasciitis. Yeah, that's what it is right. Have no idea how it goes. It doesn't just magically appear or whatever but I just decide okay, this is what it is. And so I'm ignoring, ignoring, ignoring and I pretty much understand why it's coming because I'm frustrated with a situation and I can't handle it the way that I would like to handle it. You know when you're waiting for other people to handle stuff, and so I'm just pissed and I haven't been journaling and I haven't been doing the things that I need to do to take care of myself, and so I'm having this pain and it's just there. And you know, I know that it's what it is right. I know that it's me not expressing my emotions, but yet here I am.
Dana:
I feel the twinge and I'm like I wonder if my Achilles is going to pop off, right? Why would I think that? Well, I don't know. Aaron Rodgers, who's the other one? Kirk Cousins two quarterbacks in the NFL have snapped their Achilles in the last two months. Sima Lu, who's the guy that played Shang-Chi in the Marvel movie he snapped his Achilles. So of course, I'm going to think it's my Achilles, because I'm hearing all these things about Achilles.
Dana:
Now, have I ever had this pain before? No, have I done anything that could possibly remotely be the reason why I have this pain? No, right, I haven't been running, I haven't been lifting weird, I haven't been trying to balance on a foot, I haven't done anything to have this happen. But here it is right. So there's this urge. It's like a visceral urge to want to solve what's going on right. I'm like I know this, I can fix it right, so I'm going to stretch, I'm going to, you know. So I'm stuck in this. It's like Netherlands, of trying to decide, like, should I pay attention to this and allow it essentially to distract me, because, you know, the care for something to this extent requires a lot of attention, right, you know, we're going to roll out the calf, we're going to foot massage.
Dana:
I've been having, you know, feelings about, like, maybe, if I just go to the chiropractor and I do XYZ, oh, I'm noticing that my foot is at the wrong angle, so maybe that's the reason, right. So I'm totally over analyzing the situation instead of, like, just sitting down and taking a moment and just journaling about whatever it is that's bothering me. But this need to solve things is, like I don't know, woven into my DNA and I just have this belief, right, if I do X, that that's going to be the thing and it's like I don't know if it's a drug, it feels like a drug, right, and I'm always searching, I'm always looking, I can find it. I know there's that one thing one more door, and that is the reason why my ass has spent thousands and thousands of dollars on supplements over my years. That is the reason why I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, healers, you know whoever Because I thought just one more corner, corner I can turn, and there's going to be the resolution and, of course, just like anything else, the resolution's inside of me and I just want so badly for there to be a different outcome, like I really just I'm insane. Right is the best way of proving it right.
Dana:
What are the 12-step programs? Say, right, keep doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for results. Like I know, right, there could be a different result. But that's pain. Pain makes you insane. There's just, you know, especially chronic pain. Not, you know, obviously not accident injury pain in the moment. Well, that can make you a little crazy too. But this need, this chronic need to solve, to want to, and so I guess it would be fair to say that I am deep in my addiction right now and I'm trying to work my my steps on. How do I, you know, handle this? How do I get through this Right?
Dana:
So for those of you who don't know TMS, right is Tension Myocytus Syndrome, and it was coined by Dr John Sarno and essentially, saying that repressed emotions cause pain, basically in whatever somebody may, whatever their weakness in their body may, be right. So, essentially, if your family is prone to headaches and you have repressed emotions because of XYZ, then you're probably going to get headaches and that it's not the piece of chocolate that caused the headache, or it's not the I didn't. You know the bare-mic pressure is dropping, or whatever reason is that you feel like you're getting headaches, but actually the fact that you're just not coming, you know, honest with yourself, coming clean about what is bothering you. And so you know I've done this work for three and a half years now and I know better, and I'm still finding myself kind of falling down every once in a while, and you know, I guess it's cool cause it makes me human, but anyway. So why is this? Why is this a thing, or why did this come up? So I was listening to Jim Quick and you can Google him.
Dana:
He is a gentleman who had a traumatic brain injury when he was a young guy, a little dude, and he started doing a deep dive on how people learn, because it was always so frustrating and he struggled in school. And one of the things that he said, and something I was listening to he said all learning is state dependent, which means that if information has emotional charge to it, then it can become a long-term memory, right? So of course he was talking about it in the positive way, right, is that if you are having a positive learning environment, like, children learn better when they're playing Right, if something is fun and engaging and whatever, then they, it will stick with them. And that's when they run home right, and they're like you know, mommy, so-and-so said right. All of a sudden, teacher becomes God. Have you ever realized that, like with preschool, that situation is that the preschool teacher becomes more important than the parents because learning is fun, right, the things that they're learning are fun, and you know, if you are in high school and you're being held against your will, you're not learning, right. You're sitting there, you're listening to somebody talk at you, you feel like you're being tortured and, essentially, you're not going to remain, remember anything that you're being taught, because you are in a state that is not conducive to learning and it's something that the education system should take note, right? So, anyway, learning comes in all shapes and sizes, right, and I realize that a lot of my behaviors around, my pain and my pain beliefs have been learned. And so what does that mean?
