The Mind-Body Couple

Go From T to S: The Brain Retraining Method That Helps Desensitize Chronic Pain & Illness

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 119

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Ever find yourself trapped in a cycle of obsessing over every twinge, googling symptoms endlessly, or talking about your pain nonstop? That mental fixation isn't just a reaction to your chronic pain and illness—it might actually be the force keeping it alive.

In this transformative episode, we unveil our powerful "Go From T to S" brain retraining technique for breaking free from chronic pain and illness patterns. This simple yet profound approach helps you identify when you're feeding symptom pathways through common behaviours (the T's): Trying to fix it, Thinking about it too much, Testing it constantly, and Talking about it excessively. We then guide you through shifting to healing actions (the S's): Starving the pathway of attention, Shifting to safety signals, Showing your body it's healthy, practicing Somatic focus appropriately, and Sticking to your game plan.

Tanner shares his personal journey from being bedridden with debilitating pain to experiencing his first breakthrough moment of genuine indifference toward symptoms during his honeymoon. He describes how cultivating this indifference wasn't about forced positive thinking, but about consistently redirecting his attention away from fear-based responses toward safety and regulation. Through concrete examples and practical strategies, we demonstrate how this technique helps your brain finally "forget" about chronic pain and illness by creating new, healthier neural pathways.

Whether you're struggling with chronic pain, fatigue, fibromyalgia, IBS, or anxiety symptoms, this episode offers a missing piece that could transform your healing journey. The goal isn't to mask or ignore your symptoms, but to change your brain's relationship with them at a fundamental level. Check out our online course for comprehensive support in implementing these strategies into your daily life: https://www.mbodycommunity.com/

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.

Speaker 1:

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 or purchase our online course at embodycommunitycom to access in-depth education, somatic practices, recovery tools and an interactive community focused on healing.

Speaker 2:

Links in the description of each episode. Hello everyone, hi everybody, welcome, welcome back. Yeah, today we're gonna do a brain retraining episode, so our topic the brain retraining technique that can help end chronic pain.

Speaker 1:

Go from T to S. Yeah, I like that, from T to S, and we're going to explain all of that in this episode right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, to give credit, the name go from T to S came from our producer, Alex Klassen. He thought he was being pretty witty.

Speaker 1:

But it's good actually and we hope, as we explain this to you guys, it'll stick in your mind of like, okay, I just need to go from T to S, and we hope it's catchy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like a lot of times in our approach, we're talking about somatic work with pain and symptoms. Nervous system regulation Now, of course, that's involved in this skill, but it really structures what you should be doing throughout your day. So do you ever find yourself obsessing over every twinge of pain or illness? The classic Googling of symptoms? Yes, as we talked about last episode, or talking about them nonstop? That's all I talked about with Anne.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, and I remember you're right, it was nonstop, and I was nonstop talking about it with him too in our relationship.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and what you find is that and what you all have probably noticed is your body starts to spiral with more stress and more symptoms, and you're really not imagining this. Yeah, this cycle is very real and it can actually be the thing keeping your chronic pain and illness stuck or even making it worse over time, yep, and I think we really need to highlight that again.

Speaker 1:

It can actually be the thing keeping chronic pain or illness stuck.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Which is hard to kind of wrap our heads around sometimes, because I think we start thinking, no, the more I talk about it, the more I think about it, the more I try to figure it out, I'm going to get to a solution.

Speaker 2:

Now, here's the good news you can break free from this cycle.

Speaker 1:

Ah, yes.

Speaker 2:

So in this episode we're going to introduce you to a powerful brain retraining technique that our agency created, which we call Go From T to S. It's simple and it's a daily skill that everyone can start using to rewire your brain's response to pain and symptoms, and over time, this method can help reduce or eliminate the actual physical symptoms you're having, and it does this by essentially cultivating regulation and indifference about your physical symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and so we'll start with explaining the T's. And so the T's are what not to do. So these are things that keep your brain stuck in pain pathways, like trying to fix it, overthinking testing or talking about symptoms too much. That's what the T's are, and we're going to go into more in depth about that. The S's are what to start doing, are what to start doing, and so that might be starving the pain pathways and helping your brain feel safe, instead shifting to safety signals showing your body it's healthy, or sticking to your game plan.

