The Mind-Body Couple

Part 2: How do I know if my pain or symptoms are neuroplastic?

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 102

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Your nervous system might be stuck in a state of high alert, creating very real pain and symptoms even when there's no physical damage. In this second part of our exploration into neuroplastic pain, we reveal the sensitization factors that make chronic symptoms more likely to develop.

We break down how chronic nervous system dysregulation—whether you're stuck in states of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—creates the perfect conditions for neuroplastic symptoms to emerge. High-intensity living patterns like perfectionism, people-pleasing, and excessive worry aren't just personality traits but coping mechanisms that keep your system on constant alert. Conversely, low-intensity patterns of disconnection and isolation sensitize your system through understimulation.

Research shows people with histories of childhood adversity or trauma are 2.7 times more likely to develop conditions like chronic widespread pain, fibromyalgia, and IBS. We emphasize it's not about the size of traumatic events but how your unique nervous system responded to them. Even highly sensitive individuals can experience profound effects from events others might consider minor.

We also explore two often-overlooked trauma types: sensitization trauma (when developing symptoms becomes traumatic itself) and medical trauma (from negative healthcare experiences). Both perpetuate pain cycles by creating additional layers of nervous system dysregulation.

Finally, we discuss how negative beliefs about your body being "broken" or "permanently damaged" increase pain sensitivity. Understanding these factors isn't about assigning blame but creating space for recognition and validation—a crucial first step toward healing.

You don't need to match every criterion for your symptoms to be neuroplastic, and your belief that healing is possible can grow over time. By recognizing these patterns and gathering your own evidence, you're already beginning the journey of unlearning chronic pain and reclaiming your life.

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. Hi everyone.

Speaker 1:

Hi everybody Welcome back.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back. We've had a wild couple days.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, with a lot of. So we have two vehicles and they both just started breaking down at the same time.

Speaker 2:

Well, Anne's broke down first. Yeah, and I was at home with our daughter phone off.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, phone off. So you know, I'm calling him, and I'm calling him and I'm like stranded in some parking lot with my son after we go to Kumon and we have no way home and of course Tanner doesn't answer his phone for like 40 minutes or something 35. It was a long time. It was frustrating.

Speaker 2:

But I came to your rescue, I guess, and then this morning, as Anne was dropping off our children, In Tanner's car. In my car, because her car is now In the shop. In the shop.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

My car doesn't start is now in the shop. My car doesn't start in the middle of.

Speaker 1:

So then I'm now walking home with my daughter because we have no cars in the cold. Luckily, a kind friend noticed and offered to boost our car, and then when I got back the car was working again. We realized Tanner has some weird anti-theft situation with his car that none of us knew about and Tanner failed to tell me about. Which is what was going on there.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I'm really getting blamed for life.

Speaker 1:

It's a bit of frustrating time it's been yeah. High alert time for me.

Speaker 2:

It's a little high alert. It actually ties into our topic.

Speaker 1:

It was stressful. It's been stressful, it's been a lot of things not working and if you guys are like us, you depend on things working to like function through your day.

Speaker 2:

Hopefully by next week. We have two working vehicles.

Speaker 1:

After we lose a lot of money.

Speaker 2:

To fixing our vehicles. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I thought there was something else we were referencing.

Speaker 1:

No, no, it's like we're losing money now Like what's happening? We just oh yeah, by the way, tanner. Yeah, anyways, we felt like it felt good to like share that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you for listening.

Speaker 2:

You've vented to our listeners. Yeah, thank you. Hopefully they're still listening as we dive into the topic.

Speaker 1:

They're probably like oh, see you later, all right, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So this is part two yes Of our two-part episode. How do I know if my pain or symptoms are neuroplastic?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we hope part one was useful and, if you're kind of following along, that you were able to kind of gather some evidence in part one and see some things about how your symptoms behave.

Speaker 2:

Yes. So just again, because I know some people are new to this idea of neuroplastic pain or symptoms. What we mean by this is that your chronic pain, your chronic symptoms, it's not being triggered due to damage in the body or disease in the body, due to damage in the body or disease in the body. It's occurring because our brain and nervous system is stuck in a heightened state of danger or survival, and so, again, neuroplastic pain and symptoms very real.

