The Pain PT News

Affect Tolerance or Feeling our Feelings

Affect tolerance is a term we use to indicate how much emotion or feeling in our bodies we can sit and tolerate with without needing to shut it down. This is a crucial skill we want to learn when we have…

Feeling your Feelings Creates Healing

One of the things you know I talk about is the overlap between emotions and pain or physical symptoms. The very definition of pain has the word 'emotional' in it. All physical pain or symptoms activates…

Recap From London Chronic Pain SIRPA Conference

Had a fantastic trip over to London for the 2022 Chronic Pain SIRPA Conference. Very educational and inspiring to see so many leaders and practitioners in one place. I want to thank my mentor and head…

Mind-Body Healing & Upcoming SIRPA Conference

As many of you know, I am a physiotherapist and mind-body coach. I am also a SIRPA practitioner and trained under Georgie Oldfield, who is the founder of SIRPA (Stress Illness Recovery Practitioners' Association)…

Emotions of Anger & Sadness Amplify Pain

Wanted to review a study here showing the impact of emotions on physical symptoms like pain. What the study found was: Conclusion. The experience of both anger and sadness amplifies pain in women…

Proof the Brain Causes Physical Symptoms in the Body

Many people have a hard time believing their brains can generate physical somatic symptoms in the body. Studies around what's called the 'nocebo effect' prove the brain is capable of producing all sorts…

Rebecca Tolin: From Healing to Helping Others Heal

I had the pleasure of catching up with Rebecca Tolin, who has not only recovered from her own debilitating chronic fatigue, but has since gone on to helping others heal as a mind-body coach.  Rebecca…

An Emotional Part Of Your Brain Can Cause & Cure Physical Symptoms

Do you know your amygdala (the part of your brain that generates negative emotions) has been shown to cause and also cure physical symptoms? Incredible and probably not believable by many. But just because…

Kinesiophobia and Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain

Title of this 2019 review study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine is: 'Role of kinesiophobia on pain, disability and quality of life in people suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain: a systematic…

Impaired Threat & Safety Learning With Chronic Pain

This 2022 study in the Journal Pain found what I see daily with chronic pain patients. The researchers 'conclude that chronic back pain is associated with altered threat and safety learning. This ambiguity…

Optimism vs Pessimism and Your Health

We have tons of clinical data that show positive optimism is related much better health outcomes while negative pessimism relates to poorer health outcomes. One of the ways pessimism shows up is with catastrophizing…

Chronic Fatigue is Linked with Negative Beliefs About Activity

One of the more common chronic symptoms I treat in people is fatigue. CFS/ME as it's called, really stops people from moving forward because of the crippling fatigue symptoms it brings. The fatigue…

Become a CEO to Reduce Your Risk of Anxiety & Symptoms

Those who follow me know I am big fan of the science supporting the work I do to help people heal from chronic health conditions. I love it when the title of a complex brain study says exactly what we…

Repressed Emotions & Physical Symptoms

Here is an article describing how repressed emotions can affect us and also cause physical somatic symptoms. It's something I see in my practice and something many of you will relate to as well. What happens…

Self-Efficacy is Important for Healing Chronic Symptoms

One thing that's not talked about much in the chronic pain world is what's called self-efficacy. Self efficacy (SE) is defined in this review study as "the personal confidence to carry out an activity…

20 year study shows how anger can cause health symptoms

In this study the authors were looking at whether chronic anger expression or what's called stonewalling predicted cardiovascular or musculoskeletal complaints in married couples over a period…

Anxiety the cause of many physical symptoms

Anxiety is probably the biggest thing I see in my practice that causes physical somatic symptoms in the body that are not originating from a physical structural cause. The symptom list is vast, check out…

Chronic pain is a memory of the pain in the brain

Researchers at Northwestern University have been studying the brain-chronic pain connection for well over a decade. Based on their multiple studies "we argue that the state of the brain’s emotional and…

Altered Brain Connections in Chronic Back Pain

I've posted before about how we see stronger one-way brain signals from the amygdala to the pre-frontal cortex in anxiety and how this is one-way signaling can cause the amygdala to hijack someone into…

Scaling Up Cortical Control Inhibits Pain

What this fMRI brain study and many others are showing is a loss of whats called cortical control over the pain system. This is where the prefrontal cortex loses its power (strength) and firing rates with…