What Is Pain Really?

Before we begin the process of eliminating your pain, let's first take a look at what pain really is. Just for a moment, imagine a life where pain is nonexistent. You wake up, jump out of bed, and feel great. You are running late though, and because of your rush, you trip on the way into the bathroom, landing face-first on the floor. It doesn't hurt a bit, so it doesn't slow you down and you keep on going. You continue on to get ready for the day, heading into the shower. The water is steamy, scalding to the point of blistering your skin, but you don't really notice it because you feel no pain. You later head to the kitchen to make yourself breakfast, and in your rush to not be late for work, you accidentally cut your hand wide open, and blood is dripping everywhere! But no worries, it doesn't hurt, so you just put a bandage on it and head out to your job. Do you see where I'm going with this? When you think about pain this way, would you consider that pain may not be your enemy but instead, it may be your protector?

Many times pain is an indicator — a warning, if you will. It lets us know on the outside that there is something wrong on the inside. It's a message telling us that our bodies have had enough. It's the result, the effect, of something else.

When we are discussing pain, we need to talk about the different types of pain there are. When an injury or event first occurs, the pain that is experienced is considered acute pain. Many times this type of pain, if treated soon after the injury, will go away with traditional methods. But when left to its own devices and fueled by the emotions associated with it, it becomes what is called chronic pain or suffering pain. Even though the POP Method works with acute injuries as well, especially when we can easily identify the initial emotions we associate with the injury, the type of pain we are really focusing on in this book is the chronic type.

The development of chronic pain is a process, and it isn't the result of just one thing. Of course, if you are in an accident and have pain immediately, you know that the primary cause can be directly traced back to that trauma, the acute pain reaction, but if the pain lingers on and on, well past the treatment plan and the customary time it takes a person to heal from an injury, that's chronic pain.

Maybe you got some relief but never felt like the problem was resolved. That lingering pain was still a result of the accident, but maybe it was not from the physical nature of the wreck but instead from the emotions surrounding the event. Pain can develop from the feeling part of your body, and if that part isn't addressed, the pain keeps coming back.

Pain lets your conscious mind know that something is wrong. It's like the warning light on the dashboard of your car. When we see the light come on, do we just cover it up and keep on driving without addressing the reason the light came on in the first place? Of course that sounds ridiculous to us because with our cars, we know we have to correct the problem that caused the light to come on or our car will eventually break down. Just like our cars, our bodies provide a warning signal, and although we want the pain alleviated quickly and easily, if we only address that outer symptom, or warning light, if you will, and ignore the underlying feelings that fuel it, the pain will continue to come back. And furthermore, what other problems are going to result because of that initial issue?

Usually when I introduce the POP Method to patients and explain the concept of the process, the knee-jerk response is that they can't think of any emotion or feeling that they connect to the pain. Even past that, they can't fathom why they would hold on to something that caused them grief and would result in chronic pain. The majority of people I encounter who have chronic pain just attribute it to age or some activity that they did for so many years. While overexertion and repetitive physical activities over a course of time can be the culprit, if the pain is not responding to traditional methods, chiropractic or medical, then there has to be something else keeping it active.

Let's consider this: could it be possible that working for so many years doing some activity for all those years made you feel frustrated, angry, disrespected, and so on, and those feelings are keeping that pain tied to you? It's a different way to think about your pain, isn't it? Sometimes it's hard to believe that our feelings about our circumstances, our work, or any event, for that matter, could be keeping us chained to the pain. It's hard to imagine that our feelings on the inside can be reflected physically as feelings on the outside, but many times, that is the reality.

To get a better understanding of how emotions and feelings can anchor pain, I want you to think of the difference between how a child responds to an injury versus an adult. When young children have a fall, for example, they respond to the actual sensation they have as a reaction to the fall. If it doesn't really hurt, they get up and get moving again. No problem. If they do experience some pain, they may cry initially and be upset about it, but then once they begin to get involved in some other activity and their minds wander, the boo-boo is forgotten.

On the other hand, when adults fall down, all different kinds of emotions can come up. Maybe at first they experience the shock of falling, then the possible embarrassment of someone seeing them or the fear that they might have broken something. Maybe they worry that they won't get better quickly or that it is going to keep them from the activities they love to do. They are already creating a mental picture of this incident causing lasting pain and problems. Can you see the difference? Of course, this analogy does not always hold true, but I'm using it to establish that we, as adults, have many emotions that can get tied in with an injury and with our pain.