Speaker 2:

I want to be clear with people, because I know many people have seen practitioners or doctors and feel like they were told their symptoms weren't real. Neuroplastic pain and symptoms are very real. They're one of the most common type of chronic pain and symptoms, and so we're going to explore the rest of the criteria for neuroplastic pain and symptoms because, again, starting to increase our belief that this is what's taking place, it helps us create safety and it's part of the work. It's part of healing, and whether you're new at this healing work or you've been at it for a while and still debating this is a really useful two-part series for people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so as we go through this, we want you to really take your time, try to recall experiences in the past, or distant past maybe, or more recent past, to see if you relate to any of the criteria. But just a reminder it's very common to not meet all of them and that doesn't mean that if you don't meet all the criteria, that your symptoms are neuroplastics. So often we talk to people and really two or three of these really jump out for them.

Speaker 2:

Yes, in our approach we talk about how we kind of break the criteria down into two categories. So last episode we covered category one. It's not making physical sense. So if you haven't listened to that yet, after you listen to this episode, go back and listen to that one For sure. In this episode we're going to discuss the second category of criteria, which is sensitization factors. So really to understand category two, the sensitization factors, it's important to understand that difficult life experiences, events, difficult life experiences, events, major changes can cause the brain to function on high alert for an extended period of time and this nervous system dysregulation can make our environment, relationships, emotions and body feel more dangerous. It's in this unsafe, sensitized brain state that neuroplastic pain and symptoms are more likely to develop. So these sensitization factors again, it's not just considering them right when your symptoms onset, but it's like over the lifespan.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally, and I think often when I'm meeting with people we look at a whole that's right, a whole life history of, kind of maybe what this picture looked like for them, and sometimes that sets the stage for chronic pain and symptoms to develop.

Speaker 2:

Yes, because as this level of danger increases throughout our life and we're not coping with it in healthy ways or we're not processing it, it makes it more likely for your system to become sensitized and produce chronic pain or chronic symptoms. Yeah, so the first criteria chronic nervous system. States of fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so explain what those mean. First Tanner.

Speaker 2:

So really quick. We have lots of episodes in the past people can go into about chronic nervous system dysregulation, but fight would be more. This like irritated, angry, frustrated feel Flight, which is really common for a lot of people, is more like that anxious, nervous panic. Nervous panic Freeze also we call it shutdown is essentially where your system's starting to collapse. Like it's starting to shut down, we go numb, we disconnect. Despair, hopeless, helpless and fawn is like this appeasing behavior that happens for people.

Speaker 2:

It's also a nervous system response where we try to gain socialist acceptance through people-pleasing perfectionism and other ways of coping.

Speaker 1:

And one thing about these states is none of these states are wrong or bad. We all go into them for different, certain reasons, but it's when we kind of are there prolonged and I know you mentioned prolonged, but I think we really need to kind of say that again.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's that term, like chronic we want to be clear, like chronic nervous system dysregulation. Like every day I have some flight energy, some anxious energy yeah, that's normal. But if we're stuck there for days, weeks, months yes, that's where our system does become sensitized and start to produce chronic pain and symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Well, and sometimes it takes some reflecting to really notice. Oh, maybe I am kind of always in that state. I just didn't realize, or I thought that was normal. And so and I hear that a lot.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think it just becomes so normal to us that this is how we function, this is how we feel. Yes, that of course most of us. When it's extreme, we're not going to miss that. But at this more mild end, like I've met so many people where they're mildly always frustrated and irritated, like this fight, yeah, but it feels normal to them. So they don't even understand that. Oh, this is nervous system dysregulation and we understand, you know, pain and symptoms.

Speaker 1:

They're designed to protect us and so is entering nervous system states of fight, flight, freeze or fawn. So if that example say somebody's always in that kind of agitated state, how would their nervous system be protecting them?

