The Mind-Body Couple

Healing Chronic Pain and Symptoms can be SLOW... Here's why.

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 105

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Ever found yourself frustrated that your chronic pain or symptoms aren't resolving as quickly as the success stories you've heard? You're not alone, and more importantly—you're not doing anything wrong. 

The truth about neuroplastic healing is that while some people experience rapid improvement, many of us face a slower, more complex journey. After working with countless clients, we've identified several factors that can extend recovery timelines: past trauma, mental health challenges, ongoing social dangers in relationships or work, and the simple fact that long-standing symptoms create deeper neural pathways that take more time to rewire.

When most research studies showcase dramatic improvements in just 8 sessions, it's easy to feel discouraged if that's not your experience. But these studies don't capture the full spectrum of healing journeys. Your brain and nervous system are uniquely yours, shaped by your specific life experiences, and they will heal on their own timeline.

The hope-disappointment cycle many sufferers experience—getting excited about a new treatment only to be crushed when it doesn't work—can create its own layer of nervous system dysregulation that needs addressing. And when you're working to create safety in a chronically activated nervous system while simultaneously managing anxiety, trauma responses, or challenging life circumstances, healing naturally takes longer.

This isn't bad news—it's simply reality. We've seen people heal completely after years of consistent work, even when their initial progress was slow. The key is understanding that you're on your own path, focusing on your unique small wins rather than comparing yourself to others, and addressing all the factors that might be keeping your nervous system in danger mode.

Ready to embrace your healing journey with more patience and self-compassion? Subscribe to our podcast for more insights that normalize the complexities of recovery while offering practical guidance for moving forward, no matter how long it takes.

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, hi everybody, welcome back, welcome back.

Speaker 1:

I feel like you say that welcome back in the same way every time. I'm consistent, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Our listeners expect a certain.

Speaker 1:

I feel like that yeah, we're going to maybe expect you to change your the way you say that now moving forward a little bit. It's a challenge, tanner.

Speaker 2:

I'm just trying to be my authentic self over here.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, I'm being authentic Okay. This is who I am. Yeah, I know Consistently the same.

Speaker 2:

Consistently so-so in lots of ways.

Speaker 1:

That's what.

Speaker 2:

Anne was thinking in her mind. Yeah, a little Epic in some ways, below average in others.

Speaker 1:

Geez, I wasn't thinking that I don't know.

Speaker 2:

This is part of being human.

Speaker 1:

That's a whole episode in itself, oh yes, but that's not our episode today.

Speaker 2:

That's not, so let's dive into this Our topic today. Healing can be slow. Here's why.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I feel like this might be a controversial subject in some ways. Some people might be hearing that title and be like, okay, yes, and others might be like feeling a bit upset or discouraged upon hearing that title and be like, okay, yes, and others might be like feeling a bit upset or discouraged upon hearing that too.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and we're going to explain this fully. So if you listen to half this episode and leave discouraged, please finish the whole episode yeah, good point.

Speaker 2:

There is a message of hope here, but I think this is such a common thing that people get caught in Like why am I healing slower than people have when the model's been tested in research or compared to? You know the success story that I saw on this YouTube channel and people get really discouraged. So we're going to talk about this. We're going to break this down of healing why it can be slow and how we can still move forward, healing why it can be slow and how we can still move forward. So, to start off, there is a common path that I see happen when people come to a mind-body approach. So I'll walk you through this, sam. All right, I'm ready. Many of our clients that we work with have experienced. Many of our clients that we work with have experienced, I would say, like years of pain or chronic symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Most commonly yes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's pretty rare I see someone three months in. It's great that they've come to that approach so quickly. But for most of us you know three, five, sometimes decades long of chronic symptoms, and for a lot of people the symptoms haven't just stayed in one place. They've spread to multiple parts of the body, shifting around over time, and this often results in people having to change their life in a significant way. So, for example, needing to go off work, needing to work part-time.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and so sometimes when we come to a mind-body approach and we're like, okay, I'm ready for this. Even that statement that you just made, tanner, that's a lot to kind of look at and work through. That also takes time in terms of maybe like returning to work, returning to life again, kind of working through changing relationship with pain and symptoms.

