The Mind-Body Couple

Finding Purpose: Transforming Chronic Pain and Illness with Passion and Creativity

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 93

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After years of battling with chronic neuroplastic pain, Tanner Murtaugh discovered the power of purposeful action as a transformative tool in their healing journey. Join us on the MindBodyCouple podcast, where we share how engaging in actions with a sense of purpose, passion, and creativity can help shift focus from fear-driven behaviors to those grounded in values and meaning. By letting go of perfectionism and embracing a life filled with small steps towards new career paths or hobbies, you'll learn how to transcend the constraints of chronic symptoms and find fulfillment in everyday life.

We delve into personal stories, such as contemplating a major career shift or exploring creative hobbies like art and music, to illustrate the importance of balancing passion with ease and flexibility. Experience how low-pressure, meaningful activities can enhance your life, reduce symptoms, and bring a sense of wholeness. Be inspired to experiment with small, exciting projects that focus on creativity without the burden of deadlines, and see how these purposeful actions can lead to personal growth and a wider, more engaged world.

Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson are therapists who treat neuroplastic pain and mind-body symptoms. They are also married! In his 20s, Tanner overcame chronic pain and a fibromyalgia diagnosis by learning his symptoms were occurring due to learned brain pathways and nervous system dysregulation. Post-healing, Tanner and Anne have dedicated their lives to developing effective treatment and education for neuroplastic pain and symptoms. Listen and learn how to assess your own chronic pain and symptoms, gain tools to retrain the brain and nervous system, and make gradual changes in your life and health!


The Mind-Body Couple podcast is owned by Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc. This podcast is produced by Alex Klassen, who is one of the wonderful therapists at our agency in Calgary, Alberta. https://www.painpsychotherapy.ca/


Tanner, Anne, and Alex also run the MBody Community, which is an in-depth online course that provides step-by-step guidance for assessing, treating, and resolving mind-body pain and symptoms. https://www.mbodycommunity.com


Also check out Tanner's YouTube channel for more free education and practices: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Fl6WaFHnh4ponuexaMbFQ


And follow us for daily education posts on Instagram: @painpsychotherapy


Discl...

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the MindBodyCouple podcast.

Speaker 2:

I'm Tanner Murtaugh and I'm Anne Hampson. This podcast is dedicated to helping you unlearn chronic pain and symptoms. If you need support with your healing, you can book in for a consultation with one of our therapists at painpsychotherapyca or purchase our online course at embodycommunitycom to access in-depth education, somatic practices, recovery tools and an interactive community focused on healing. Links in the description of each episode. Hello everyone.

Speaker 1:

Hi, everybody, welcome back.

Speaker 2:

Welcome, if you've been following along. We did you know play, talked about play, how play is essential to heal chronic pain, chronic symptoms, and today we're going to talk about purposeful action.

Speaker 1:

Ah, I like that purposeful action. There's something I don't know. There's something kind of powerful even about that statement.

Speaker 2:

There is, and we're going to get into why engaging in this purposeful action is a real essential when healing neuroplastic pain and symptoms. So first a definition Purposeful action is when we engage in action or behaviors with a sense of purpose, passion, creativity and or meaning.

Speaker 1:

And so how would we differentiate that, tanner? Because we do actions all the time, so how would we know it's purposeful?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so I think it's just. It's the feeling that we have inside as we're engaging in it.

Speaker 2:

I think a lot of times for people with neuroplastic pain or symptoms, myself included, we engage in actions, but it's really driven by fear and dysregulation. Uh, so, for a great example of this is like perfectionism. Perfectionism you're engaging in basically trying to gain social acceptance through actions that are based in fear. They're based in this like fight or flight, dysregulation, and so this is why purposeful action and we're going to talk about why it's so difficult for people Because for most of us, myself included, we've engaged in actions and we've lived our life, but it is from this place of fear and dysregulation that's like the driving force a lot of the time. And so purposeful action is different, because you're engaging in the action, but you're doing it to have a sense of purpose, to be passionate about something and to have greater meaning that really matters to you.