Speaker 2:

Stick to that game plan.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm. Consistent practice builds indifference towards symptoms, so your brain can finally forget them, and that's what we want.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm, and that's it. We don't say the term indifference lightly, because you know you might be swearing at me right now if you're hearing me say oh, just become indifferent about your pain and symptoms. That's not just going to click on. There's active steps that we can do to cultivate that and that's what this skill is going to help you do. So if you've been struggling with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, ibs or anxiety symptoms, this simple brain retraining tool could be the missing piece in your healing. Now, for myself, I used this skill, or a version of it, when I was getting better, because I was obsessed with my symptoms, as Anne said. I talked to her about it constantly. I wanted reassurance. I was constantly Googling things. I thought about it probably 80% of the day, and then the other 20% of the day I was really just focusing on what do I do to make this go away?

Speaker 1:

And I think most people that I meet with Tanner relate to what you just described by the time, that they're kind of looking for support or another approach.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's so common. It really is. And by the end, for people's context, like I was bed bound yeah, I wasn't working. I was either lying in bed, sitting in a straight back chair in front of the TV and just completely shut down. So I know that this is really hard. Now, in contrast, by using the skill that we're going to talk about today, plus all the other stuff we talk about on this podcast, I remembered my first carefree moment, Like true carefree moments about pain being there. We were on our honeymoon in Mexico. I had been doing the healing work for I don't know about four months, so I was getting a lot of progress not quite fully there, but I was seeing progress and I remember, and we went into the waves in the ocean.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I think I remember that and it was terrifying for me because I was bed bound and now I'm like being like bashed around in the waves.

Speaker 2:

But I was in the moment I did it there was some fear. I remember we went back to our hotel room and we were just getting changed to go to the buffet, yeah, and I had back pain. I could feel it like lower back all the way up to kind of mid upper that burny, tensing, constricting feeling, and it was just a moment where I was like I don't care, like I'm done, like I am not letting this ruin my vacation. Now it sounds magical that moment. Yeah, there was a lot of work in using the skill we're going to talk about that led to that moment, but it was so freeing and within probably less than an hour that symptom had completely gone away.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's pretty amazing.

Speaker 2:

Now we can cultivate this feeling and we need to essentially stop feeding the pathways that are producing chronic pain and chronic symptoms.

Speaker 1:

And that might look like we're going to go through our skill here. But how you feed the pathways might look a bit different than the next guy. So really understanding this like connected to your unique case.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I want to explain so no one's blaming themselves here that your automatic response to pain or symptoms is nervous system dysregulation Fight, flight, fawn, freeze or shutdown. Fear, frustration, despair, annoyance, anger Like this is the natural response when we feel something unpleasant. And while it's trying to protect us, this nervous system response and the thoughts and behaviors that follow just feed that pain and symptom pathway. And so, as we just said, to heal, we got to stop feeding these pathways. The ultimate goal is to help our brain forget, and we created this simple, effective brain retraining skill that you can start to utilize each and every day, throughout your entire day.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and essentially, essentially, when we think of the skill and, as I said, we're gonna go through it really clearly we don't wanna do the T's and we wanna start doing the S's, and that's how we wanna think of it.

Speaker 2:

We need to notice when the T's are occurring. So that's a vital step, because the T's become so automatic that we don't even notice them. So you got to notice when the T's are occurring and then move to instead doing the S's. So what we're going to start with is the T's we don't want to do.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so here are the T's. We're going to go into it in depth. The first one is we don't want to try to fix it.

Speaker 2:

So common right, like whether it's physical treatments or these psychological practices we talk about on our channel, it's an attempt to reduce the sensations and this attempt this like high pressure, to fix it, to figure it out. This is going to put pressure on yourself, this is going to put pressure on your healing and it's going to cause a lot of dysregulation.

Speaker 1:

Now I think there might be some confusion. Maybe they're listening to this, tanner, because people are going to be like wait a minute, you introduced all these psychological practices to me. I'm doing them. Does that mean I shouldn't be?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this is one of the hardest concepts to explain. Yeah, what we need to focus on is cultivating safety, not trying to force your symptoms to go away, not trying to fix your symptoms away. We need to focus on using the skills, even this skill, as a way to cultivate safety in our nervous system, because if we can do that consistently, the symptom will naturally start to fade.