Speaker 2:

So there's a lot of factors to this yeah, especially when symptoms have been pretty widespread or very debilitating. Yes, our world shrinks and what happens for people a lot of the time, myself included is they've spent a lot of time, a lot of energy and in many cases I would say a lot of time, a lot of energy and in many cases I would say a lot of money trying different treatments that really didn't provide much relief.

Speaker 1:

Well, and why do you think that might impact healing being a bit slower?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think something I talk about in pain reprocessing therapy is this hope disappointment cycle. So people find a new treatment usually a physical one, before coming to a brain and nervous system approach like an injection. They're like, oh, this injection is going to heal everything. They get really pumped up, they get hopeful and then they get let down, yeah yeah. And if that cycle goes on a number of times, first off we've wasted a lot of time and a lot of money, which I empathize with people because I experienced that, but we also we just start to lose all hope altogether. It can create a lot more dysregulation around our chronic symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and sometimes part of that healing journey is spending time understanding that cycle, maybe processing different emotions around that cycle. We've talked a lot in other podcasts, like, for instance, our medical trauma, and we've mentioned how difficult this can be right, so sometimes it also is taking time to really look at that kind of hope disappointment cycle and how it's impacted us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that could be a whole podcast episode in and of itself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast, you've already probably made it to this step you start to learn about neuroplastic pain and symptoms, how pain and symptoms can be due to our brain and nervous system feeling in danger and this can be healed, this can be reversed, and when people come to this idea they often gain this new treatment pathway, this new hope starts to build and, for some people, the assessment for neuroplastic symptoms. So they start to increase their belief their symptoms are neuroplastic by looking for evidence, their belief their symptoms are neuroplastic by looking for evidence, and this restores a sense of safety. And then they start to do some brain retraining, some graded exposure, and then you know they're approaching life again. Their dysregulation about their symptoms reduces and, as a result, their chronic symptoms reduce or become eliminated.

Speaker 2:

Yeah for some people that happens.

Speaker 1:

And sometimes it happens right away, and so I think those are like the stories that people hear of, like okay. I came across this approach Like I read the book the Way Out, for instance. I got really kind of hopeful and then my symptoms went away, and so I think part of what can be difficult is we hear those things and we compare success to those experiences.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly it. You know, most of us have seen the research studies in this area and I'm not knocking those research studies by the way. They provide great hope, they provide validity to the medical community that this approach, a brain and nervous system approach, can provide healing. But people see these studies. They read testimonials of people having limited number of sessions with a therapist.

Speaker 2:

Like I'm talking, I don't know seven to 10 sessions and they don't take much time and they go from really high pain or symptoms and disability to completely healed and when that's not the case, it can really start to affect us in a very negative way and I understand that with people.

Speaker 1:

Well for you, Tanner. Did you have expectations around maybe how quick your healing journey was going to be initially?

Speaker 2:

when you found this type of approach, you, know, one of the benefits I had when I was healing so for listeners giving context that was I don't know, I was maybe a decade ago give or take. Yeah, at that time there was basically no YouTube channels on this stuff. Now there's a handful that are pretty big, ours included. There was really no podcast out there. There was a few sites where people would post success stories so I'd read those, but there was a lot less information. There wasn't these massive studies, clinical trials that had been completed, or at least on several of them, so I didn't have as much expectation. That was one of the benefits I actually had is I didn't have an expectation of how long it was going to take.

Speaker 2:

One of the reasons I feel and to give people context and I'm careful saying a number, because people ask me this often in comments on our social media like how long did it take you to heal? I'm cautious here because that's why we're doing this episode, because sometimes it's slower. For me, it took about four months for my symptoms to no longer be chronic. It took an additional four months for me to be fully moving my body because I was going from basically immobile, so I had a lot of ground to cover, to be able to go back to the gym to run, to do all these things now we've seen a lot of variation.