Speaker 1:

So when we think of like, maybe skills like somatic tracking or like safety signals, when we engage in those things, there's a different purpose behind those, other than fear or like reaction.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and as we start to live our lives, this is what we want to do. It's it's vital to move towards our goals, engage in life with healthy stress, with meaningful stress, and cultivate motivation. Like this is what purposeful action can give us. And one thing I really want to highlight here is when we talk about safety, people people get this confused.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people understand, like the cure for neuroplastic pain and symptoms is safety, which is correct, yes, but most of us think, like safety means calmness, like I need to be calm almost all the time in order to cultivate safety. Right, and so that's, and I've done this, like when I was first healing, and what will happen is you end up more dysregulated because your nervous system, it's not meant to feel calm all the time, like we're not designed, and so, yeah, I want someone to have more access to calmness. But safety is having this, this deep embodied connection. We're able to attend to all the states of our nervous system, all our emotions, our pain and symptoms, but we're doing it with this sense of safety, compassion, lightness and ease involved and purposeful action is a very useful blended state that actually cultivates a feeling of safety and it cultivates a feeling of safety in our life, but it's not calmness a lot of the time.

Speaker 1:

So it's not necessarily about that's right, like leaning into calmness or that type of sensation is regardless of like calmness or maybe excitement or whatever we're feeling of creating purposeful action within that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because purposeful action, people are motivated, people are driven, people are doing things, they're mobilized. So you're not necessarily calm, like you might have a foot in calmness, but you're driving forward with purpose and meaning, and so we really believe that learning to engage in purposeful action is essential for healing neuroplastic pain and symptoms. You talk about this when we have chronic symptoms, for many of us, our world shrinks. All the actions we take become dedicated to figuring out, fighting against, fixing our symptoms in some way, which I know we see a lot with the clients that we work with.

Speaker 2:

where this is what's driving them forward, is all their actions become that and, as a result, all the actions based on values and meaning and purpose shrink and shrink and shrink until we almost have this shell of life.

Speaker 1:

Ah, okay, so with this idea of purposeful action, then be kind of stepping outside of that and then, yeah, creating meaning or purpose within our life, or engaging in life again, outside of the fixation on pain and symptoms.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you think about this, like when I was healing, I like I said I really had this view at points, which was not helpful, of I just need to be calm all the time. I almost call it Zen mode, Like I'm just going to be like Zen and relaxed and calm all the time, but I almost kept my world small as a result. And so we can't heal by keeping our world small Like we heal by widening our world through purposeful action, through beginning to engage in life again.

Speaker 1:

Can you tell us maybe, just so people can really get an understanding of what we're saying with purposeful action, of how you started purposeful action when you're widening your world Like what did that look like for you?

Speaker 2:

You know, part of it was starting and I'm going to give a funny story at the end of this episode, so I'll get into that of one of the main things that I did. But one thing that I started to engage in is, you know, I did start to work again, but the job I was into it was a good transition job. It wasn't something I was ever going to be super passionate about, but it was laid back enough that I had a lot of time to do the healing work. But I started to think about my future. I started to make plans. This was a rare thing because I had no plans by the end of my chronic pain, like my plan was just to get out of pain, that was it. But I started to do things like look at what graduate program I wanted to go and do, because I already had my undergrad in social work and I wasn't certain if I wanted to be a therapist. I had just gone through hell with chronic pain, so I wasn't certain. So I remember do you remember the law school thing?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, yes, tanner the lawyer. Oh wow, I feel like Tanner the lawyer, oh wow.

Speaker 1:

I feel like Tanner, the lawyer, would be very stressed.

Speaker 2:

Tanner, the lawyer would have been stressed. I made a good choice there.

Speaker 1:

Oh yes, but it was. I'm glad you're not.

Speaker 2:

Tanner the lawyer. I'm glad I'm not Tanner the lawyer. I could have figured it out. We would have been fine. Right, right but one thing that was useful is I was just starting to like research programs Like, even though I you know playing that out may not have gone so well for me given my nervous system state, but it was helpful for me to make plans of like, oh like. What are the requirements for law school? What are the requirements to do a clinical social work graduate, like?

Speaker 2:

I started to look into this I even started to study for the LSAT, which you need to get into law school, yes, but it gave me some purposeful action, okay.

Speaker 1:

So action, then, about engaging life outside of pain and symptoms, exactly. And then with that intention behind it, this intention that I'm going to kind of lean into this and put my efforts here instead.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because you're widening your world. Like one activity that I know we both give our clients often, but it's a really useful one and it's so simple is each day, can you do one thing to make your life bigger and your symptoms smaller? Right, like we don't need to go. Zero to smaller, right, like we don't need to go zero to a hundred here.