Speaker 1:

So it doesn't mean not doing the practices or the skills or these things that can be helpful for, like nervous system regulation, but it's more of the what is the motive or feeling behind it? Are we trying to fix it kind of desperately in that moment?

Speaker 2:

It's the mindset behind it, and I think about five episodes ago we talked about mindset. Yeah, next.

Speaker 1:

I like to say this one because I think this one is a big one that really hits home for me. Don't think about it too much.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, as I said in our intro, I was thinking about my symptoms 80% of the day, trying to fix them the other 20. And this is really normal, because when we have pain or symptoms, it feels like the most important thing we can do is try to solve it. And so what the brain does is it starts to think about it all the time. We're thinking about symptom levels, triggers, the strategies we should use or what might happen next. Now that you know like, for example, you wake up in the morning you have a symptom, now you're all of a sudden you're thinking about how is this going to affect my whole day? So it really starts to feed this pain and symptom pathway in the brain, this hyper focus and fixation with your thoughts. It's going to keep your brain thinking that your body is really damaged and it's going to support the pain and symptom pathways.

Speaker 1:

And this can be a really difficult one, and this is where it's really important to just kind of give yourself a pat on the back and applause if you have the awareness that you're thinking too much, because that's a start and this is a bit of a process of slowing down that maybe obsessive thinking piece.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Next.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

This one's one of my favorites.

Speaker 1:

You can say it.

Speaker 2:

Don't test it.

Speaker 1:

So what does that mean?

Speaker 2:

So I'll paint a picture here. I I'm making it humorous, but I know this stuff's hard and I had the same thing. Sometimes I'll be in session with a client and I'll be, you know, talking, trying to be empathetic, supportive, Tanner, of course.

Speaker 1:

Good, that's important.

Speaker 2:

You know I'm doing my best, yeah, and what I'll see? I'll be watching a client and let's say the client has some shoulder and neck pain. I'll be watching them do the shoulder dance where they're like moving it. They're moving their shoulder in different positions almost like all session and what they're doing is they're testing it. They're scanning their body and moving it to fearfully check the measure and to test where the symptoms at.

Speaker 1:

Please. I want to say that Tanner used to do this all day long Like I have memories of him doing the shoulder dance literally constantly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, or like the bending.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

I would do this with my back, where I'd be like bending at slightly different angles the whole way around. Yeah, you know, side to side, front, back, and it wasn't exposure, where I was like getting exposure to like safely approaching movement. It was like this fearful testing that I was doing.

Speaker 1:

What if, like some people relate to this, but they also relate to the movement as part of like, oh, but I'm doing it to relieve pain.

Speaker 2:

So it's being careful with these beliefs, because some of these beliefs can fuel your pain and symptoms, like I've seen people where they think they need to sit in certain chairs, right. That belief will keep us stuck. And when symptoms are neuroplastic in nature, which the vast majority of chronic pain and symptoms are, it's not the movement or positions that's triggering anything, it's the dysregulation and fear behind it. So if you're constantly testing, for example, you're just bringing this burst of fear to your brain over and over again, connected with that sensation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's going to feed this cycle of chronic pain and symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and the final T we want to talk about is don't talk about it too much. I think we relate to that and, like I know we mentioned earlier but we relate to that a lot Like it became our full focus of what you would talk about, what I would talk about, what we would talk about together. If anybody isn't like listening to this into a relationship, they probably relate to this becoming engulfing in the relationship as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I'm careful here because partly talking about it can be us getting support, so I want to compare it with you know, there's points when symptoms came up. I just wanted Ann to know so I didn't feel alone with it. Right? That's different than constantly talking about it together, trying to fix it problem solve it or get reassurance from someone in your life over and over again.

Speaker 1:

How would you know the line, tanner, if you're like, okay, relate to this, but I don't really know what's what.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's difficult. You almost like before, when you have that urge inside to like talk about your symptoms. You have to understand, like, what's the feeling behind it? Is it one that you just want to feel supported and empathy from another, or is it one where you're obsessed and you're just like spurting it all out, like really just obsessing and fixating? It's the feeling behind it that's different. But I've seen people's symptoms shift by making their pain a less big piece of the pie of their life.