Dana:
Well, I learned at I don't even know what age. I was, probably a little teeny, tiny, so I want to say three, four, five, somewhere in that range. I learned that in order to get my mother's attention that I needed to be sick right, because she was very busy and it took a lot to get her attention and I found out that if I was sick, she paid attention to me. Now there were some, you know, weird things that happened as a result of that, because you know she would send me off to the doctor because she didn't want to deal with it. So she's like I'm taking to the doctor and, of course, the doctor's like medication. Even though I had something that didn't need medication, they'd still throw medication at me, and that was another thing I needed to unlearn was that medicine isn't the end all be all. Now, if I have a chronic illness that needs medication, then that's fine, but I don't need to be taking all these things, especially like.
Dana:
I was definitely a victim of the 80s over prescription of antibiotics and that created a lot of issues for me later Again. But I was. I had her attention right. She'd take the day off, she would take me to the doctor, she would sit there and if I was sick, she'd make me soup, she'd do all the things right. So in little kid head right or little kid. Math is sick equals attention, right? But there were times that it didn't work right and that a lot of times because of the nature of my mother and who she is, that the attention I got was not fantastic.
Dana:
And you know, I tell the story of when I was a little girl, like I was sick and I can't remember how old I was, and I think I had either thrown up or I felt like I was going to throw up and I went into my bedroom, my parents bedroom, to wake my mother up, and because I knew not to wake my dad up because he had to go to work, so you don't mess with him and so I went to my mother and I would tap her and she goes right, and I'd scare, and then, of course, she'd scare me, and then I'd cry, and then it started this weird thing and then she'd be like what do you want? I was like I don't feel good, right? So then the message I got was that being sick was an inconvenience. So then what do you decide? You decide that it's best to suffer in silence, right? So if you don't feel good, you lay there, you cry yourself to sleep, you do all the things that you need to do, because I don't know if a 10-year-old, 12-year-old or whatever knows how to parent themselves, right, they think they do, but the reality is, you know, there's some love and attention that is required and it doesn't always happen. So, but that became my pattern, right Is so.
Dana:
Then when things would go wrong or I felt, you know, unwell, I was embarrassed or concerned about the consequences, so then I wouldn't complain and I don't want to be a burden. Right, that became, you know, my mantra is that I'm not a burden, and you know that created two different situations. One is that I'm not getting my needs met and two is that I have no empathy for anybody who's wanting help, right, because I'm like, well, damn, you're a burden. So then I was not a very, you know I worked on. I wasn't a fantastic mother when the kids were little and whatever, but I worked on it because I was aware of the fact that I didn't want to treat them the way that I got treated. So I understand that the core of all that is some weird, you know, codependency stuff, and you know I'll work on that as I go along. But I guess my point is saying is that I had this weird ass interpretation of how to feel loved and because there was no one to tell me what was appropriate or what wasn't, I ended up coming up with my own conclusions. And again, little kid, math doesn't add up. And so, you know, everything got screwed up and that kind of put me at this point where I decided that I was suffering and but I wasn't going to tell anybody. So why does that matter? Because I still know that little Dana pops up for attention every once in a while, or she's needing to express her emotions and is still afraid to express the emotions.
Dana:
Now Dr Sarno says that you know the when you were in the mode of challenging TMS, also known as mind-body syndrome. Right, your body tries to find new ways to distract you, because the ideal, right your brain, you know, in the world, your, the ideal is to keep you small and protected. Right, because that's it. Right, you know turtle in. You know all those kinds of things. Now Nicole Sacks, who was his mentee.
Dana:
She describes the symptom imperative as a process of where new symptoms appear as the old ones are about to subside. So if your main issue is your back pain and you either reduce it through whatever work you're doing journaling, somatic tracking, tapping, meditating, all the kind of stuff to really just start to feel those emotions and that back pain starts to go away. Then your body goes uh are we sure? And says, here, here's a pain in your foot. Oh wait, let's make your stomach hurt. Oh, how about headaches? Oh damn, that finger, right, your finger, starts to hurt. That's another one that popped up for me. That was so entertaining.
Dana:
So the symptom imperative is like your brain attempting to protect you, right, and also trying to distract you from your emotions. And she says you know, please note that the symptom imperative is not a bad thing, right? Your brain and your nervous system are preparing to release the symptoms. So you're almost there, right? You just have to stay the course and not get distracted by the frickin' foot pain that pops up out of nowhere, right? Or, you know, don't get distracted by the headaches, because you know that it's really just trying to get you to rest. Now are there times that you just need to rest, I'm sure, right, and that may be a thing. Now, if you can go oh, I have a headache because I'm tired and then you lay down, you sleep and you wake up and the headache is fine, then obviously everything's cool. If you have a headache for three days or four days or a week or a month or whatever, then you know it's something that you need to address.
