The Mind-Body Couple

Part 1: How to Go from Bed Bound to Fully Moving

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 124

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Have you found yourself avoiding more and more activities as your pain or symptoms increase? Do you have an ever-growing list of movements, positions, or situations you need to avoid "or else"? You're not alone, and there's a fascinating explanation for why this happens.

Tanner and Anne dive deep into how chronic pain creates a shrinking world through avoidance behaviors. Drawing from Tanner's personal journey from being nearly bed-bound to fully active again, they explain the neurological mechanisms that create false associations between normal activities and pain/symptoms. These associations form what they call your "pain or symptom rulebook" – a collection of often unconscious restrictions that your brain believes will keep you safe.

The science is compelling: your brain is an association-making machine designed for survival. Just like Pavlov's dogs salivated at the sound of a metronome, your nervous system can learn to produce pain or symptoms when you engage in activities it mistakenly believes are dangerous. The more you avoid these activities, the stronger these associations become, creating a vicious cycle that keeps you trapped.

"I had so many hidden rules that I didn't realize I were doing," Tanner shares, recounting how his world gradually shrank to the point where sitting on couches felt terrifying and walking more than ten minutes seemed impossible. The irony is that this avoidance, while providing temporary relief, actually increases nervous system dysregulation and perpetuates the pain cycle.

This episode provides an eye-opening framework for understanding why simply "pushing through" or "completely avoiding" pain or symptom triggers aren't effective long-term strategies. Instead, they offer a practical exercise to identify your own pain or symptom rulebook as the first step toward breaking free from these limitations. Grab a notebook and follow along to discover the hidden rules that might be governing your life.

Ready to reclaim your freedom from pain? Listen now, and be sure to catch next week's episode where Tanner and Anne will share six powerful strategies to safely break your rules and expand your world again.

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. Hi everyone.

Speaker 1:

Hi everybody Welcome back.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back. We got a great topic, a two-part topic, two-part topic, and this is something that I feel a lot of people need support with. A lot of people desperately want to learn how to do this, and we're going to talk about how to go bed-bound to fully moving.

Speaker 1:

And I think, Tanner, I don't think I've ever encountered someone that doesn't relate to having a smaller world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and even if you're not bed bound like I was most of us, we avoid things in our life. When we feel these unpleasant sensations of pain or symptoms, naturally as human pains, we run for the hills. We've run away as fast as we can. Right Now, it's really vital for everyone to ask themselves has neuroplastic pain or fatigue made your world feel very small, where you're avoiding things like activities or movements, places, people, because this is so common when we're working with people that they're coming to see us and their world has shrunk to such a small level.

Speaker 1:

And I get it Like if doing activity or doing certain things increases the pain, then yeah, that makes sense to not do those things anymore.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we're going to talk about how avoidance, even though it might provide short-term relief, is not going to be the long-term solution to healing chronic pain or symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Now for myself. I had to work at this incredibly hard during my healing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And we're going to talk about my story a bit as we go throughout today. But I was the master of avoiding anything that I thought might be triggering my pain. I just would stop doing it instantly.

Speaker 1:

Well, let's talk about for a moment. Tanner, you mentioned that temporary relief, so what did that do for you when you were stopping or avoiding at first?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think the thing here to understand is that your brain can make these powerful associations between a normal or neutral activity and pain and symptoms being triggered. So, again, this is a mistaken association. That happens. But when these associations take place, you're smart as a human being. So you're seeing oh, I bent over too far and all of a sudden got a back spasm or some back pain, and this is how it starts is now okay, I don't bend fully over ever. And then all of a sudden, walking is dangerous because that one time you walked triggered a pain flare. So it's really easy how this starts to pile up. People start to set all these different rules of what they can and cannot do.

Speaker 1:

And when you followed those rules. So say, you had a day where you were following those rules of not doing those things. What was it like for you, what was your pain like of not doing those things? What was it like for you? What was your pain like?