Speaker 1:

Ah, and that's going to feel hard at first. So if we're like consciously, like okay, aware of this, we're trying to talk about it less, that probably is going to feel a bit like uncomfortable making something else more important or sometimes a smaller piece of the pie, um, but that's a really good start forward.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and this gets into the S's we didn't want to do but, but I did this where I would practice talking with you. I w I was consciously intentional about talking about things with you that had nothing to do with my pain, or my body. And it was really hard to do because we had gone three years where this consumed both of our lives.

Speaker 1:

Do you remember what some of those things were?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so at the time I was thinking about being a lawyer.

Speaker 1:

Oh right.

Speaker 2:

Now that got a little. I'm so glad you're not a lawyer.

Speaker 1:

I know Nothing against lawyers. Just Tanner would be a bad lawyer. He would not be good at it.

Speaker 2:

Well, actually.

Speaker 1:

No, they're a fit for you.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting because I think I'd be good at it. Oh, but my nervous system wouldn't like it very much.

Speaker 1:

He'd be a really stressed lawyer is what he would be I imagine myself. And if you're a lawyer, I feel for you because the pressures that in that profession, but I would be a very stressed out angry lawyer, yes, which is why I mean it's not for him, yeah, which I discovered. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So now let's talk about the S's you want to start doing instead of the T's.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so do starve the brain of the pathway.

Speaker 2:

So, firstly, congratulate yourself for noticing you're falling into the T's and you've noticed yourself fixating and now you want to starve. That pathway, and one of the easiest ways, is to intentionally shift your attention to something else. This could be starting a new hobby. This could be researching a topic that you're interested in online that has nothing to do with health.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

For myself. A big thing that I focused on when I was healing was finding out what career I wanted to do. What were the pros and cons of being a lawyer? Like this was helpful, though, because, like I was bringing my focus intentionally away and I was starving that pathway of attention, and so I get creative with this. I would go out for and my friends were great with this but I would go out with my friends and they knew it's like we're not talking about pain with Tanner, so they would like be jokey and talking about other things you know silly things but I was bringing my focus elsewhere. In a perfect world, if you can do this on, like, pleasant things or things that are valuable or meaningful to you, you could also bring your attention to emotional things. So, if you're like having an issue in a relationship, could you express that appropriately, get support, fix that relationship up. So, like this is the example, you're just shifting your attention to something else.

Speaker 1:

But I'm thinking people might be wondering does that mean I'm avoiding?

Speaker 2:

So I'm all for focusing on pain and symptoms in a certain way, with compassion, ease, curiosity, safety, interest. I'm not for focusing on pain and symptoms with this state of dysregulation, such as trying to fix it, thinking about it too much, testing it, talking about it too much, these T's that we talked about.

Speaker 1:

Ah, so that's why the awareness that we're in the teas is so important.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so this gets confusing to people, because it's one of the confusing parts of healing is on certain episodes I'm telling you focus on your pain and symptoms and dysregulation, and then other episodes.

Speaker 2:

We're telling you don't focus on it, don't do that. It's a balance. During, for example, like somatic tracking or, in our approach, embodiment practices, we're having people focus on their symptoms and create safety. Outside of the few times that you're doing that a day, I don't want people focusing on their symptoms. I want them using this skill that we're talking about today.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yep, for sure. Okay, the next S we want to talk about is do shift to safety signals.

Speaker 2:

Safety signals. I love safety signals.

Speaker 1:

I do too. I talk about that a lot with people.

Speaker 2:

It's so key. It's so key for people to understand what safety signals work for them. This could be a lot of things. It could be internal safety signals, such as breath work, somatic movement, somatic touch, present moment sensing, tapping and massage, or safe self-talk. These are internal safety signals and just figuring out what ones work for you, Like this morning I did a Qigong routine with some deep breathing, some somatic movement, and I focused on sensations as I did that. I like that because it's I'm starting my day with a burst of safety. There's also external ones right, Like a pet, a certain person, nature, food, art, music. When you notice yourself falling into these T's, you could shift to a safety signal yeah, because shifting to safety signals is the opposite of the tease.