Dana:
So, all right, here we are. Right, I have my foot pain, my finger pain. Today I had a headache, my stomach's been funny, right, like all these things. So I know this pattern, right, and I haven't done anything different. The finger may be because I caught it funny, and and so I bent it back. So of course that's gonna be sore, but it shouldn't be sore for three months, right. So you got to look at that kind of stuff. But the other stuff, right, I haven't done it hitting right, like I said, I haven't run, I haven't been injured, I haven't, you know, torn a muscle. You know my calves aren't unusually tight, you know, or any tighter than they've been for the past. You know how many years. All that, right. So I know that nothing is new, that I haven't done anything.
Dana:
And so then the question becomes maybe I don't need this pain. And then, or why am I so afraid of expressing my feelings? I have the time, right. There's no like oh, I'm so busy I can't sit down and journal, I am avoiding this shit like the plague because I don't want to do it Now, I don't know why. Because it doesn't make sense, right, because I know, like journal feel better, but because the pattern is so ingrained in who I am of. You know, pain equals ruined day, or pain equals illness, or pain equals 12 hours on Google, you know, or whatever it is right.
Dana:
I don't know why that's so comforting and sitting down and journaling for 30 minutes or 10 minutes or 5 minutes doesn't Right, like I am still in that pattern where I can't just snap it, you know, and I try to be committed and I want to be committed, and when I'm committed I feel good and then I forget. You know, like, I'm the person who forgets to take my medication, right, my medication is expressing my feelings on a piece of paper, and yet I have an aversion to it because it almost feels too easy. Now, no, the goal right of the symptom or symptom relief around the corner is to take a pill and make it all go away. So I don't understand why that's easy and not expressing my feelings is difficult to me, even though it's probably the same amount of effort. Think about making an appointment, going to the doctor, finding a parking spot, paying for it, right, all that other stuff. I could have journaled three journals by the time. I do all that, but yet I still avoid it.
Dana:
So part of it is there's a comfort in it, right, I know there's a comfort in it. And it's a pattern. And again, it's a pattern that I've had for so many years. Right, I am 54 years old. For 40 some odd years I've been doing this pattern, so clearly it works for me to an extent, till your foot hurts and your finger hurts and you got a headache and stomachs bothering you and all these things, right. So, look, we repress our feelings at a necessity, right, because we're not allowed to be embarrassed, we're not allowed to be sad, all these things. Right.
Dana:
And I know that part of my issue is that I want to be perfect, right, I want to do a good job. I want everybody to kind of high five me which is funny because I don't, but I do, right. So, like little Dana wants a high five, I want to know that I did shit, right. Right, big Dana's like oh, that's embarrassing, why would you be so needy? But that's just the way it is. So we all know things can't be perfect. I'm not perfect but I want to try.
Dana:
But I also need to give myself some space right for that loving, kindness and understanding that people aren't perfect and I'm not sure what you know crazy goal that I'm holding myself up to, that I need to be perfect. I don't know, but you know, I know part of this is because I've taken on some new projects and I'm new to the projects and I'm new in the field in which we are participating and I feel like I'm, you know, an 18 year old with my first job again and I'm trying to figure out the nuances of working with different people and it's scary. I'm trying to write a digital course and I have a fantastic idea and I have run into a wall because of the fact that I'm like, why would people listen to me? Now, I know that I have a ton of experience and knowledge and whatever, but there is the naysayers, the committee in the back that is giving me information, and I still want to be perfect because I don't want people to talk shit about me.
Dana:
And the reality is that people aren't talking shit about me. They don't care about me, but that's me, and what is it? If I defend it, I get to keep it, and so I need to stop defending myself and my insecurities because I don't want them. Do I want to have moments where I doubt myself? Sure, because that's healthy? Because if you're not doubting yourself all the time, then you're probably not open to new ideas, and that's not a good way to be. You don't want to be in a situation where you think you know everything, because then there's no room for new learning, and then that's not ideal for anybody or any situation that you may be involved in. Right, you always want to be open to new ideas.
Dana:
So all I know is that I have a choice on how to feel and that there is literally no pressure on me, except for the pressure I'm putting on myself, which is bullshit.
Dana:
I shouldn't be doing it, but I am at this time, and so you know what does that mean? That means that I probably need to start setting a different alarm to get me to journal and to you know, really, you know, honor that time and set that time aside. You know it's in my reminders, but it's not in my calendar. So maybe that shit needs to go in my calendar so that I do it, because we know that I love my calendar and I pay attention to my calendar, so that's something that I probably need to start looking at. I hope you got something from it. It's interesting sometimes when I'm trying to craft an episode of what it's going to look like and how I feel about it, and that there's a lot of things that come through, and it's therapeutic for sure, but anyway, I appreciate you being my therapy partner. Anyway, thank you so much for listening and I will catch you next time.