Speaker 2:

Like I didn't need to go into studying for the LSAT for 13 hours a day which luckily I did not do but like just these small actions where you're taking purposeful action to widen your world, to live by your values, to be creative, to be passionate. That's what we're going for.

Speaker 1:

Well, and that can feel really scary, especially if we're used to being hyper-focused on pain and symptoms. That's where all of our purpose has been, or all of our actions have been. It can feel really difficult to try to shift elsewhere, and so we really want to validate that this isn't always easy and can feel really scary at first.

Speaker 2:

It can feel scary because you're shifting your focus and we often believe like I need to be this focused on my symptoms or I'll never heal.

Speaker 1:

One thing I want to add here if you're struggling with like rumination and hyper focus and always thinking about pain and symptoms, which I hear from people a lot, this is a way to start kind of shifting out of that pathway or pattern as well, to just actively practice putting focus elsewhere so yeah, so what I want to do now is just explain you know why purposeful action is a blended state.

Speaker 2:

We've already touched on this. This is a little bit of the science, really quick. But purposeful action is this useful blend. It blends together sympathetic and sympathetic. You know it's fight or flight, of course, like fear, anger kind of territory, but it's also mobilization, like we need it, like right now we're having a conversation, no one can see us, but we're like looking at each other, we're looking at our notes for the show, like there is this mobilized energy that's taking place. We're not in fight or flight, or at least I'm not. I'm not sure if you are, maybe you are but we're mobilized to some degree. But purposeful action, it blends together sympathetic, mobilized, not fight or flight, but mobilized with ventral, vagal, safe, connected, socially engaged, calm, at ease. So it blends these two things together really nicely. And that's what we're going for, because we need to teach our brain not just to be inventorial and safe, calm, connected, but also how to be mobilized while feeling safe yes, because I think sometimes we can get caught in to.

Speaker 1:

You know, try to feel calm, like you're saying, or safe in this, like pure meditative zone in a seated position all the time, and that's what we think is cultivating safety, but then we're not engaging in life, and so we need to be engaging life as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you know, purposeful action, as we've touched on lately so far, it's not just us telling you, hey, go be purposeful in your actions, Just go do it because, like you, do need exposure to doing it but it can be difficult to do, Like it can be a difficult blended state to access. Often our neuroplastic pain and symptoms can actually get in the way of purposeful action. Yes, or we have people have a strong belief of I can't engage in life or the world until my symptoms start to reduce. But I do want to state that often it's the opposite. People start to widen their world, they start to take purposeful action and then their symptoms start to reduce.

Speaker 1:

And that's a bit like a like I want to say a leap of faith or a bit of trust or a bit of like okay, I'll see. So we kind of have to do that first, to kind of let that happen.

Speaker 2:

And I want to be clear here gradual Grade this experience. Don't go study for the LSAT for 13 hours when you haven't sat in front of a computer for a year. Like that's going to be really overwhelming.

Speaker 1:

Right and front of a computer for a year, like that's going to be really overwhelming Right. And that's again back to that phrase of don't just, we're not telling you to just go do it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, go do it in this kind of gradual way that cultivates safety. Yeah, but our pain and symptoms can get in the way.

Speaker 2:

They make it really hard. The other thing is for a lot of people in terms of the way they cope when they have neuroplastic pain or symptoms. Part of the reason we've developed neuroplastic pain or symptoms is we've lived life with a lot of intensity, with perfectionism, with high achieving standards, and this can turn purposeful action into pressure and a fight or flight state so quick. This is like one of the main things that I see is you know, people try to engage in purposeful action. They go into high fight or flight really quick and then they eventually just shut down into kind of like a shut down, frozen state. This pattern, this is why you have to practice this in a graded way.

Speaker 2:

For myself, this happens not so much anymore, but even when we first started our main company, I would get great ideas. I'm full of great ideas, I get great ideas and I tell you about the great ideas. I'd be like, yeah, we got to do this project, this is going to be epic, this is going to help so many people, and within 20 minutes I would all of a sudden been in fight or flight. Yeah, so there was purposeful action, I was excited, I was motivated and then I lost the ventral, safe and connected part and I just went into fight or flight.