Speaker 1:

so, like we've mentioned, we see some people where it comes really quickly and really fast, but that 100 is not the norm and then some people where it's taken a number of years to really kind of get some movement. When we mentioned at the beginning, when we talked about what people are coming to this in terms of that hope disappointment cycle, maybe people are coming into it having multiple pain, symptoms and that small world because of pain and symptoms. Again, it takes a long time for those shifts to happen and so it's not just about pain. A lot of the time there's a lot of different factors that people are working through to get healing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so, for example, one of the groundbreaking studies that was on pain reprocessing therapy over half the participants became pain-free or nearly pain-free. Over half the participants became pain-free or nearly pain-free and the majority of those stayed that way for a year. So we hear this and that's amazing. And don't get me wrong, I've seen that happen for people. Yeah, so that can take place. But I think what will take place for a lot of people is when symptom reductions are slow and gradual, much, much slower than per se the PRT study of eight sessions and healed we can see a lot of different things start to take place, like frustration, self-blame, confusion is a really common one, like why am I taking longer than others? There can be this fixation on I'm not healing right, how do I heal right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think I hear that a lot as like it's not working, or I've tried it for a little bit but it's not working. When we think of like PRT and maybe the bones of that, we think of brain retraining. Well, brain retraining 100% takes time, time and consistency, and so that's something that we really need to keep in mind, that it's like okay, it's a rewiring. Rewiring is never sudden.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, another thing I see when healing is taking slower is people give up hope and they return to a physical focus. I've had this happen many times in my practice and working with clients and it does make me really sad. Again, I'm not saying it in a judgmental way, like everyone makes their own choices around this stuff, but, for example, if I meet with someone for four sessions and they're not seeing significant difference yet and then they just go back to the physical focus, the reality is they didn't give it enough time. It's incredibly rare to work with someone for four sessions and they're healed. It has happened, but it's rare.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So when we think about it taking time, I really think about the brain retraining piece, like I mentioned. But then if there's other layers that could take a lot of time. So say, we struggle with really high anxiety, we know that connects to our pain, Well, yeah, okay, we want to do the brain retraining and our relationship to pain. That's going to be taking some time and we need consistency. But then working on anxiety, that's a whole nother ballpark and there's got to be some understanding around the pieces again.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, as you were saying, you know, when healing that's a whole nother ballpark and there's got to be some understanding around the pieces. Again, yeah, as we're saying, you know, when healing is slow, all these things can happen Frustration, self-blame, confusion, trying to heal properly or heal right and giving up hope and returning to physical focus and generally just an overall hopelessness. And you know, I think about this a lot. This is something that actually keeps me up at night, and it's rare things keep me up at night.

Speaker 1:

He sleeps quite soundly. I sleep quite soundly.

Speaker 2:

When we're framing healing these mind-body symptoms as this quick, simple, easy thing to do, I think we can do a disservice to this community. I want to be clear that there is still lots of hope. I think people can get there, but when we frame it like this, when this is how it's marketed but that's not the case for a lot of people people give up instead of keep going, and so the reason you know neuroplastic pain and symptoms are happening is likely complex for you and so, as a result, it needs a complex approach. I think about our clinical practice, which I'm very proud of, like our therapy clinic and our digital course. We provide like a really complex approach. For some people it can be quite simple and they don't need all the fancy complexity, but for a lot of people, they need that, like even our course. It's massive.

Speaker 2:

When you think about our digital course that we put out last year. It has so much education in so many different areas. It has over 60 somatic practices, brain retraining activities and a bunch of worksheets, an online community so we can answer questions and the reason we did all of that not because one person needs all of that. No one needs everything in that course, but we did it to be this buffet because we understand people are complex and so a person's healing is complex. And so, if we go back to the basics, we know that, at a fundamental level, neuroplastic pain and symptoms they're occurring because the brain is mistaking safe signals. Coming up from the body is dangerous. There's a miscommunication going on between body and brain. So, for example, you have back pain. Do you have back pain right now, anne?

Speaker 2:

Not right now, not right now. Okay, you have back pain.

Speaker 1:

Let's say, anne has back pain.