One of the main reasons why we have such trouble identifying our feelings is because, as a society, we have been made to believe we shouldn't express them. We have become stuffers — we stuff our true feelings down deep and act as if everything is just fine. For a while, that works out all right, but eventually too much has been stuffed in and it begins to erupt. Those feelings must be dealt with, and in our bodies, if it's not, all of that stress and turmoil inside becomes an outward manifestation instead ... namely, chronic pain.

Think of the millions upon millions of sufferers who are out in the world each day. Why do so many people hurt? The answer could be that we have never dealt with the feelings we have buried within us! Those feelings have transformed into something physical, and our bodies are begging us to do something. The warning light is glowing, and it is time to look for the cause.

Let's think about this for a moment. Typically, what is our response when the pain begins? In most cases, we go to the doctor, have someone evaluate our symptoms, and then treat them. Does that work? Sometimes it may, maybe at least for the short term, but until the root cause is eliminated, your body will always suffer. If the traditional medical model worked, our healthcare system wouldn't be where it is today. We are a sick world, especially here in the United States.

With my chiropractic background, my philosophy is different from the medical model. The foundation of treatment revolves around the controlling system of our bodies — the nervous system. If the nervous system isn't working properly, then the rest of the body cannot function properly. Because the nervous system is comprised of the brain and spinal cord, and the skull and spine protect those areas, we adjust the spine, and in turn, the nervous system function improves. Chiropractic treatment gets to the root of many problems by correcting the interference to this controlling system, and as a result, the body heals. We don't treat the symptoms per se but instead address the disruption to the nervous system and the function of the body improves.

But taking these principles of healing one step further, I consider the nervous system to be our feeling system. It interprets every stimulus we experience, whether it is something we feel physically or mentally, and then it responds accordingly. With it being our controlling system, if it's not working properly, the other systems are compromised as well.

Part of our nervous system is our autonomic or automatic part of the system. This is the part that controls breathing, heart rate, digestion, and so on — all the things your body does that you don't have to think about to control. Making up the autonomic part of the system is the sympathetic NS, which is also termed the fight-or-f light part, and the parasympathetic NS, which is also known as the feed-or-breed System. When a strong emotion comes in, such as fear, anger, or frustration, the nervous system's fight-or-flight system registers a threat and takes over. As a result, heart rate and respiration increase, blood f low increases in the muscle tissue, digestion slows, and other body responses happen that would help make our bodies ready to fight or f lee. That's exactly what we need when there is imminent danger, but what if the strong emotion was because you got upset about the extra load at work or embarrassed about a slip and fall in front of a group of people? Do you really need the body to react in that manner?

What also happens when strong emotions or other stressors trigger that type of sympathetic response is that the system can get so overloaded with the daily stress we incur and the added emotional trigger that it becomes jammed, and the balance with the other part of the autonomic system (the feed-or-breed) side becomes distorted. At this point, you are no longer digesting food properly, and your hormones are getting imbalanced as a result, all because of those feelings and stressors that your body is detecting.

Over time, as our emotions and feelings cause this system to get overloaded and imbalanced, disease in the body results. Let me give you an example. Suzie came into my office with debilitating shoulder pain. She had it for years, and no matter what she did, it wouldn't let up. She came in to see me for chiropractic treatment and would feel better after every visit, but the problem would soon return. When I asked her if she could identify any emotion or feeling she could relate to the pain, all she could come up with was stress. She said there wasn't really a particular event or feeling that she could think of that she had when the pain started, and when she looked at a list of emotions, she said there were several that described her, but she couldn't see a connection between those feelings and her pain. We then looked at a list of common pain patterns that relate to particular emotions and found that shoulder pain could manifest from family and money stress. To that, she said, "Doesn't everyone have that? I don't think I'm any more stressed than anyone else about those things." (Typical stuffer dialogue.) Just for a starting point, I asked her to come up with what emotion she thought was the most predominant in her life at that moment. She decided that frustration was pretty high on that list, so we started with that.

