Chronic pain is a condition many people live with, it is REAL, and can control one’s life. Affecting 1 in 4 people, chronic pain is a challenge that moves beyond the physical.  With an impact on everyday body function, as well as the ability to be present in many parts of life including home, work, and social gathering, it can make a person’s world quite small. In this episode we talk with Dr. Alissa Wolfe, chronic pain specialist, doctor of physical therapy, and the founder of the Chronic Pain Breakup Method.  Alissa helps us understand chronic pain, and the neuroscience behind the wiring that happens between our brains and bodies.  With the methods she uses, she assists patients to retrain their nervous system and minimize the effects of chronic pain.  

Be sure to download her Chronic Pain Flare-up Tool Kit to help you reduce the intensity and duration of your flare ups: https://www.alissawolfe.com/flare-up-tool-kit-free-guide

You are loved!

Tanya  xo

About the Guest:

Dr. Alissa Wolfe is a chronic pain specialist, doctor of physical therapy, and the founder of the Chronic Pain Breakup Method.  She helps proactive women get unstuck from their chronic pain using principles of neuroscience to retrain the nervous system.

Her passion is in helping people with chronic pain to understand it on a deeper level, and take their newfound understanding to retrain their brain and live with more freedom and ease.  

Download this Chronic Pain Flare-up Tool Kit to help you reduce the intensity and duration of your flare ups: https://www.alissawolfe.com/flare-up-tool-kit-free-guide

Find her here:

website: www.alissawolfe.com

FB group: Battling Chronic Pain with Neuroscience: https://www.facebook.com/groups/661471315077252

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paincrusader/

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@paincrusader

About the Host:

Tanya's mission is to create a legacy of self-love for women that reinforces trust in themselves through our programs, coaching, podcast, and book, The Trifecta of Joy! As Founder and creator of the Trifecta of Joy Philosophy, she combines over 30 years of research and work in various helping fields, to help you achieve your greatest successes!

Using her philosophy of the Trifecta of Joy, her mission is to empower people through their struggles with the elements of awareness, befriending your inner critic and raising your vibe. This podcast is about sharing stories of imperfection moving through life to shift toward possibilities, purpose, and power in your life!

Having had many wtf moments including becoming a widow, struggling with weight and body image issues, dating after loss, single parenting, remarriage, and blending families, Tanya is committed to offering you inspiration and empowerment – body, mind, and spirit!

As a speaker, writer, and coach, Tanya steps into her life’s purpose daily – to INSPIRE HOPE.

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Hi friend, I'm Tanya Gill Welcome to lighten up and unstuck your What the fuck. Together we explore the ways through life's stickiness moments, and how to live with more peace, joy, love and gratitude. We're going to talk honestly about what isn't easy so you can discover the light within you that will carry you forward. My friend, this podcast is about you in real life, your body, mind and soul, and the opportunity to not only live your best, but shine, doing it

Welcome my friends to lighten up and unstuck. You're What the fuck, I'm so excited to share our guest with you today. Dr. Alissa Wolfe is a chronic pain specialist, a licensed doctor of physical therapy, and the founder of the chronic pain breakup method. Alissa, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to talk about all things chronic pain and how to get unstuck from chronic pain because it's a big deal.

Well, and you know, I have some people in my life. And I think we can all relate that we have people in our life that experience chronic pain. And it is not just a physical experience, it becomes an emotional experience, it becomes a spiritual journey. It is a test in a lot of ways. And I'm sure that you have people that come to you who are so overwhelmed by their pain, how do you start with people who come to you and just say like, my life is torture?

Oh my goodness, how do I even start? Well, I like to shed light onto the chronic pain problem by looking a little bit deeper. So usually, my conversations people are have when they come into my world, people have already tried almost everything you know, that you can find about pain relief. Usually most of the or all of the medical interventions, physical therapy, chiropractic care, injections, pills, surgeries, you name it, all of that good stuff. And then they take it to the they've already tried all the other things that you know, you can find in the world. Yoga, Reiki CBT, you know, that kind of therapy, trauma, therapy, tapping, grounding, like they've done everything and they get to into my world, or have these conversations with me. And by then they may or may not have heard about that element of the nervous system. And so my first conversation with folks is usually to just expose or educate people on what else could be going on in your body. Physiologically speaking. I'm not necessarily talking purely just about the, the mental or cognitive elements of pain because I think sometimes people can think that it's like psychosomatic or something like that. Or you can just like think your way out of pain that it's not a pure physical experience. But so yeah, digging a little bit deeper and looking at what could be going on in the nervous system, or how is your nervous system responding to a disease or condition or injury that you have, and that nervous system could be amplifying your experience of pain. And like you said, it absolutely affects every aspect of life, physical abilities, emotional, you know, mental health, depression, anxiety, relationships, sexual function, digestion, reproduction, like it bleeds into every aspect of life. And I think one of the worst components of that is no one seems to understand what they're going through, and they don't seem to get answers from their doctors to the people who should be able to provide an explanation. So I felt like there was a need to for someone to step into that role of like, I will at least try to tell you what's going on and at least try to help you figure this problem out.