Speaker 2:

So the thing that happens is I had so much fear over doing these things, doing these activities, movements, positions, that when I had to do them I would be panicking. And then you know, say I had to, you know, walk around at work a lot that day. I'd already be freaking out in my mind and sometimes the pain would start to come on even before I started to walk.

Speaker 1:

Well, and that's a really interesting observation, and if you relate to this, I kind of encourage people to think about this. It's like what is my relationship with my body and the pain when I'm in that avoidance, because it can give us that sense of control or temporary relief, but it's almost like we are keeping ourselves safe, but we're tricking ourselves as well as like, okay, if I stay in this very small bubble, I'm okay. But, that bubble gets smaller and smaller over time.

Speaker 2:

Well, and that's exactly it your brain and your nervous system. Over time, when you have chronic pain and symptoms, it comes to believe so much is dangerous and now it's using pain and fatigue to protect you. It's this protective mechanism where, you know, I start to walk and my brain really views walking as dangerous, so it is just firing off pain right away. Yeah, so it is just firing off pain right away.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I remember this, like when I think back to this time, tanner, I remember how limited things got for you and how small things got and same thing being on this belief that, okay, tanner can't do these things and rightly so Like when you did them you became very much in pain, very much fatigued, like there was barriers there, but I didn't have the knowledge at that time that actually the avoidance was making this even more gigantic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, I think neither of us really knew at that point. And what occurred to me and what occurs to so many people I work with that have chronic pain, chronic fatigue, other chronic symptoms and you've really shrunk your world is you just go into this like frozen shutdown state Because you're becoming so immobilized over time that your system and it feels so overwhelming doing anything that your system just starts to shut down. So in today's episode we're going to really dive into this. We're going to dive into how do these associations actually form Like, why do they keep us stuck and why is breaking them so essential for people's healing?

Speaker 1:

You say that with such conviction, tanner, you're like very into that right now.

Speaker 2:

I am because and you know I say this in the least judgmental way because I was there I get how scary it is to start to break these associations and widen your world. But the one thing that I will see kill a client's progress more than anything else is when too much avoidance is on board for too long as they're trying to heal.

Speaker 1:

Ah, I like that. What about, then? Because I agree with you. What about somebody that's like okay, I am widening my world, but maybe not quite enough, Like there is almost too slow or shallow, if that makes sense, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And we're going to talk about this even more so in part two, uh, next week. But I think there is a balance of like I see people like really shy away from it and be too scared to go very quick or quick enough, and then I see other people like pushing, plowing through, yeah, and it's like way too intense. So there there is a balance of we don't want you to do this so slowly that it's going to take you a hundred years, but we also don't want you to do it so quickly that you're in a perpetual pain flare for the next four months. So there is a balance here. But yeah, we're really going to explain associations, really understand how they develop, and we're going to help you start to identify where you need to maybe start, so how the brain creates associations.

Speaker 1:

And we've already kind of touched on this a little bit, We've touched on this.

Speaker 2:

We're going to break down a bit of the science here.

Speaker 1:

Ah science. Yeah, Anne loves science, Ah science.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting because Anne's dad is like an epic scientist.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, wait, are you like comparing me?

Speaker 2:

to my dad right now, as like not in the same realm.

Speaker 1:

Here this is getting heated.

Speaker 2:

No, no, no.

Speaker 1:

What's happening.

Speaker 2:

What I'm saying is like your dad like loves science, like he's, you know, he even bought our son like science books.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And you like. There's probably not a topic you hate more than the entire world.

Speaker 1:

It's true.

Speaker 2:

Maybe math and same with my sister.

Speaker 1:

She's a bit more like science-minded, but neither of us got my dad's quite science brain, unfortunately. I think maybe he's like oh wishes that.

Speaker 2:

Maybe our kids will get some of the science brain. I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Maybe. Okay, we're getting off track.

