The Mind-Body Couple

The Fight Response: Are You Fighting Against Your Chronic Pain or Illness?

Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson Episode 113

Have you ever wondered if your determination to overcome chronic pain might actually be keeping you stuck? This eye-opening discussion reveals how our natural tendency to fight against uncomfortable symptoms can backfire by triggering more nervous system dysregulation.

Tanner and Anne expertly break down the fight response – not just physical fighting, but the tension, racing thoughts, urgent behaviors, and constant attempts to fix and figure out our symptoms. "I was perpetually in fight mode for my first two years," Tanner reveals, highlighting how many of us fall into this pattern without realizing it's counterproductive.

Through practical examples and compassionate guidance, they explain why frantically researching solutions, scheduling endless appointments, and pushing through pain actually sends danger signals to your brain, perpetuating the very symptoms you're trying to eliminate. The solution? A paradoxical approach that involves allowing your sensations rather than battling them.

You'll discover practical strategies for breaking free from the fight cycle – embodying sensations instead of amplifying them, using safe self-talk, and embracing short-term acceptance that signals safety to your nervous system. Perhaps most challenging is learning to embrace uncertainty rather than constantly seeking control.

Whether you struggle with chronic pain, mysterious symptoms, or find yourself constantly fighting to fix your body, this episode offers a refreshing perspective that could transform your healing journey. Notice when you're going into fight mode this week and try gently stepping out of it – your nervous system will thank you.

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.

Speaker 1:

Hi, everybody, welcome back.

Speaker 2:

Hi everyone. Today we are talking about the fight response. Are you fighting against your symptoms?

Speaker 1:

And this is a really important topic, because often when I talk about this with people, they really readily relate to this.

Speaker 2:

And I think for a lot of people, when we bring it up they're like ah, that's what I'm doing, but they don't have the insight that they're falling into this mode and it can perpetuate things and worsen things long term.

Speaker 1:

And that's what we're really going to outline and talk about this episode.

Speaker 2:

So the fight response? It's essentially, you can think about it as part of your sympathetic branch of your nervous system. It mobilizes you to respond to a threat. So you think about you face a challenge at work, such as dealing with Tanner.

Speaker 2:

You know, and you're dealing with a difficult Tanner and you're a little mobilized, you get a little fight response. You're ready to take action, maybe argue a bit. This is an example of like your sympathetic branch comes online and it essentially occurs when your nervous system is picking up on dangerous signals and this fight response is often associated with, like frustration, anger, this kind of feel.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and there's kind of three areas where we experience it. So physically that might look like tension, maybe difficulty breathing. For some people it might be increased heart rate, difficulties sleeping or the inability to sleep, tingling, heat, dizziness, chronic pain, tinnitus or other physical sensations. For some people there's also a mental experience as well to the fight response. So that might look like racing thoughts, maybe some frustrated or irritated thoughts, blaming, self-criticism, obsessive thinking, dwelling or ruminating, and anger and rage, and I think a lot of people relate to falling into that. But sometimes you're right, like we mentioned earlier, we don't always label that as part of the fight response.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think it's so key to understand that when we say fight there, it doesn't mean you're physically fighting, right, like I think that's where people get caught up in the wording is like I'm not in a fight response I wasn't like actively ready to fight. Of course that can be part of it, but it's quite rare, right. For most people they have more of this physical experience, this mental experience that you're kind of outlining. Like we fall into this pattern.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and there's also behavioral experiences as well, and so that might look like changes in tone or expression, like an urgency moving quickly, looking for arguments or confrontation, yelling or aggressive actions like pushing, punching, kicking.

Speaker 2:

And so this is really what makes it up we got the physical, we got the mental, we got the behavioral, and it's really key for people to understand this and be on the lookout for it, Because, you know, essentially we really need to be aware when we're going into that response, Otherwise we're not going to know to do anything right.

Speaker 1:

And we want to highlight that that response isn't necessarily wrong or bad, but we want to understand why or when we go into it, how it impacts our body and actually how we come out of it as well.

Speaker 2:

Yes. Now, when we talk about the fight response and chronic symptoms, this is really common. People respond in this way. They have this fight response to their physical symptoms and, as we're going to discuss later on, this can result in your brain worsening the sensations of pain or physical symptoms. So when we talk about a fight response to your symptoms, this can look like almost like an irritation or anger when you're feeling the sensations.