Speaker 1:

It's not trying to figure it out. It's not talking about it too much? Yeah, right, it's not thinking about it yeah, we're.

Speaker 2:

We're giving our nervous system what it actually needs and what's actually going to be healing, which is instilling a state of safety and giving you more easy access there. Next, do show your body. It's healthy, and we do this by taking active steps towards expanding our world outward. This could be certain movements or positions, like I really worked on walking. I was showing my brain hey, you can walk for three minutes. Hey, now you can walk for five minutes, even if the pain's mild. I was showing my brain what was taking place. This could also be. I've worked with a lot of people of like gradually returning to work. You're showing your brain no, I am able to work five hours. No, I am able to work 20 hours a week now. Like it's really, really healing. So, instead of doing all the teas you can shift to, like showcasing to your brain hey, I'm actually safe.

Speaker 1:

And I think it can be really powerful. I think it can also be scary at first, and so starting showing in small ways is an okay place to be.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you want to be careful here. You want to make it mild, to moderate the exposure. That's why it's always called graded exposure. Going to run a marathon when you haven't walked more than five minutes in two years not a good idea, and I relate to you there. But I couldn't go and start with running. I got to running eventually, but it took time. Yeah, next, do somatic focus.

Speaker 1:

So again back to what we're saying we want to do somatic focus, but without the T's present.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So you're not trying to fix anything. You're not trying to make something happen, make your symptom go away. You're not hyper-focusing on it. You are dropping into your body with ease, compassion, curiosity, lightness. You're noticing what's happening, describing it in detail, and you're approaching the pleasant, neutral or unpleasant sensations within. You're just noticing what's taking place. I think this is so key because a lot of the T's involve our cognitive mind. Where this is different, you're being with what feels dysregulating inside and learning to cultivate safety there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, our final S is do stick to the game plan.

Speaker 2:

The game plan.

Speaker 1:

This very much could be a game plan.

Speaker 2:

This is exactly what we've talked about so far. This is a great game plan. Yeah, most of us have been on this journey for a while. If you're new, we have lots of episodes on this podcast. I also have a lot of free content on YouTube and practices. What I'll see happen to people is they get a flare and they get so far away from doing the things that they committed to do. Now they're like trying to go back to treat it physically.

Speaker 1:

They're lost in Google world.

Speaker 2:

They're lost in Google world. They're, you know, testing, constantly thinking about it. Talking about it, they get moved away because the flares scared them, and I get that.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

Flares are scary. They, they suck. Yeah, that's well, that puts it lightly, but they were terrible. So we really want people to stay focused. Stay focused on the game plan. The healing path is not linear. We want your symptoms to reduce over time, but it's kind of like those stock market charts, Like it's bumpy, it's volatile on the way down and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah for sure. And actually one thing that people share with me that helped them is sometimes they write out their game plan somewhere like the fridge, their wall, their bathroom mirror, somewhere, so they can see it and be reminded if they're in a flare of like okay, this is my game plan.

Speaker 2:

so sometimes, knowing this is how I operate, I want to operate the same way in a flare yeah, I've seen people it's great ideas put sticky notes all over their house, right one saying safety signals, yeah, one maybe writing it a piece of their neuroplastic evidence, like they have. All it's a great idea to put sticky notes all over their house, right One saying safety signals, yeah One maybe writing a piece of their neuroplastic evidence, like they have all these sticky notes that are reminding them. No, this is what I'm doing today.

Speaker 1:

Yes, because it's hard, when we're struggling with pain or dysregulation, to yeah, to stick to the game plan.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so this is the go from T to S skill. By using this consistently, it's going to help you cultivate indifference and regulation towards your symptoms, which is ultimately going to help your brain feel safer, and that's going to reduce or eliminate your chronic symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Now in our digital course we have a whole lot of brain retraining, techniques, practices, educations, so the link for the somatic safety method course is down below and also our therapy agency. We support people doing this because, even though we've explained this very laid out skill, we know it gets complicated, there's nuances to it. Some people need support. In our therapy clinic we're able to work with people located within Canada, so you can check that link out below as well. So thank you so much everyone for listening.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2:

And we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1:

Talk to you soon. 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.