The minute she voiced that she was frustrated and let that feeling be voiced, I could see the tension in her body increase. And the more I allowed her to talk about her feelings about her life in general, the more the pain flared. This type of reaction is common for people who are stuffers because they don't put any weight in their feelings. They have been taught to disregard their feelings, so they have a hard time even talking about them at all. With Suzie being a stuffer, she had refused to acknowledge a lot of the feelings that were inside. And the more feelings that got stuffed, the harder it was for her body to cope.

Once she was able to recognize that there were some feelings behind the pain, we were able to face the real problem head on and get rid of the pain once and for all. And the steps of the POP Method that are in this book will allow you to do the same.

Let's take a minute to determine if you are or have been a stuffer. Here are some key questions to help you:

• Do you consider yourself a rational person rather than an emotional one?

• Do you focus on taking care of others instead of yourself?

• Do you have trouble looking at yourself in the mirror and feeling good about what you see?

• Do you have recurring pain that isn't easily managed?

• Do you have trouble sharing your feelings with others?

• Do you feel uncomfortable in your own skin, so to speak?

• Do you have trouble dealing with other people's emotions?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I ask you to consider the possibility that you may benefit from some emotional exploration. You may not see a connection to your current pain right away, but as we move through the process, perhaps you will find a connection that you simply haven't noticed. Then, as you begin to recognize that there may be feelings inside festering and bring a voice to them, you are one step closer to becoming the healthy, vibrant, perfect person you were always meant to be.

The moment you change your perception is the moment you rewrite the chemistry of your body.

— Bruce Lipton

The Roots of Chronic Pain

What if the state of our bodies — their function, appearance, and overall health — were primarily determined by our subconscious thoughts? What if what we learned from our parents and from our upbringing shaped our lives and our bodies? In all actuality, a new science called epigenetics has begun to demonstrate how our bodies are not completely controlled by the genes we have been born with but more so by the environment we expose those genes to. And when we are talking about our environment, it is not only the place we live but also the habits we have formed, the ideas we have developed, the feelings that we have, and the way we choose to live our lives that can change the way our genes respond. Our emotional experiences can actually change our DNA. The findings of this branch of science have f lipped what we originally believed to be true about how genes affect our bodies and our health, and in many ways, they put the responsibility for our health back in our own hands.

Renowned cellular biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton is a leading authority of epigenetics and how emotions can regulate genetic expression. In his best-selling books The Biology of Belief and Spontaneous Evolution, he discusses in depth how we are not victims of our heredity. Our health outcomes are not predetermined. In Dr. Lipton's research he has found that our thoughts, diet, and lifestyle can control how our genes respond. We are not destined to die of a heart attack just because our family members before us have. It's how we choose to live our lives and the way we believe, act, and think about our health that determines our outcome.

In Lipton's book Spontaneous Evolution, he explains how epigenetics has changed the way we view genes. He describes our genes as blueprints. In essence, he says they are the design drawings, but they are not the contractors that actually construct the building. The genes do not control our biology but are instead used by biology.

Dr. Lipton discusses how a person can be born healthy, but through a distortion caused by his or her environment (lifestyle choices, stress levels, beliefs, and so on), they can develop something like cancer. But a person born with a gene sequence that could cause potentially debilitating mutations can in turn create healthy and normal genes. Your life experiences can determine what your genetic makeup becomes.

Oftentimes when patients begin care with me, they will say that they knew they would eventually have back pain because their parents suffered for years with the same problem. In their eyes, it was inevitable. But consider this. If you grew up in your parents' home, learned how to walk and talk and live like them, wouldn't you have many of the same patterns? Did you learn from them what to eat, what activities to do, and so on? Does it have to be your genetics, or could you just be having the same symptoms and problems because you have their same habits? It's a different way to look at it, but it makes sense, doesn't it? Also, many of the beliefs and thoughts your parents had became your own beliefs and thoughts. They may not have originally been your beliefs and thoughts, and maybe they weren't originally even your parents' beliefs, but you heard them enough for them to become yours as well. As a result, those beliefs and thoughts created outcomes in your life too. Do you see a pattern here? It may not be genetics that are the true culprit at all.

I know this way of thinking about our health really puts a lot of responsibility on our shoulders. We control our own destiny. And most of us like to put the responsibility elsewhere. It sure seemed better when we could blame it on our parents, right? Well, although passing the blame onto another may have been the way we approached things before, it just isn't our truth anymore. Our health is in our hands. We have to take control of our actions, and that all starts with our beliefs and the truths we tell ourselves each and every day.