Speaker 1:

I mean, is it almost like irritation and anger to the sensations, like you're mad at them?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're mad at them or you're mad, they're occurring Either way. Like I think, that's what happens to people is. Their natural response is just frustration, irritation.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I think we need to pause for a minute and validate that, Tanner, because that makes sense. It is frustrating having these symptoms come up, being in pain all the time. I think it's a normal reaction to get into this kind of angry fight response with symptoms.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, you have to understand. I want to empathize with anyone who falls into this, because I did with my chronic symptoms, without a doubt, especially in the first like two years. I was just perpetually in fight mode. I was fighting to get better care from medical providers, I was fighting to try and make my symptoms go away. I was just like and I thought for a long time it was useful because it drove me to take action, but it stopped serving me along the way.

Speaker 1:

Well, you made a really interesting point there, because you also talked about fighting to seek and get the care, which I think is another way of understanding the fight response and how we fall into it, because it is it's like fighting to get better and there's this idea of like if I fight harder, I will get better. But actually it's the opposite in terms of like. No, the more we fight, even fight to find the solution, the more that can perpetuate symptoms.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because in the short run, you know, get things physically checked out. But, yeah, for a lot of people, they feel in this like fight mode with the medical system which just is perpetuating everything and it's a hard. It's a hard thing to break out of Now your fight response to your symptoms. It can also look like unhelpful thinking. So for a lot of people, this is like this critical lens of their pain and symptoms, or they're critical of themselves for having pain and symptoms and a lot of these thoughts that they're having are really focused on anger, unfairness, injustice, like we fall into this pattern when we're thinking Now the unhelpful behaviors I think these are so key for people to be aware of is people trying to fix, figure out or force healing to happen.

Speaker 1:

So again back to like what we were saying of like fighting to get to the solution.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because even when people come to a brain and nervous system approach, people end up in this mode of like just fighting to get better.

Speaker 1:

And so then what is the line between kind of actively seeking help, working on things, but not being in a fight mode, because I think that can get really confusing.

Speaker 2:

It really can, and this is one of the many paradoxes in this healing approach that people get really confused about. I hear a lot. You're telling me to try, but don't try too hard. Right, and I am. That is what I'm saying. It's like you know, anne's favorite word is like consistency.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Be consistent but don't be intense, right? Because at some point, if you're trying to be consistent and you're have the right attitude, you're trying to create safety in your brain, but then now, all of a sudden, you're doing this to try and force it to go away. You've now shifted to fight mode.

Speaker 1:

One thing I think can be helpful sometimes is asking ourselves am I doing anything out of urgency and is there a lot of fear behind it? And so am I seeking and fixing, and there's this urgency to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That might be a tip off or if I'm like, very afraid.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that can often look like this, like constant research and reading about a brain and nervous system approach to healing chronic symptoms. The education makes sense at first, but at some point that excessiveness is not going to be helpful anymore. It can also look what you just mentioned, anne, of you're using these strategies, but almost with this, like aggressive lens. This often takes place for people. They're using it, but they're using it to fight against their symptoms, fight to make them go away.

Speaker 1:

It's almost a way of being or kind of a feeling inside the body is something to kind of question.

Speaker 2:

Yes. Lastly, I want to say it can look like pushing through pain and symptoms. Look like pushing through pain and symptoms. Now, I'm all for exposure and getting back to doing activities and feeling empowered, but a lot of times what I'll see people do is they're pushing themselves through their day in this state of anger, regardless of their physical symptoms and where they're at, which isn't going to be helpful long-term.

Speaker 2:

So, as we're kind of discussing here, you know, this is what a fight response to chronic symptoms can look like, and I think it's so important people reflect on this a bit. They start to understand. Am I falling into this and noticing when you're falling into it? Because I've never seen one person heal by applying this like fight energy to the healing work.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

To getting better.

Speaker 1:

And I think most people I've talked to relate to this to some degree at some point in their journey. And so if you do relate to this, we don't want anyone to panic because it's super common to go into fight response with pain, like with the symptoms. But it's starting to kind of recognize it, notice it and then shift out of it and so again it's a gradual process of trying to exit and kind of lessen that fight response around symptoms.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and, as we said, you know this, this fight response, as we're talking about having that response against your symptoms it's just going to keep them going. It's going to cause your nervous system to further get dysregulated over time, resulting in your brain worsening the sensations and, as I've kind of discussed, I really fell into this while healing. So you know, like two years in my life consisted of going to physio three times a week, going to a chiropractor two, three times a week. I would spend my nights researching, trying to find a solution, trying to get a certain diagnosis that I believed I had, and it just perpetuated things forward.

Speaker 1:

I think, tanner, a lot of people probably relate to what you just outlined there, and so how might you suggest someone reflecting on that piece, like maybe all the appointments, all the like, kind of the all-consuming need to kind of fix the body because I think that's a common place to be in, need to kind of fix the body because I think that's a common place to be in.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's a common place to be in, and starting to reduce it a little bit is where you start. So we're going to get into how to give up the fight in a second tier. But you don't need to go from a hundred percent fight energy to zero percent. That's a big leap. We're just dialing this back a bit. That's the idea. Could you just spend a little bit less time reading about this approach when you're feeling frustrated? Could you spend a little bit less time trying to fix and figure this out? Could you take a night off? That's the idea. Like we're just trying to dial it back little bit by little bit for people. But we're going to dive into the solution here of how to give up the fight. Response oh me, okay. Sorry, anne, I thought you, you wanted to go. You want me to go?

