Overcoming Chronic Pain
I know what it’s like to struggle with pain.
It’s like an immense wall, one that gets between you and what makes life worth living.
Pain keeps you from riding your bike, going hiking, or sometimes even leaving your house. It makes you quit your jobs and hobbies for the sake of minimizing misery. It makes you turn down that invitation so that you can stay home, recharge, and prepare for another day of struggle. Life becomes more about enduring and surviving rather than really living and thriving.
Few things feel more defeating.
That old pain from injury, repetitive stress, or a medical issue persists. No matter how many doctors, physical therapists, or chiropractors try to help, the suffering continues.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross once said that “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.”
After overcoming chronic pain in my own life, I can only tell you how freeing it feels to move beyond the hurt and begin to live again. And I believe you can do that too.
My name is Jack Rubin. One of my biggest passions is to help people find freedom from chronic pain. If you are interested and ready to get started, click here to connect with me directly. To learn more about chronic pain and how I can help, read on.
What is Chronic Pain?
For several decades, chronic pain has been widely understood to be a biological symptom that needs to be treated through medication and often major medical interventions like surgery. While some people are able to find relief, many become trapped in a cycle of reliance on their prescriptions, desperation, and, ultimately, increased experiences of physical and emotional pain.
A main problem with this mainstream understanding of chronic pain is that it does not actually get to the roots of what is causing the pain in the first place. In reality, chronic pain is a message from the body that some need isn’t getting met, something in our life is not in alignment, or some past physical or emotional trauma has yet to be healed. Most of us think about pain as solely physically related, but in reality there are very often major mental and emotional contributing factors that lead to chronic pain.
Once we are able to listen to the messages our pain is trying to communicate with us, it no longer needs to speak to us as pain. Most of us, unfortunately, have never learned how to listen to and interpret the messages from the body though and so we are unable to respond in a way that leads to long term healing. I am here to help you do this.
How Chronic Pain Affects Our Lives
Recent research has highlighted that the symptoms of chronic pain are multidimensional – it affects the whole person: physically, emotionally, and even relationally.
When these dimensions of chronic pain arise, they also tend to interact, create new problems, and intensify one’s suffering.
The physical symptoms of chronic pain are easy to recognize. Bodily aches and pain. The loss of energy. Nausea, inflammation, and more. We do our best to manage these physical signs of pain by taking care of our bodies and following the doctor’s orders. However, the pain often holds us back and keeps us from doing what we love. We turn down social invitations. We opt out of going for a walk with our kids or a bike ride with friends. We stay at home, in bed, or on the couch, just trying to survive.
Sacrifices like these come with emotional problems. The constant pain and struggle to function keep us on-edge, irritable, and feeling overwhelmed. The medical bills continue to pile up. We begin to feel lonely and sad. Feelings of depression and anxiety might begin to crop up. To make matters worse, research indicates that pain and other physical symptoms get worse when we are feeling depressed, stressed, or anxious.
Over time, the relational problems begin to emerge. We might lash out when people don’t understand how bad it hurts. We might try to hide our pain from others, perhaps out of shame or fear of what others might think. The more we isolate and withdraw, the fewer resources we have for support and love. And so, of course, we can start to feel helpless, hopeless, and stuck.
The combination of physical, emotional, and relational difficulties caused by chronic pain creates a vicious, self-defeating cycle - one that feeds its own symptoms and often worsens over time.
How can therapy help with Chronic Pain?
The reason the traditional medical model is often not effective for treating chronic pain is that it does not focus on treating the whole person - and that’s where therapy for chronic pain comes in.
Therapy for chronic pain is all about helping you work through the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of your pain.
This is much more than “mind over matter.” It’s about learning to listen to the messages your pain is trying to communicate with you, rediscovering safety and ease with your body, and helping your nervous system relearn how to communicate with the brain.
Therapy can help you:
Learn to understand, heal, and overcome your pain
Regain a sense of control and safety
Get back to doing the things you love in life
Sleep well and more effectively
Reconnect with loved ones and rebuild your life the way you want
Learn to use and listen to your body in a way that decreases the chance of future chronic pain and other health issues
Discover an improved sense of overall health, vitality, and self-knowing
How do I treat Chronic Pain?
Therapy provides a safe, confidential space for you to work towards your wellness goals as you begin to break the cycle.
I help you learn to listen and open up a dialogue with your body so that you can learn what it needs to heal.
I provide a source of support and care. You will have a space to process frustrations, share your experiences, and feel understood. As you are able to work through your thoughts and feelings and reconnect with your body, the physical symptoms diminish, become more manageable, and can even go away completely.
I can help you reduce dependency issues with pain medication. Often, people use pain medication to numb the physical symptoms as well as their emotional experience, which can mean they feel like they still need it - even after the physical pain fades.
*If you are on pain medication or are considering surgery, we will look at these things respectfully and help you get clear on what feels right for you.
Finally, I can help you learn to recognize and move towards what matters most in your life. While on your way to healing, we can talk through strategies for being active, learn to recognize and set healthy limits, and find ways of reconnecting with loved ones.
To help you overcome your pain, I draw upon tools from:
The Alexander Technique. Chronic pain is very often caused by using our bodies inefficiently in our everyday lives. Most of us are not taught how to use our bodies with awareness of minimizing excess tension, and so very frequently we develop physical habits that cause the body to break down and chronic pain to develop. The Alexander Technique is a method for training physical habits of ease. In session, you will learn ways of helping your body release the excess tension it is holding onto, allowing it to come back into equilibrium. We will also pinpoint the various activities contributing to your pain, and you will learn ways of using your body more efficiently in these situations.
Somatic Experiencing®/Internal Family Systems. Chronic pain is our body trying to give us a message. Once we get the message, the pain is able to go away. Somatic Experiencing® and Internal Family Systems help us learn how to listen to what our bodies are trying to tell us. Often the messages that come through not only help the pain go away, but help shift our lives more into a place of authenticity and alignment personally, professionally, and spiritually. SE® and IFS also help us to release trauma that has been stuck in the body and contributing to our pain.
Mindful Self-Compassion. Research has shown that the way we respond mentally and emotionally to our chronic pain strongly impacts how well we are able to heal. If we constantly meet our pain with strong aversion, negativity, or hatred for what we are experiencing, our healing journey is going to be slowed dramatically - “What we resist persists.” Mindful Self Compassion helps us learn to more fully embrace the physical and emotional aspects of our pain and build compassion for ourselves through it. The result is deeper understanding of our pain and increased ability for the body to heal itself - “If you can feel it, you can heal it.”
What do sessions look like?
Sessions are uniquely tailored based on the connections and challenges of each individual. My priority is to help you receive the care that will help you find freedom from pain and see results as quickly and effectively as possible.
During sessions, we will:
Build your awareness of what is causing your pain so that you can directly understand what will help you overcome it
Develop self-care tools that will help your body heal and reduce the strain on your body in all areas of life
Process and work through the mental and emotional components that are contributing to your pain
Set concrete goals for helping you find freedom from pain and begin living again