Speaker 2:

So it's a survival response, right Like when we talk about like fight. It mobilizes you to take action. So you're frustrated. You're irritated and hopefully you go out and make changes. But the problem is is like your body was designed to move in and out of these danger responses, and becoming chronically dysregulated over time can trigger and perpetuate these chronic pain and symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm. The next criteria that we look at is high-intensity living. So that can be in forms of perfectionism, people-pleasing, worrying, excessive, controlling, self-criticism. Again, we talk about these as coping mechanisms that we've kind of learned to operate in this way for a reason that served us, that needed to kind of protect us. But when it comes chronic, or the way that we're always operating, that's when we can kind of get stuck in operating in this way. That isn't helpful for us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think an important definition that I like that you talked about here is that they're coping mechanisms, because a lot of people that are really highly intense people, yeah, they, they view it as, oh, this is a personality trait, yes, and as a result it's like that's not changeable. But we understand these develop because at some point they were useful. Your nervous system deemed like, for example, perfectionism at some point was really useful to create safety. There was points when I was doing and I'm a perfectionist myself, I'm recovering there was points when I was in school and I was struggling, I was getting a lot of pressure from, you know, teachers to do better and my perfectionism would snap in. Everyone was happy with me. It created safety. But then over a lifetime it starts to become really excessive where we're kind of locked into this high intensity living.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, when we think of like learning and habit forming and the way of being, that becomes kind of the natural way of being. We keep operating that way. Pressure goes up, always constantly in high alert, like Tanner was talking about, and so we can kind of look at okay, how does that keep me maybe in dysregulation? It can be hard to change. We learn to operate this way and it really just becomes a way of being again, understanding that this maybe isn't helpful for us is the first kind of step.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's not helpful and that it's changeable. Yes, we can make changes to this. Yeah, and it makes sense why these are so related and a criteria for neuroplastic pain and symptoms because, as we've said in the last point, when we're chronically dysregulated, we're more likely to have the brain trigger pain or physical symptoms, and being in this high intense zone all the time is chronic nervous system dysregulation in a certain way it can present. Now the next criteria is the opposite of high intensity living. This is low intensity living. What this can look like is disconnection, lack of movement, limited social interaction, lack of connection to nature, and these are also coping mechanisms that probably created safety for you at one point.

Speaker 2:

For a lot of us, we can view the world as very dangerous, and so it's normal for us to collapse, shut down and go into this low intensity zone. For a lot of people I find, with like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, pain, burnout, like this, can really present this way. Yeah, and for a lot of people, they may have started with high intensity living and then their symptoms came on and they moved to low intensity living to try and cope, and so, again, spending much of our lives in this frozen, shutdown state, just like high intensity living makes you more likely to develop chronic pain or chronic symptoms. We weren't meant to be in this prolonged state of shutdown, so it's a balance. I like to cover these back to back so people can assess like okay, where am I landing?

Speaker 1:

Ah yeah, and that's a really good way to look at it.

Speaker 1:

And again, just like, if you relate to high intensity living or low intensity living, there is kind of hope of like how do I create that balance a little bit that Tanner's talking about.

Speaker 1:

The other one that we look for is a history of childhood adversity. So that might look like, for instance, some examples abandonment or neglect, high conflict home, maybe like conflict in the parental relationships, family members with mental health concerns or of using drugs, bullying, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse or accidents. These are just like a handful of examples and so there's a lot of things that could go into this. The reason that we look for this is sometimes when we start learning that the world is unsafe and I think you just mentioned that in the last point we get kicked into this kind of fight or flight, coping, ways of coping, and that can kind of continue on throughout our lives, and so we learn maybe that we need to be in this like flight mode a little bit. Sometimes we operate in that way for a long, long time and then chronic pain and symptoms come on later. So it doesn't mean that everyone that's experienced childhood adversity develops chronic pain or symptoms, but it can just again set the stage for this to be more of a possibility.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you said you know they could get locked in fight or flight. But I also want to say you know people could get locked in, being just shut down Right or numb. Yes, but yeah, this pattern happens Like when these overwhelming events happen to us as children. Like we can stay chronically dysregulated from that point moving forward into adult years and we're much more likely to develop chronic pain, chronic symptoms and, in my opinion, most of the time this is neuroplastic in nature.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the one thing I want to say, as you're giving some of these examples is it's not about the size of the events. So if you kind of relate to this but you're like, I don't relate to anything on that list and my event is different.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for example, I'm a very highly sensitive person, as Ann knows. So is our son.