Speaker 1:

is alex cutting that?

Speaker 2:

no, he's not cutting this out. This is staying in but okay, okay, cut this, alex so now we're going to discuss how to give up the fight response. Now, the first thing people don't particularly like this. You need to embody the fight response. So instead of and I am a master at this and I've had to learn to shift this over time instead of amplifying the fight response with unhelpful thoughts or unhelpful behaviors, you're dropping into your body, into the fight response and sitting with it.

Speaker 1:

So allowing it to be there essentially.

Speaker 2:

You're allowing yourself to feel it.

Speaker 1:

And that might not always look calm or smooth or pretty, but it means not perpetuating it and not engaging into like kind of that anger cycle more.

Speaker 2:

Because when we have this fight energy, what's the urge? The urge is to like act, to think our way out of it, to fix or figure out our symptoms right in the moment, and so you're almost like resisting the urge and now sitting with what does frustration or anger feel like in my body?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's not like. That is a hard thing to do.

Speaker 2:

Now, of course you want to do this at a more mild to moderate level at first. When we're rageful, most of us don't have the ability to drop it. It's just too overwhelming. So of course I want people to be safe, but when it's at that more mild to moderate range, we want to drop it. I've had to get really good at this over time because, as ann knows, one thing that would happen to me, like years back, is I would get irritated and then I would that still happens to Tanner.

Speaker 1:

I still get Like what it would be years back.

Speaker 2:

No, I haven't. No, no, I was going to explain.

Speaker 1:

Just give me a second it would happen to me so long ago and I'm so far from that.

Speaker 2:

No, that's not what I'm saying Years back. What would happen is I would get irritated and I would ignore it.

Speaker 2:

And I would get irritated and I would ignore it, and then I would get a little bit more frustrated and I would just try and disconnect, try to frantically fix whatever I'm dealing with, and then I would get really angry and then at some point I would just get rageful and at that point I don't even remember what I was saying, I don't remember my behaviors, it was just like full outrage. So what happens is I just ignored and ignored and it built, and it built. And this happens to people, right, it's like a pressure cooker just waiting to go off, and the more you use unhelpful behaviors and thoughts in that process, the more it builds and builds, and builds.

Speaker 1:

So by sitting with it and allowing it, it's almost letting a little bit of it out or up.

Speaker 2:

Yes, you're, you're touching into it, but if you can start at that more mild to moderate range, like when I was first healing and I do still get annoyed, ann, never at you, though, of course but, I still do get annoyed, but now I have such an ability to automatically just be like okay, I just need to let myself feel annoyed right now and not do anything to worsen this feeling.

Speaker 1:

Ah, and I love you saying that, tanner, because that in a way, you know allowing it will help it. Let go, cause I think there's often this thinking and I fall into this too that actually if we don't do anything and we allow it, then we're kind of like it's going to get worse or we're going to get stuck in it or we're failing in some way. But it's actually the opposite thinking If we allow it and then it kind of like passes along.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because you know releasing emotions. We did this on our last episode.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And we discussed. If you want to release emotions, you need to be with the emotion right. There needs to be an accepting and allowing. This is how I feel right now. But you're right. So many people in our world think that's giving up. You're giving up, um?

Speaker 1:

well, it kind of feels that way.

Speaker 2:

It can be very scary, it can feel that way, but it's actually one of the most useful actions you can do.

Speaker 1:

Can I?

Speaker 2:

just accept and allow. I feel this way Now. This leads us into the second way you can give up the fight accepting and allowing your pain and symptoms. So we just talked about it for fights, but the same thing goes for pain and symptoms. If you want to give up the fight, let go of fighting your pain and symptoms. There needs to be a short-term acceptance. We don't need to do long-term, but short-term acceptance. I have these sensations today. This is how I feel. I'm going to allow myself to feel this way.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I talk with people about this acceptance for now.

Speaker 2:

Because otherwise we get this long-term despairing acceptance and that's not beneficial. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then that goes back to maybe the behaviors that we all might engage in around intensely booking more appointments, intensely kind of searching the internet. So if we're going to kind of allow and also accept a bit, we're going to stop those behaviors too.

Speaker 2:

You got it? That's exactly it. It's like we're stopping these behaviors and we're accepting and allowing the fight, response and our pain and symptoms.

