The Mind-Body Couple

Let Them: The Chronic Pain & Illness Edition

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 116

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The struggle for control lies at the heart of many chronic pain conditions—but what if letting go could offer more relief than fighting ever could? 

When faced with persistent symptoms, our natural instinct pushes us to fight, fix, and control. We've been conditioned to believe that addressing physical problems means actively engaging with them, finding their cause, and eliminating them through sheer determination. Yet for those with neuroplastic pain and symptoms, this approach often backfires, creating a feedback loop of frustration, fear, and worsening symptoms.

Drawing on Mel Robbins' powerful "Let Them" concept, we explore the counterintuitive approach of acceptance and allowing that can transform your relationship with chronic symptoms. This isn't about resignation—it's about recognizing what you genuinely can and cannot control. As Mel wisely states, "Focusing on what you can't control makes you stressed. Focusing on what you can control makes you feel powerful."

Tanner shares a deeply personal story of his longest pain flare after initial recovery, describing how weeks of attempting to control and fix his symptoms led nowhere. The breakthrough came only when he genuinely surrendered the fight, creating space for his nervous system to regulate and his symptoms to naturally subside. This powerful example demonstrates how our attitude toward symptoms can be more influential than any specific technique or practice.

Rather than fighting against pain and illness, we invite you to explore embodiment practices with curiosity and compassion, shift your focus toward meaningful activities aligned with your values, and remind yourself that your body is fundamentally safe and healthy. These approaches create the platform of safety from which true healing can emerge.

Ready to transform your relationship with chronic symptoms? Download our free embodiment practice using the link below, or explore our comprehensive digital course featuring over 60 somatic practices and brain retraining techniques designed to support your healing journey.

Embodiment Practice for Chronic Pain & Illness: https://youtu.be/FuE_XMbWEh4

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. Our topic today, let them the chronic illness edition.

Speaker 1:

Ah, yes.

Speaker 2:

We're doing a spin on a popular topic nowadays. So Mel Robbins is a very popular motivational speaker, lawyer, writer, and she recently published a book called Let them. Her work is influencing the mental health world and we thought we'd do our spin on this idea and really talk about how the concept of let them can be applied to chronic pain and chronic symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely, and so I think, to start, we want to talk about what let them means, and so in Mel Robbins' work, she outlines let them as meaning stopping trying to control other people's actions or opinions, because really you can't, and instead preserve your energy and peace. And that's an interesting statement and a very powerful idea, because I think a lot of us struggle with that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, especially people that develop neuroplastic pain and symptoms, myself included.

Speaker 1:

Anne works with me and lives with me, so she knows, and I'm married to you, and you're married to me, and I have children with you.

Speaker 2:

And you have children and you have cats with me.

Speaker 1:

And a dog.

Speaker 2:

And a dog, and so you know that the one thing that Tanner really likes is control.

Speaker 1:

Ah, yes, and so this idea of letting them and kind of letting other people's perception of you, letting other people kind of in their behavior be detached from you and not letting that really come into your world or try not to bother you is a complicated thing, and so let them can also mean detaching from others' behavior, defining personal worth and success from within instead of others and having that influence what we do or think, and also not needing to fix or fight and simply letting other people act.

Speaker 1:

But we have the right to decide how we want to respond.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a really challenging thing to do and the concept sounds quite simplistic. Yeah, I was actually talking to a friend of mine, a therapist, and we were talking about how simplistic this let them idea is, but it's really hard to do.

Speaker 1:

So you're saying in our example of like living together, working together and having all these animals and kids together, that I need to work on letting them and preserving my energy instead of letting kind of what you do or think impact me?

Speaker 2:

Exactly, I think you just need to. Let me be me.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wait, wait, wait. This is great, this is where we're going.

Speaker 2:

I like this.

Speaker 1:

Kind of Well, and there's some truth to that. So the more I get frustrated by you and what you do or don't do, or maybe also the more kind of worry about your actions and your thoughts of me and kind of let that become my world, that really does impact me and my experience. So, yes, we can definitely apply this, let them, to our relationship as well.

Speaker 2:

Yes, deciding what you can control and what you can't control.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And the let them is letting go of the things that you just can't control. You can't Like for anyone listening who's in a romantic relationship. You can't fully control your partner.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm, and this also applies to, like, this idea of what we can or can't control. Sometimes we can't control our first response or emotions at first. A really great quote that Mel Robbins outlines I want to share with you right now. So she says you will also never be able to control your emotional responses because they're automatic, just like how your stress response turns on automatically. Automatic, just like how your stress response turns on automatically.

Speaker 1:

But you can always choose what you think, say or do in response to other people, the world around you or the emotions that are rising up inside of you. That's the source of all your power and I love that quote. I think it's really amazing to think about of like, oh, I have choice, I do have control in some sense in terms of how I choose to respond, but also that kind of kindness and forgiveness in terms of like, okay, I have this automatic reaction or have this emotion, or I have this experience. I am in that I can't control, but understanding that and letting that be a bit and then going to how you want to choose to respond.