Speaker 2:

So the science you know. One of the amazing things I always tell people is how your human brain so quickly makes connections to survive. It is essentially an association-making machine From early in childhood. What's going to happen is we learn to repeat what feels safe, what feels nice, and avoid what feels unsafe or dangerous.

Speaker 1:

We see that in our kids. We see them as they learn and explore the world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we see that. Even you know. If you have a pet at home, this is what happens, and to understand this, let's go way back to Pavlov's famous experiments. So here's what he did he clicked a metronome before feeding dogs and then, soon after this, the dogs would begin to salivate just from the sound of the metronome, even if there was no food in sight. So their brain had created this association that the clicking sound of the metronome equals dinner's coming. So this is what it is. You know, our pets do this, we do this, and it can benefit us and help us survive in lots of ways.

Speaker 2:

But when it comes to pain and symptoms, it starts to fall apart, Because you have to imagine the same process is happening when you have pain or symptoms. Okay, I'll give you an example from my own life. When I was first starting to feel pain, probably in about the first year, I noticed every time I went for a walk, naturally my brain started asking why does my back hurt while I'm walking? Why do my back and hips feel sore and tight and painful? And quickly, without skipping a beat, the obvious answer was it must be the walking, and so this was kind of one of my first associations that I really remember developing and becoming ingrained.

Speaker 1:

And one thing about this, tanner, because I think this example can feel complicated, because we know activity could maybe possibly create pain in our bodies and so that assumption logically doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think we're taught this because we're taught oh, if you're injured and you keep doing movements or dangerous positions or activities, you're just going to make your injury worse. But when it comes to chronic pain and symptoms, it's a completely different ballgame, Because the vast majority of chronic pain and symptoms are neuroplastic, meaning there is no damage or disease in your body. This is due to your brain and nervous system being stuck in danger mode.

Speaker 1:

Well, and that's an important piece, to develop awareness around. This is to remember that.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and so what I did? I avoided it and over time my walking shrank more and more. I was probably thinking back, especially maybe like two years in, I was limiting my walking to maybe 10 minutes max, even like the grocery shopping. I remember getting new to do at that time because I was scared. I was scared to like go to the grocery store and be standing and walking for 20 minutes. That felt really terrifying because every time I walked, pain would occur. So this is the connection that started to take place. The problem, as we're saying, is that the walking wasn't causing it. It wasn't damaging my back in any way. All that was happening is my level of stress and nervous system dysregulation at that time was so high that my brain was making this error. It was making this mistake of you know. There's something wrong. There's something wrong with this movement when it was actually completely safe.

Speaker 1:

Well, and that makes sense too, because when we're in a lot of pain, we start searching for the why. Why is this happening? What's causing it? So it makes sense that we would land on, or you would land on, walking at that time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we're giving this as an example. With movement, this can happen with everything.

Speaker 1:

Totally Is there like do you remember other things that you had associations connected to?

Speaker 2:

I had it with clothing.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and I've heard that from people- yeah, and I had all sorts of wild explanations of why certain shirts would hurt my shoulder more and others wouldn't. Right, maybe the seam's in the wrong place, maybe something's going on, because this is it. We're trying to make meaning out of something, not understanding that all that happened is, you know, when I was wearing certain shirts, my shoulder pain was bad at first, and now, the next time I go and do that, my brain just clicks on shoulder pain as soon as I put that shirt on.

Speaker 1:

And the more we avoid it, the bigger it gets.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And that's like something I think that's really important to remember and we like fuel the belief if we avoid it or stay away from it.

Speaker 2:

And an interesting part around this this is kind of a bit more of the science behind it is there can be this conscious fear, like I had, conscious fear of walking, for example, but your brain has also made this like strong unconscious link and so sometimes people ask well, I'm not thinking about you know walking being scary, it just comes on.