Speaker 1:

I have so many sensitive people in my home.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know I'm sorry. You're sensitive too, though.

Speaker 1:

We're sensitive, not as sensitive as you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're not as sensitive as me. I'm definitely, I'm definitely.

Speaker 1:

I am the caretaker of the home, if any of you are wondering you're holding down the fort I am, so don't get mad at me about this car situation. Anyway, sorry, we'll go back.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're getting off track, okay, the point is that it's not the size of the event, so for myself, like there wasn't extreme necessarily childhood adversity like if someone looked at my childhood, you know I had loving parents like there wasn't these like extreme abuse or something taking place.

Speaker 2:

But, like my, my system is so sensitive that even things that were mild to moderate had this huge nervous system response and so it's all valid. That's what I want to be clear with people is sometimes people almost like invalidate that they didn't have child diversity because it wasn't a huge thing.

Speaker 1:

yes, but it doesn't matter when it says the event uh and yeah, and I like that point, tanner, and so it's. It's valid to us, it's valid to you, it's valid to your nervous system, um and 100, and we need to be able to validate that, because if we're living in kind of this belief of like, oh, I shouldn't be feeling this way, I shouldn't have experienced this or that was so small and shouldn't have created this, well then that invalidation is not going to be helpful for healing no, and and then we don't actually do the work to maybe process childhood adversity phase because we've sent and again I'm careful as we're saying invalidation.

Speaker 2:

We're not blaming you for invalidating yourself, like a lot of times, like if we've been invalidated by caregivers or peers, like that pattern starts. So again, you're not to blame for that. But we are trying to say you know, starting to validate that maybe things were difficult at points in childhood or you felt unsafe physically or emotionally at points, because it is a criteria, you're much more likely to develop chronic pain, chronic symptoms well, and why would validating and like trying to shift towards more validating be helpful for healing?

Speaker 2:

it's helpful because if we can start to validate oh, we did deal with really hard things it can help us actually start to work with that, to process trauma that we faced. I find when people have been taught to invalidate their own experience, they don't think there's anything to process or work through. Yeah, and they don't. And then a lot of people are left almost confused Like why am I so dysregulated as an adult? But they don't understand all these unsafe feelings were happening as a child. Now this leads into the next criteria that we look for is trauma.

Speaker 2:

So trauma in adulthood increases rates of chronic pain, chronic symptoms, even if the body is not damaged. So an interesting research study showed that people that face childhood adversity or trauma in their adult years are 2.7 times more likely to have chronic, widespread pain, chronic fatigue, ibs or fibromyalgia. We've also seen other research studies show that there's higher rates of things like chronic dizziness or vestibular concerns, which was an interesting study that they did with veterans who have PTSDs compared to veterans who didn't have PTSD. So we know this has been taking place. These studies aren't brand new. We've known this for a long time, right, I think most people would be agreeable to this.

Speaker 1:

I think it's kind of common, not common knowledge but more open knowledge of like that this can be connected a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I think the problem is that is that, like the treatment for pain and symptoms up until recent years hasn't really reflected that. Yeah, like most people have pain and if you face trauma in your life, that is without a doubt. Even if your symptoms aren't fully neuroplastic, they are being amplified if we face trauma.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's what the research shows. But then what happens is we just try to treat it physically.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're right, there is that kind of disconnect there. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so that's what we're trying to understand here, and another thing to look for is a few different types of trauma that we commonly see after people start to develop chronic pain or symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yes, that we commonly see after people start to develop chronic pain or symptoms. Yes, and now? This, I think, is something that is very not as open in society, like people are not aware of this.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so this is a term that we use at our clinic.

Speaker 1:

You won't hear it anywhere else.

Speaker 2:

Of sensitization, trauma, yes, which is dysregulation from the onset or progression of chronic pain or symptoms. We can have this fight, flight, freeze, fawn response to the onset or progression of our symptoms taking place.

Speaker 1:

And this is something I think we commonly see when we talk to people of maybe almost like a secondary trauma response going on, even if they've had previous trauma, but now this is another trauma experience.