Speaker 2:

And this really applies to chronic pain and chronic symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, not just our relationship.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, not just you and me.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 2:

Because, like the actions of others, you cannot directly control the sensations of neuroplastic pain and symptoms. Symptoms occur essentially because your brain and nervous system are sensitized, and this occurs because it's just felt too in danger for too long and, as a result, it starts to produce physical symptoms. Now a lot of people, when they learn about neuroplastic pain and symptoms, they do what they've always done, because before coming to this approach, a lot of people try to fix, figure out their physical cause of their symptoms. They do all these treatments physio, osteopath, injections and they're doing this to desperately try to control the sensations. But when people come to understand, oh, my symptoms are neuroplastic, they end up doing the same thing.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's really true, tanner. I think it also is very confusing because Often when we come to this mind-body approach, we start learning tools and skills and different things to work with our symptoms, and the aim in the long run is the hope to get rid of them. And so how can we kind of and I know we're going to talk about the let them in a minute but how can you kind of step away from that fix it kind of mentality?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think to take a step back. The first thing that everyone needs to do is realize when their brain snaps into fix it, figure out mode, because so many people when I work with them, they'll come to session and it's clear that's what they've been doing for the last two weeks and I never judged someone for that, like if there's anyone in the world that likes to fix and figure things out it's me, it's me.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, it's sneaky, and so what I'll see is like people come to session and they spent two weeks doing this and have no awareness that they snap back into this. So, yes, we're going to talk about this idea of let them, which is really the solution, but the first thing is you need awareness because, whether you're using physical treatments or you're using these mind body techniques, if you're doing them to control, fix, figure out your symptoms, it is going to create more fixation, more frustration and more fear and it creates this feedback loop where we react to symptoms by becoming more dysregulated, and the more dysregulated we become, the more the brain produces pain and physical symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Well, and back to the original, let them kind of idea. We can't control what other people think of us. We can't control their actions. There's so much in the world around us we can't control. The more we fight and push against that, so much stress and dysregulation happens in our minds and our body. And so why wouldn't that same concept apply when we're fighting and trying to control our symptoms that we fully can't control either?

Speaker 2:

Yes, Now I'm going to say two words that people hate oh no I know. No, I I like thank you for this warning I'm warning people, they're not gonna like me right now, and that's okay I often don't like you I will, I will, I will.

Speaker 1:

Let you not like me sometimes oh oh, that's good right, I guess all right, keep going, tanner.

Speaker 2:

I also should change sometimes. So let's be fair. But you know, when we're talking about this, the best way to respond to your symptoms is by accepting, in the short run, that they are here and allowing them to take place. As I've said, people don't like those two terms and I don't mean you need to accept that you're going to have chronic pain and symptoms for life, because if your symptoms are neuroplastic, I don't think that's necessarily the case, but you do, in the short run, need to accept and allow the sensations of pain and symptoms to take place.

Speaker 1:

And if it helps, thinking of like I'm accepting and allowing for now can make that easier to land.

Speaker 2:

And I want to lay out a quick story of how powerful this let them idea can be in terms of shifting your pain and physical symptoms over time. So I've shared this story before, but it was a couple of years back. My biggest pain flare after I initially healed. So for new listeners, I recovered from neuroplastic pain widespread, debilitating neuroplastic pain about 10 years ago Now. That doesn't mean I've never had symptoms again. I've never had chronic symptoms since, but my longest flare that I had was actually several years after I first recovered and my longest flare was about, I want to say, five or six weeks Now. At the time I had gotten into perfectionism again. My best friend Anne, yes.

Speaker 2:

I was controlling everything.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

We had our daughter in the midst of this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And both our kids were premature. Our daughter was born at 29 weeks, I think. We were in the NICU, and so my schedule revolved.

Speaker 1:

Oh no, and it was the pandemic.

Speaker 2:

And the pandemic hits. The COVID pandemic hits a day after our daughter was born.

Speaker 1:

actually, I want to say in this, though I want to give props to me right now for experiencing all that with a very stressed out Tanner at the time.

Speaker 2:

You had a dysregulated Tanner, my goodness.

Speaker 1:

You were holding him for it Good work for me, yeah, anyways.

Speaker 2:

No, you deserve that. After hearing that, I was like, wow, Truly, you deserve that. You deserve that because I was doing my best to help. Because, I was doing my best to help, but it wasn't pretty and so, by the time our daughter was born, I was already in fight or flight perpetually, and this happens to people.