Speaker 1:

Right, I'm not afraid of it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's the thing is like the fear is going to fuel it more. But your brain can have this unconscious link where it's just firing it off, where we're not fully aware of it. But you're right, anne, in the sense that these associations can grow stronger and more numerous over time. Certain movements I've seen it with weather, food, time of day was a really common one for me Socialization I've seen it where certain people will trigger someone's pain.

Speaker 1:

Oh yes, like you know, mother-in-laws is a common one I hear. Mother-in-law.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, what are you saying about my mom?

Speaker 1:

Nothing'm saying nothing there, but I just say that mother-in-law has come up a lot, um, or like my pain is so much better on the weekend versus the weekday.

Speaker 2:

I hear that a lot yeah, and so you really want to start to realize all these different associations that have been piling up, because it is not a sign of damage or disease in your body, it's just this mistaken association that has been trying to protect you. So now we are going to discuss one of my favorite topics the pain or symptom rule book.

Speaker 1:

Yes, live by rules.

Speaker 2:

We like rules, yeah, we do like, I like rules but they're not always good for us, which is what we're going to talk about they're, they're not, and you know the pain and symptom rule book is something that we do with people in our digital course in detail. It's also something I definitely do a lot one-on-one with clients, because these pain or symptom rules what you can think about them is, let's explain by walking. To give an example, walking caused back and hip pain for me, so I developed this rule of oh, I have to walk under 10 minutes. That's a rule that took place. Now, if you were living by one or two pain or symptom rules not a big deal, like if that was my only rule, but I could do everything else. Sure, it's not great, but it's not the end of the world. But a lot of times people just have dozens or I've seen hundreds of rules Throughout their day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah that they are following yes, trying to meticulously manage their pain and symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Ah, so that's back to that idea of making your world small and that avoidance piece, because the rules really keep that going.

Speaker 2:

Yes, they really do. They shrink your world to such a small level where you know we naturally go into shutdown and we don't feel alive anymore and we're just terrified to do anything.

Speaker 1:

Well, and it's confusing because the rules are learned out of pain. We don't want pain, so we have this rule to try to kind of mitigate that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Which again makes sense. So I really empathize with this, because it's complicated.

Speaker 2:

And my pain and symptom rulebook was massive.

Speaker 1:

Yes. I remember that rulebook, Tanner.

Speaker 2:

You know, there's ones I. I was following your rulebook as well and was also in the rulebook.

Speaker 1:

I was yeah.

Speaker 2:

I was a part of it, you were, and it was really tough at that time because by the end of my pain journey I was basically bed bound. I wasn't working, I laid in bed most of the time. The only other two positions that were somewhat comfortable is I would sit in like remember that straight back chair oh, the straight back chair to watch TV, because I was terrified of couches. Yes, another rule don't sit on couches.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

So I had like a towel rolled under my lower back sitting watching TV and in hindsight you have to think you know I was what 23, 24 years old at the time Like I was young and the other time the only other way I would watch TV is I would lie on the ground in front of the TV and there was just so many rules that really limited me. And understanding your rule book is the first step to starting to widen your world. So there can be do and don't rules. So we'll give some examples. Do rules I need to stretch for 20 minutes a day. I need to go to physiotherapy or massage twice a week using, you know, a heating pad.

Speaker 1:

Every night is essential ah, and you touched on something there because we can have rules around healing activities as well, yeah, and those aren't always helpful too, so that's something that like be aware of.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've seen people where they thought I have to meditate for an hour a day or else. Now I'm all for meditation, but you're now doing that activity out of a place of fear and dysregulation, so it's not actually benefiting them Right Now. There's also don't do rules, sit on hard chairs, type on a computer, lift my arms above my head, eat certain foods, move too quickly. Yes, so there's all these rules. Now these rules might feel protective, but here's the truth around them. The rules are just often incorrect. They're just not right. Like I was able to sit on a couch. It wasn't damaging my body. I was terrified, I can tell you to do that. But we have to start to understand that probably most of your rulebook is just incorrect associations that have taken place.