Speaker 2:

It's another trauma experience that someone's experiencing, and each week, in multiple sessions, I'm processing sensitization trauma because it keeps all this sense of danger around our pain or symptoms and that's going to dial everything up and increase neuroplastic pain and symptoms and that's going to dial everything up and increase neuroplastic pain and symptoms. The other thing we look for which we did an episode, I think, pretty recently on is medical trauma Dysregulation from medical procedures, experiences, treatments, like when we have chronic pain and symptoms. We have a lot of interaction with the medical community and, again, some of the interactions with the medical community, it goes really smoothly for people. For others, they almost have this trauma response taking place and that needs to be processed. So subsequently, like you could have had, you know, childhood adversity or trauma in your past, but when your symptoms come on, there can also be all these trauma events taking place.

Speaker 1:

And again I went back to this idea of validation. It's important to again recognize this and validate that and kind of show some kindness and compassion, and often we have to work with people on how do we approach this with kindness and compassion as well. Exactly, kind of the final criteria that we look at is pathological views of the body, which just means kind of the relationship to the body and the belief that something is wrong with the body, it's damaged or it's abnormal. Um, often when we're trying to kind of diagnose our pain earlier on, fix it or figure it out, we start developing more and more belief that something is wrong with the body, that we just need to find out what's that something is wrong with the body, that we just need to find out what's wrong. Often the relationship with the body turns more and more negative.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's so common Like we have such a negative belief system that the body's damaged, that it's diseased in some way.

Speaker 1:

And this is a sensitization factor, because when we have all these thoughts and beliefs that our symptoms are permanent, that our body's flawed in some major way, Well, and it's interesting that you mentioned permanent, because there's some I have talked to a number of people that have said they've been told oh, this is the way it is, you're going to have this forever, there's nothing we can do, and like those types of statements. And then, of course, then that spirals into this very negative view of the body and that feeling of being very trapped.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it can increase pain and symptom sensitivity and perpetuate it long past any injury that's taken place, and again, no one's to blame for this.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 2:

Because I felt this way. I thought my spine was like the most messed up spine for a 23-year-old around.

Speaker 1:

And you were kind of being told that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

There was scary. Things I was told by professionals, things I was told by professionals.

Speaker 1:

You know, I do my online Google research.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yes, google research, dr Google, not great for this, and so, like it develops naturally for people, yeah, and that's why we're gathering these criteria and going through them in detail over two episodes so people can really start to assess oh, like, my body's actually okay.

Speaker 2:

So these are the sensitization factors, category two of the criteria for neuroplastic pain and symptoms. So again, we want you all to spend some time reflecting on how you relate to these criteria for neuroplastic pain and symptoms that we've covered over these two episodes. And again, we want to increase that belief that our symptoms are neuroplastic, as it's a vital early on step in starting to heal our chronic pain, chronic symptoms. I want to even make this ironclad here If you skip this and you don't believe your symptoms are neuroplastic, but then you continue with the rest of the work, it doesn't have a huge effect. And so, again, I'm not saying you need to fully believe it, because I know there's practitioners out there saying like you need to fully believe this or else I didn't believe it fully until my symptoms were 80% gone. So just be open and start to go off these criteria, see how you relate, gather some of that evidence and that belief will increase over time.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and so I think I've mentioned this before about using this gathering as a tool a little bit. We want to keep fueling this belief, gathering kind of this evidence, understanding this as we go through our healing journey. If there's some hope there that, hey, maybe I can get better, we want to lean into that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and the gathering of evidence is ongoing. So even if you sit down with your piece of paper after these two episodes, you're writing things down. Keep looking for ways that you relate to these criteria over the course of your healing, because often new evidence kind of presents itself. So thank you everyone for listening to this episode.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening.

Speaker 2:

We are hoping by next episode that we have two working vehicles.

Speaker 1:

Oh yes, we rely on them a lot. We realize, you know, that when you don't have it anymore, yeah, and one thing about where we live.

Speaker 2:

We live in Calgary, alberta, canada. It's not built very well to not have a vehicle. Yeah, it's not New York, it's not Toronto, like like you. Like, it's really spread out everything.

Speaker 1:

Well, and it's hard when you have little kids too and you like transport them everywhere. Yeah, it's difficult.

Speaker 2:

So thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening.

Speaker 2:

We'll talk to you 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 we wish you all healing.