Speaker 2:

And this is why we have to practice purposeful action intentionally, in small ways at first, because a lot of people, because they've lived life with such intensity and from a state of fear, it can be really hard to start to motivate ourselves and sit in this state. The the other reason that I often see purposeful actions hard is people really have a limited tolerance for kind of mobilized energy, like they really struggle with that state of like. Why, why do you think so? Well, I think people have had so many negative experiences with anxiety or with anger or rage, where they felt so dysregulated and out of control that even when their system starts to just mobilize but not go into fight or flight, but just mobilize, get them excited, get them motivated that energy feels really overwhelming. They're like like people get scared.

Speaker 1:

They're going to move to high anxiety real quick well, and this goes back to the idea that we want to kind of create safety and be okay experiencing all different kinds of states and exposure to them yes, and so I'll give you a little story of this is the first big, purposeful action project I did when I was healing. Yes.

Speaker 2:

I'll give you a little insight of what I'm doing now. You remember this though, oh, I do so. At the time, our son was like I had been healed. I had been out of pain primarily for I don't know a year and a half, two years. It had been a while, and our sum was maybe one or under one at this time and, like I said, I was working at this job.

Speaker 2:

That was pretty laid back. It gave me a lot of space to do healing work, but I was having a hard time getting excited about life again. I was scared to do that, and so, me and a colleague at my job, we decided we were going to make this children's book. I don't know how we got here. It just came up and I like to do some art, like it can be artistic not an amazing drawer, but artistic and she wanted to write the story. But it was a good practice ground because it gave me practice. I remember feeling like, for the first time in years, like really excited, like just really excited about something that didn't have anything to do with my pain and there were points where it turned to fight or flight, I will admit, but it gave me practice like being purposeful in the way I was acting, being motivated, being excited, and then, when it went too far in the fight or flight, I would shift back.

Speaker 1:

Well and it's funny because I remember this pretty clearly, tanner, and I remember seeing you excited about something, and that's right Like I hadn't seen you excited about something in a while, so I was excited for you. I also remember the fit or flight something in a while, so I was excited for you. I also remember the fetter flight, like I remember you guys were struggling at it or something was going wrong, and then it was like your whole world was crumbling like there was. It was almost so much was attached to it for you, um, that then that intensity would just topple it over yeah, so it.

Speaker 2:

So it was definitely it was a really useful exercise. To be honest, I've had many times that's happened since, in the decade that I've healed, we've come to learn.

Speaker 2:

it's a bit of a time, but I've become better at it over time, like I've become better at catching, because you almost have to like, when you're doing purposeful action, like say you're working on something and we're going to give everyone a little task at the end of this you have to like be very like somatically focused, of like when am I excited, when am I motivated, when am I passionate and when does this all of a sudden turn to fight or flight?

Speaker 1:

Well, and this is great because this really helps expose to a lot of things. So it helps expose to kind of eventual vandal energy or that sympathetic energy. It helps expose also to maybe like taking intensity down a notch or lowering perfectionism. So this can challenge a lot of areas that we want to work on.

Speaker 2:

And it was great. And you know, we never published the children's book. No we never completed it, but it was a good practice ground for me to get used to things. My children's book yeah, I don't know if you remember this. It was like about a boy who felt sad, like why so blue. Why so blue? And he actually turns blue Right. And then he does all these things to try and like.

Speaker 1:

It's a good idea Not become blue. I like it. People might be like yeah, hopefully. Or they're like oh no, I love how my therapy is like sinking into these children's books.

Speaker 2:

Like you're the blue boy. No, no, no, it was our son.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I thought when you were like feeling sad. No, I just mean, like you know, of course.

Speaker 2:

I'm doing a book on emotion, oh yes, Right, snatch yourself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm nostalgic right now. I like that I like it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and now I'm working on something new too.

Speaker 1:

I'm starting to play guitar again and it's funny because I know your pattern and I've been like watching a bit of like is this gonna tip over into a dance?

Speaker 2:

yeah, but I've been trying. There's been a few times I've been because I I used to play guitar and rock bands many years ago, um, but in the last couple years of, like our company, I just haven't had the time and I'm starting to make the time, I'm starting to practice. But I notice myself, I can get intense, I can get all or nothing in my thinking. I'm like I have to do this or else, which I'm trying to catch.