Speaker 2:

But it's neuroplastic. Safe signals are going up from your back Same light amount of pressure, no cause for alarm, neutral sensation but your brain maybe partly because you're married to me it's misinterpreting those signals and clicking on pain. And really what this means is that we need to restore safety in a person's body, regulate their nervous system, to bring this sensitized alarm system, this pain or symptom alarm system, back into balance. Got a little sciencey there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I feel like you snuck the science in.

Speaker 2:

I did.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, good for you, tanner.

Speaker 2:

You know, little side note. Now I'm diverting. Oh no, I know.

Speaker 1:

We put together a light script for these podcasts so, mainly so, our producer alex, makes sure I stay on track, um which I'm not right now. No, he might, he's probably gonna get upset right now.

Speaker 2:

He may. He might cut this. Yeah, people may not hear exactly what I'm saying right now, like shut up tanner, but the idea is here is that a sense of danger or dysregulation? It's going to produce neuroplastic pain and symptoms. So the idea is we need to restore a sense of safety. However, if someone's nervous system is chronically dysregulated like that, healing is gonna take longer. Yeah, that's just the reality and the we kind of put this list together of factors we see that slow down healing. When I I do free 20-minute consults with potential clients, I explain this to people up front because I want you people to be clear. If you have any of these factors going on, not necessarily, but it may take you longer and that's okay, that's normal.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it makes sense well, and I think the point of this podcast too, is we want to normalize, um, that healing does take time, but it doesn't mean it's not happening. So again, as you're on this journey, every kind of piece we put forward on this journey, every kind of piece we put forward on this journey, is making a difference. But it's a bit of understanding that, okay, it's going to be a slow ride and that's normal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, to give context, there are people I've worked with pretty consistently for a year, year and a half, and they got there Like they got to pain or symptom free or nearly symptom free. It just took a lot of work and consistency. So I don't want people to get discouraged. There is hope. It's just everyone's brain and nervous system is coming to this approach differently. So the following factors that can really slow down healing from neuroplastic pain and symptoms are as follows. Number one we have trauma and childhood adversity. When we faced and we have lots of podcast episodes on this, but when we face childhood adversity, trauma, other things we talk about in our practice are things like medical trauma, a term we call sensitization trauma, which is the trauma that people get from their actual pain and symptoms, like when we've had trauma, even if it's in the far distant past. It can make us chronically dysregulated and for a lot of people they need to go back and process some of that and that's going to lengthen things. Number two moderate to severe mental health conditions.

Speaker 1:

So like I, was mentioning earlier.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, you mentioned anxiety, different types of anxiety disorders, depression, ocd, eating disorders, psychosis, things like bipolar disorder. When we have these mental health conditions and again I don't diagnose in my practice because I don't find it helpful I find it quite pathologizing. So that's not why I'm listing these conditions, but when we're landing in one of these areas like that also needs to be treated to likely reduce or eliminate the pain or symptoms and that's going to lengthen a person's time in healing.

Speaker 1:

Well, and that's a really good point, because I think sometimes we can start this type of journey but be solely focused on pain. But it's important to understand that if we have any other areas of mental health that may be a struggle for us or we might need support around, it's important to get support or work with those as well yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, for example, things like O obsessive compulsive disorder, which we did an episode on, I think it was three or four episodes back really common with neuroplastic pain and symptoms. In my experience, both those things reduce together.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And that's what I'm kind of focused on when I'm working with someone. Number three we have ongoing social dangers in life. Number three we have ongoing social dangers in life. This is really missed, I think, in a lot of the main approaches and at our clinic and in our digital course we really focus on creating social safety Because on an individual level, you can process your trauma, you can feel safer with emotions, you can feel more regulated. But if you have all this ongoing social danger taking place, like you're living life on high alert perfectionism, people pleasing you have a lot of danger coming from work, school or in your relationships social danger, social safety, it does matter and if we have a lot of social danger going on, healing is going to take longer.

Speaker 1:

Because that might be changing certain things about our lifestyles. So for some people it might be looking at a relationship and having a hard, honest look of is this relationship good for me or same with like a workplace setting? And so if any of these kind of external lifestyle factors are increasing your dysregulation and impacting pain and symptoms, then making changes in those areas might be necessary yeah, we don't say that lightly because it's it's so hard like I've.