Speaker 2:

I'm human, just like anyone else. Things slip up, we get into old ways of coping. It just falls apart from there. And when our daughter was born it was just like just a storm. It was a real rough time for both of us. We both weren't allowed to see our daughter together because she was in the NICU and we weren't allowed to have two people there at once. We would switch off, so I would go visit our daughter at 4 am and I would go to work all day and then I would come home and then I would tag you out, take care of our son who was no longer in daycare at this time and then you would go to the hospital and, as a result, I started to get my old pain in my right leg and I did everything to fix it and figure it out.

Speaker 2:

I knew from the beginning it was neuroplastic, so there was no doubt about that. Luckily I didn't fall into like debating it, but I did everything and I knew so much about this world. So I was doing the emotional work, I was doing the journaling, I was doing nervous system regulation stuff, I was doing, you know, somatic work with the pain, everything. But it was with this intent of I need this to go away. I can't handle this right now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that is so common, I can't handle this right now. Yeah, and that is so common. And when we start knowing the skills and we're in this world of falling into this like control mode with the healing activities, yeah, and I remember this moment so clearly because this is where it switched.

Speaker 2:

I was in the garage working on something. I remember being in the garage working on something anyways, and my pain was not super high, but it was about a four or five out of 10. So it was quite annoying and I just got to this place of like I'm done, like I'm done trying to fight this, I'm done trying to make this go away, I'm done doing anything to try and force this to change. There was like this real and it wasn't letting go in terms of despair, like it wasn't like I'm giving up, there's nothing I'm hopeless. It was just this acceptance of you're here right now. I know what you are and I'm just going to let you, I'm just going to let you be here, allow the sensations and within half an hour, the symptoms just vanished.

Speaker 2:

Wow, it was and it still was a little bumpy for the next couple of weeks, but it was such a stark shift of this is it and this is why I say this accepting and allowing, which essentially is this let them idea is so essential? It's the first step, because it guides everything else you're going to do, all the fancy practices. They need to have this attitude, this lens, attached to it.

Speaker 1:

Another quote that we wanted to share, by Mel Robbins, says focusing on what you can't control makes you stressed. Focusing on what you can control makes you feel powerful, and I think in that moment, tanner, you just decided where am I going to put my focus right now, yeah, and I put my focus not into shifting the symptoms, the pain sensations.

Speaker 2:

I shifted my focus to okay, I got to take the pressure off myself right now. I got to let go trying to be perfect at work. I don't have the space for that and I'm going to like actually try my best to enjoy aspects of us just having a daughter, even though this is the middle of the pandemic.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I think this really ties into self-compassion too, and so if you're kind of exploring self-compassion or have a practice, this is because it sounds like for you, tanner you made that decision to almost like let them and then be a bit kinder to yourself, yeah, and so they can really work hand in hand as part of the solution.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. So, really, what we're talking about is what can you do instead? Yeah, instead of fighting, fixing controlling Compassion, compassion.

Speaker 2:

Compassion is a key part and part of our approach. We have things that are called embodiment practices. What this is is it's not a technique to try and make your symptom go away. I do think if you use this brain retraining technique consistently, it will change things over time. But you need this. Let them attitude as you do it, and what you're doing is you're giving yourself exposure to being in your body, with curiosity, with interest, with this sense of compassion, like really diving in and exploring and then cultivating safety while you're there.

Speaker 2:

So, as a free giveaway, we are putting a link in the description of this episode for an embodiment practice for pain and symptoms. So this will get you started. Also, our digital course has over 60 plus somatic practices brain retraining techniques. Everything is laid out in our digital course has over 60 plus somatic practices brain retraining techniques. Everything is laid out in that digital course much more than you would ever need, and I'll put the link for our digital course down below as well. Now the other thing you can do instead of just embodiment practices is you can shift your attention to purposeful action.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Focusing on values, what motivates you, what makes you feel alive in life, putting your attention not so much into fixing and figuring out your symptoms, but actually start writing your world and working on things that are meaningful to you.

Speaker 1:

And that can feel so amazing. It can be scary at first because I think our brain, our fear brain, thinks we have to control and fix and figure out. So it can be a little bit of like, no I'm not doing that, I'm going to focus here, and that can feel uncomfortable. But there's something really wonderful that happens once we start to do that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a huge part of the solution that people miss because they get so fixated on their symptoms. But as you make your life bigger, your symptoms will naturally, over time, become smaller.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And lastly, if you've assessed your symptoms and have found that they are neuroplastic sometimes it's simply reminding yourself this is just my brain being protective. My body is safe and healthy.

Speaker 2:

I no longer need to fix this or figure it out. Sometimes, though, that safe self-talk can go a really long way for people, and so, to conclude, when we stop fighting our symptoms and let them, we create a sense of safety, and we create a platform where we can use all the other fancy techniques in a very meaningful way, and over time, this sense of safety that will develop from doing this is going to cause our symptoms to desensitize and reduce, naturally, though it is trying to perfectly control them. So I hope this episode was helpful for everyone, 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, instagram and Facebook accounts in the episode description.

Speaker 2:

We wish you all healing.