Speaker 1:

Actually interestingly so, Tanner likes to play his guitar in the open area, where we all have to hear it.

Speaker 2:

So you can hear my beautiful music.

Speaker 1:

I guess so. But the other day I told them I was like please go elsewhere. And sometimes if you're in really fight or flight around it or like super intensity, you would really struggle with that Because you're like no, I need to do it my way, how I want to do it, like there would be so much attached to it. But that didn't happen. You were able to kind of slow it down, um, and that was.

Speaker 2:

I was proud yeah, good work, and there was. I remember when you did it and I did feel slightly irritated, I will admit, but it wasn't to the point that it usually would get too many years ago. Yes, so I'm getting better, I'm getting more flexible. I'm being able to be like is a hobby.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

I'm not going to be a rock star.

Speaker 1:

Well, something that's good about this. So when we think of purposeful action and we're starting to engage in things as well, playing around with that teaches us how to keep that around, because usually when it goes, tips over into too high of intensity, it becomes fight or flight. Then, kind of like the children's's book, we just think we can't do it anymore. And so for you, I've like kind of feeling out these different states, but lowering the intensity and taking it gradually it's allowing you to keep this as a part of your life instead of it just falling off the map.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, being intense and then burning out, yeah, like it's finding and it still and I've been practicing for years. It's like I have to be very conscious of this. So now the task for everyone. Okay, hopefully people listen this far, you know, we put a lot of effort into thinking of giving people tasks.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's a good one.

Speaker 2:

I feel like we're the practical podcast.

Speaker 1:

I hope so. I feel like we're the practical podcast. I hope so. I feel like we are. I have had that feedback. Actually, you know that people like the task or like feeling like, okay, this is what we do.

Speaker 2:

And this isn't to speak ill of other podcasts, I don't mean it like that, like I really don't Like there's lots of other podcasts that are great, that are you know, but this is kind of our position in the mind-body world. We're the practical podcast.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we hope, we hope you all feel that way.

Speaker 2:

We hope so. This week, your task is you're going to experiment with the blended state of purposeful action. So here's what it is. You're going to pick a small, meaningful action, like a home project, a creative hobby, cooking, baking, a physical activity. But pick something that's small and non-threatening Low stakes here. Don't pick the biggest project you have to do to work on at work or with school. That's going to be a hard practice ground, like pick something that's non-threatening and small. Don't set a deadline for completion and then focus on the emotions of excitement and creativity during the project and then allow these emotions to fuel your motivation. But when the fuel gets low or you start to get intense, give yourself permission to quit.

Speaker 1:

Return to it later, okay, and are we clear that this task isn't we wanted nothing to do with pain and symptoms? Nothing to do with the healing work okay, so we're not like I'm doing this and hope that impacts my pain. We might still have that thoughts with other purposeful actions.

Speaker 2:

That's normal, yeah, but again, we want to start with that and long term, I do think it will affect people's pain, but don't do this to try and make your pain go away. Yeah, like, do this for the purpose of like making your life more whole, feeling more alive.

Speaker 1:

And again, that might feel hard if it means, oh for this, while I'm not going to be thinking about my pain or symptoms, and that's really new for me. So if you try to engage in this and as far as you get of like taking a little bit time out of thinking pain and symptoms, that's a win.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I hope this podcast on purposeful action was helpful for everyone.

Speaker 1:

And we will. We have date night tonight. Yes, date night. Anne's a bit sick but I am a bit sick, but date night, yeah, the date night, that's right. We still are excited for it.

Speaker 2:

Don't worry, we'll just like sleep in the car.

Speaker 1:

That's right. We have a babysitter, um, and we book her for a period of time so that we don't, like we feel, I don't know, guilty, coming back early or something. So, sometimes we hang in our car. But it's nice it is nice because there's no kids there.

Speaker 2:

Car hangs.

Speaker 1:

Car hangs. They're a bit nostalgic.

Speaker 2:

I remember us doing that so often when we were like 20, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we would just hang in our car when we were young. Now we really don't have time for that. Don't have time for that.

Speaker 2:

No, Except on day night. Day night, yeah, all right, we will talk to you all next week.

Speaker 1:

Talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. For more free content, check out the links for our YouTube channel, instagram and Facebook accounts in the episode description.

Speaker 2:

We wish you all healing.