Speaker 1:

We need safe self-talk to do this though. So there is that cognitive piece we're dropping into the body, but we want to remind the brain hey, it's okay.

Speaker 2:

Yes, the safe self-talk can be so important and I think you can have this compassionate lens on it. Compassion, in my opinion, is kind of the opposite of the fight. Response With fight there's not like rigid, intense energy. Compassion is like this gentle care that you have.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so some of these statements might look like my nervous system is trying to protect me by producing this symptom. I don't need to engage in fight response behaviors based on this feeling.

Speaker 2:

By approaching these sensations, I am teaching my nervous system I'm safe to sit with them.

Speaker 1:

It could also look like I don't need to control or change anything. There's nothing to fix or figure out.

Speaker 2:

And lastly, by regulating my nervous system, I can reduce my fight response over time. So these are some safe messages. We do invite people to make them their own, their own, but having this safe sense of compassion is going to help you accept and allow the fight response, your pain and symptoms, and really embody them more fully.

Speaker 1:

And so we suggest people to try this out. Try out the safe self-talk, try out kind of acknowledging the fight response and the sensations and symptoms sitting with it, allowing just see what that's like.

Speaker 2:

The last thing we're going to discuss on ways to give up the fight. I chuckled because I'm so bad at this Still, I'm so terrible at this, but I've gotten better over the years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

There has been improvement, but there's a ways to go. I'll admit that, and we did a whole episode on this. Yes, like I don't know, maybe quite a while back.

Speaker 1:

It's probably a good one to check out, if you haven't heard it.

Speaker 2:

And I was looking back at our episode count. Our episode on embracing uncertainty is one of the most listened to podcast episodes we have.

Speaker 1:

Wow yeah. And it makes sense. That's an important topic and really one that I think we all have trouble with.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So embracing uncertainty here, what you're doing is you're resisting the urge to fix or figure it out, which is so hard. I think, conceptually, a lot of these ideas you and I are both sharing today are quite simplistic in nature, like they're not super complex. They're really hard to do because when we're in a fight, response we want to do the exact opposite, right opposite, right. So accepting allowing your, your emotions or your symptoms. When you're in that fight, response you want to do the exact opposite you want to fight your way out of it.

Speaker 1:

Well, and there's a lot like with insurgency. There's a lot of insurgency when we do that. We don't know what's going to happen with the symptom, if it's going to go away, how long it's going to be there, and so that also is about embracing uncertainty when we do that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that's such a good point and I really want to validate people that we know this is really hard Embracing uncertainty. Even though I healed from my chronic pain, chronic symptoms, years back, I know this is a really hard thing for me to embrace. I'm really good at taking action, at getting control, solving those situations, and some situations we can do that, but when it comes to things like our emotions, our nervous system, say, our physical symptoms, too much control is not going to help us. I think about it like yesterday. Yesterday our son had a little accident. He fell on a picture frame and I heard this thump too. I was downstairs and I was like oh no, but I was hoping, and Anne had the same thought we were hoping, maybe just something fell.

Speaker 1:

Maybe nothing's wrong.

Speaker 2:

Maybe nothing's wrong, but he's okay. But he gashed his wrist on some glass that he fell on like a picture frame, um, and that mobilized energy in that environment.

Speaker 2:

I remember you called my name and I heard the tone of your voice and I was like here we go, we're dealing with this and there was a feeling of like I was able to help, take action, help solve the situation with Ann drive to urgent care. Like in that situation, mobilized energy has served me and you really, really well. We took the action, we dealt with it. We got a cloth, put some pressure on his wrist. We dealt with it in a very seamless way, which there wasn't maybe full fight energy, but there was a feeling of mobilization. But for a lot of things, that control and that action it doesn't solve and when we're dealing with chronic pain, chronic illness, when we're trying to fix and figure things out, it just worsens it over time.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I think that's a good point to kind of reflect on in terms of like, the fight response is there for a reason, but when we are like when it's happening with pain and symptoms, it's a bit misguided. In terms of it, it doesn't work in the same way. And if that's helpful to think of it like that of like oh hey, it's my fight response, but it's actually not helpful in this situation. I'm going to step out of it, because sometimes we need to cognitively keep reminding ourselves why we're changing the way we operate.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and we do want to give people the task of, as you go about your week, really start to understand when am I going into a fight? Response Catching that right away. That's the idea. Notice that you're going into it and then use the things we talked about in this session to just reduce it slightly and if we can do that consistently, it's going to create more safety and that's ultimately going to help us heal our nervous system dysregulation, our chronic pain and our chronic symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2:

So thank you everyone for listening.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening.

Speaker 2:

And 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.

Speaker 2:

Instagram and Facebook accounts in the episode description. We wish you all healing.