Speaker 1:

How did you get to a point, Tanner, of believing that enough to start challenging your rulebook?

Speaker 2:

So it was really tricky and we're going to talk about this in part two in further detail. But if you go back in the episodes of our podcast, we had episodes on evidence for neuroplastic pain, another two-part series evidence for neuroplastic pain.

Speaker 1:

Tanner likes his two-part series, you guys.

Speaker 2:

Well, I like the two-part series because it makes our producer happy. Oh, alex, you know he likes it too. He loves the two-part series because it makes our producer happy.

Speaker 1:

Oh, alex, you know he likes it too.

Speaker 2:

He loves the two-part series. Sometimes I send him an episode and he breaks it up into like 15 parts.

Speaker 1:

It's funny because I thought you were going to say like it makes the listeners happy, but no, it's because it makes Alex happy.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's just sometimes, you know we'll do an episode and then we get this email and Alex is trying to be nice but he's like don't do that, anne.

Speaker 1:

Oh, it's not always about me, it's also about Tanner. Anyways, you want Anne?

Speaker 2:

Like the last one, and I do apologize this probably made me sound rude on the podcast, but he was like when Anne says something insightful, Tanner, you should say something back.

Speaker 1:

That's good feedback, Ashley. You sometimes don't listen to things.

Speaker 2:

I say I know I'm sorry, like our whole lives, sometimes I'm in the zone.

Speaker 1:

Anyways, we went on a sidetrack intensely there.

Speaker 2:

But yes, there's another two-part series, so go back if you don't know your evidence for neuroplastic pain and symptoms, because that's what's going to create enough safety that you can start to understand these are actual incorrect rules and then start to break them, which we're going to cover next episode.

Speaker 1:

So awareness is so important. Awareness is always important in a lot of us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and here's the other essential truths you need to understand about this rule book is they shrink your world and they reduce your freedom probably in more, in more ways than you know, like when I was all of a sudden able to walk for half an hour. That freedom that I felt oh I can't even explain it like it would it felt so freeing inside that I could freely go for a walk or freely go to the grocery store, and I think this is some of the amazing parts of healing when I see people get that back.

Speaker 1:

What if, like and I know we're going to get more into this as we go along, but what if someone starts challenging it? But yeah, they're faced with that pain. How are they supposed to believe that eventually, maybe this could help?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you're getting ahead of yourself. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1:

I think people are asking these things a bit as they're listening.

Speaker 2:

It's really vital to understand that you will never go bed-bound to fully moving without having some flares along the way. Yes, it's just. I tell people that before I ever start this work with a client that I have never once seen anyone go to being able to do whatever they want without having some flares. Now we want to mitigate the flares. The next episode we're really going to talk about how you can do that, and I don't say that way because I know it's scary but it will be bumpy. On the way up You'll stabilize, things will level out, but it will be bumpy, and just reviewing that evidence list of your evidence for neuroplastic pain and symptoms can be an essential piece in all this.

Speaker 2:

For sure, the other thing that all these rules are going to create is just chronic nervous system dysregulation. As I said, avoidance is just a danger signal to the brain. So if you have a bigger and bigger rule book, you're constantly going to be in danger mode. So why do we need to break these rules to heal? This is a question I get asked a lot, because if you don't, your brain's going to continue symptoms to protect you.

Speaker 2:

Breaking these rules is really, in my opinion, at the heart of brain retraining. It's vital. It teaches your brain that everyday movements, positions, foods and environments are safe. Foods and environments are safe. A common thing we talk about with people is use safe self-talk. You know, based on your evidence, use safe self-talk. Remind your brain hey, the sensation's temporary, I'm going to heal from this, there's nothing wrong with my body. You could do that all day long, and it's not to say it doesn't have an effect. It's an important piece, but by starting to break the rules, this is a behavioral safety message. So, instead of a cognitive safety message, this is behaviorally showing your brain oh, my body's actually okay.