Speaker 2:

I've seen people make such courageous healing moves um and I do mean that like big moves, like deciding to walk away from a career they built for 20 years or deciding to leave a marriage. Again, I'm not saying that everyone needs to do that. I want to be clear. But, like for some people, I have seen people become pain or symptom free or have huge reductions from making these bigger changes in life to have their life start to naturally create a sense of safety.

Speaker 2:

The reason I'm so focused on this in my healing work with people is what I'll see is people are almost using these micro strategies like somatic tracking, somatic work with people is what I'll see is people are almost using these like micro strategies like somatic tracking, somatic work with emotions. They're using them as band-aids. So their natural lifestyle factors in their life are creating such a sense of danger and they're just like hucking band-aids at it, trying to like create safety. But a lot of times we need to go to this root cause of actually creating safety in our life and how we're living. Now number four the last thing I want to discuss is longer duration of pain or symptoms, and lower level of functioning in life can be a factor that's actually going to make your healing slower. So I'll give you an example of this If I'm working with someone who's had chronic pain for six months, generally they're going to heal quicker than someone who's been in chronic pain for 30 years.

Speaker 1:

Right, and I think most people would probably agree with that statement. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because the brain becomes wired more and more the longer the symptoms are there. Again, I've seen people 30, 40 years of chronic symptoms completely heal, so I'm giving a message of hope there. But it generally takes longer for someone because their system has become so sensitized over time. It's also about the level of functioning. Like my level of functioning by the end was so low, like I was basically bed bound or sitting in this straight back chair watching TV, not working, not seeing friends, no physical movement, like it was really low and as a result my healing did take longer because I had a long way to kind of climb back to working or even going to a restaurant with friends or these different things. It just took me more time I got there. But it's just important for people to be aware of that.

Speaker 1:

So the takeaway is, yes, you do need to understand the science around neuroplastic pain and symptoms and start thinking differently about your body engaging in brain retraining. So I think when I'm working with somebody, that's always where I start. But you also need to address danger in the nervous system level, address concerns maybe with mental health so that might be like anxiety, depression, ptsd, lifestyle factors, like we said, and relationships and understanding that this might take more time. Sometimes when I work with people, I'll look at okay, what was happening when your symptoms came on and now what is perpetuating your symptoms? What is keeping them rolling? Let's get brain retraining down and then chip away at these other pieces, but there's no timeline on these pieces, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So we do want to leave a message of hope that healing is possible. I've seen people heal that took much longer, significantly longer than eight sessions, the worst thing I see people do in their healing which I get why they do, it is so common we just want to set a deadline. I'm going to be healed by September. By the end of summer I'm good to go. No more symptoms. But the closer that becomes, every little signal that maybe they're not going to meet that goal, it starts to make them more dysregulated. Yeah, so be on your own path. This is why I think success stories can be a blessing and a curse. There's hope that comes from success stories and I have people listen to success stories. I think that's important. But it also can be a curse, because people are now comparing to every single success story they've seen and if they're taking longer than the ones they've listened to, they're somehow failing and it's not going right well, and I think that's why I really like the strategy of noticing wins along the way, your unique wins and your small wins.

Speaker 1:

I'm really kind of putting them up in the limelight. I was like, okay, I see this today. That really helps us be on board with our healing and, even if it is slow, just don't notice that healing is happening.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so just understand your brain and nervous system is different than every other person's brain and nervous system and when you listen to a success story, as I was saying, you do not know all the factors that lined up to allow that person to heal in that amount of time. So it's just being really clear about that. Again, I'm not knocking success stories. I think they're a big part of this approach. It can be really helpful. But just careful with the comparison, people. So there we go.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we hope this was helpful. We know it was a bit of real talk around kind of what this process can look like, but we also think it's really important to have that understanding while you're working on this journey. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So thank you everyone. So thank you everyone for listening, thanks for listening and we'll talk to you next week. Talk to you next week.

Speaker 1:

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.