Speaker 1:

Right and we need both going on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think of it as like maybe a child is afraid of something and we know it's good for them, maybe, and it's safe, we can talk to them about it, but we need to show them, we need to bring them into the environment and we need to kind of expose them to what they're afraid of for them to realize they're okay.

Speaker 2:

Yes, no, I agree with that, and so this leads us to.

Speaker 1:

Was that your commenting on my comment right there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, did you not like that comment?

Speaker 1:

I liked it. You could have agreed a bit more and said more. Okay, I think our listeners also might feel that way. That's a fair point yeah, okay, anyways.

Speaker 2:

I'll take your feedback into consideration. Alex would like to hear that we had this. Alex probably thought that exact thing when he said that.

Speaker 1:

He was like why is Antana expanding more?

Speaker 2:

As he's editing this, he's like writing an angry email to me.

Speaker 1:

Oh no. Now he's like oh, why are they even talking about it, right? Now oh yeah, yeah, cut it's going to be cut.

Speaker 2:

Cut it out. Okay, go on. I was just excited to get the exercise.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay. We have an exercise, so, as we said, the first step, you got to become mindful of any and all rules that have formed the do's and don'ts. Okay, so awareness, awareness and reflection.

Speaker 2:

So grab a notebook and write down everything you do and everything you don't do, in an attempt to reduce your pain and symptoms.

Speaker 1:

I like this and, even if it's healing things, write those down too, Because sometimes we're scared to write down. I do that hour of meditation every day because I don't want to have to look at what if that might be perpetuating things as well. But write those down.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, Be detailed. Look at your mornings, afternoons, evenings, how you move, how you eat, how you interact with people. Like really get this all written out.

Speaker 1:

What about how you think, or how you think about things?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it could be how you think about things potentially Like. I've seen people where they obsessively give safe self-talk because they're convinced if they don't do that for X amount of time a day that their pain will flare. So watch for that too. It definitely can be.

Speaker 1:

One thing that might show up on people's lists is the checking, the checking, the body scanning, the anticipation of pain. I was like I must check all the time before I go do something.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so really look out for it. Yeah, the testing that kind of reminded me of that, of like how many times do you bend over a day testing if your pain's there? Yeah, like that kind of thing, and you'll likely find hidden rules that have become so automatic for you. I had so many hidden rules that I didn't realize I was doing.

Speaker 1:

What was a hidden rule?

Speaker 2:

Like well, it wasn't hidden to you, but the shoulder snapping where I'd push my arm forward and like snap my shoulder.

Speaker 1:

Yes, oh yes, it was not hidden, because I would see it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you would see it, but it became like so automatic that one day, while I was like healing and starting to widen my world, I was like why am I doing this all day, like it's just you know?

Speaker 1:

and Anne's like yeah, it's annoying because I was just like sitting there. What did you believe about that, though? Like what was the belief about that as a rule for you?

Speaker 2:

I had some weird belief that, like, somehow it was like resetting my shoulder and like I thought, like because it made a clicking sound, like I thought maybe it was like loosening something, doing that over and over again, so like again, not really much logic behind it, but that's what I thought at the time, I think when it first developed.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so it became something that you must do throughout your day to manage your pain.

Speaker 2:

So, in closing, today we have uncovered how associations form, how they keep you stuck and why breaking the pain and symptom rules is essential to heal. So, like we said, go, sit down for 10, 15 minutes, write out that rule book, and then you'll be prepared for next episode, episode two, episode two. Episode two, episode two. We're going to go deep into understanding six powerful strategies to break your rules, widen your world and, ultimately, live more freely.

Speaker 1:

That sounds really awesome. I like it. Yeah, I like it Hopeful. We want people to feel hopeful.

Speaker 2:

And remember everyone. You know, if your pain and symptoms are neuroplastic, your body's not broken and your brain can change. Healing is very possible. So thank you everyone for listening. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1:

Talk to you next time. 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.