So Alissa, why chronic pain like with with, you know, with all of the credentials you have and being a doctor of physical therapy, why did you decide chronic pain was the area that you wanted to help people in?

Good question. I don't think that I decided, in my own right, I think the universe and God and just whatever the powers that be decided For me, I think just after a series of very specific events, I thought I thought when I was in PT school, I thought I wanted to work with soldiers with combat PTSD, who had a symptom of pain as their PTSD. And as a physical therapist, I was thinking, well, because we treat pain, these people are going to be in our world. And so I wanted to do research on pain and PTSD in soldiers. And then as I just as I learned more, I had specific mentors, who kind of just like, pivoted me away from just being so focused on the military and combat PTSD and just open that up to everybody needs your help. It's actually one in four individuals has chronic pain, one in four to five individuals have chronic pain. And so when I was exposed to that, and just like I said, certain elements had kind of shifted me away from just being wanting to work with the military and open my mind to working with everybody. And, yeah, so I think I was, it's a combination of certain experiences in my life that led me to that, but also just being naturally blessed with a very strange and obsessive passion for wanting to help people with chronic pain. I didn't actually, a lot of people ask me a lot of a lot of times like, Well, where do you have pain? Or what was your pain experience? Because they'll say, No one can understand the experience of pain and not have had it. So they assume that I've had it, that I haven't had chronic pain, aside from what I would just like an A average shoulder injury and some ankle injuries. But I haven't had to go through that experience personally. But I was sitting in my car one day, on my way home from the airport, and I swear, and this may sound a little weird, but I swear I heard the voice of God say you are going to do something big, with chronic pain. And I said, Okay, God, I'm not going to let you down, we're going to do something. So here I am. Lots of different circumstances have led me here. But

okay, now, what I think is so cool as as, like, you may not have had had chronic pain yourself. But you know, how to help people with chronic pain. And, you know, I am sure that there will be people who are listening who are going, okay, you've never had the pain. And I've tried everything. And you're here. So how how, how do you help people with chronic pain and, like, the other thing is, is that there's a lot of neuroscience behind it. And so, you know, a lot of people hear that, and then they kind of just go, I'm not a science geek. So how do you how do you explain to people like the process of working with them? And what do you do? That's different?

Yeah. So I look at the pain problem. First of all, teaching people neuroscience is something that I actually had to learn in my specialty training. So because a huge component of it is actually understanding what is going on in your body and filling that gap of information. Because if you don't really know why you hurt so much, it's harder to heal, you have to actually have that reason why you hurt before you can heal. So really understanding that component of the neuroscience, it's very important for you to begin the healing process. And so in my job, I actually have to teach people the neuroscience of pain, so I had to learn how to teach. So that was one big element. But basically, the way that I look at the nervous system problem when it comes to pain, there are basically two different sides to this problem. There is what traditionally you may hear a little bit more about is this whole fight or flight element, the body gets stuck in a state of fight or flight. It's in survival mode. It is trying to protect you from something whether there is a threat or not, whether you're in danger or you're safe. And so that causes number one one of the protective mechanisms. Your body utilizes this pain is the alarm it lets you know hey, I'm trying to protect you from something. I don't know what that is potentially, but I'm trying to keep you safe. So pain is the alarm to let you know, hey, don't go run that marathon right now we might be trying to heal from injury. So pain is there. It also is going to increase activation have big body mover muscles to help you be ready to fight, flee or freeze at any moment. So you have those areas of extreme muscle tension, upper traps, hip flexors, your hamstrings, all of those areas that are just super tense all the time that massage and no amount of stretching is going to resolve because something is telling it to be tense all the time. So we have increased muscle tone, we have altered digestion. So if you're, you know, in our survival situation, like, your body's going to not let you digest that sandwich, because it's not conducive for you to stay alive, it's not gonna let you your body won't let you fall asleep. Because if something is bad or dangerous, if you fall asleep, you could die not healthy. That sounds dramatic, but you get the point. So no sleep, digestion, reproductive systems get shut down as well. So we see a lot of people with chronic pain with either for women with unusual periods, painful periods, pelvic floor, dysfunction, endometriosis, fibroids, uterine, all of that good stuff, not good stuff. So we see all of these conditions, and then we also have your brain fog, because in a fight or flight situation, your brain is going to shut down those higher level thinking tasks. So forming new memories and problem solving become impacted, as well. So we have this whole fight or flight side of the problem. And when you look at how do we address that side of the problem, physiologically speaking, really the the number one thing that we can do to alter that is, physiologically we can control our breathing. So that's like, the easiest way to really address that problem. It's an immediate benefit. Like you'll see immediate results from doing breathing, but it's a short term benefit. So doing a breathing drill isn't going to, you know, you're not going to see benefits, two, three days down the road from doing one breathing drill, right. So it has an immediate result, but it's a short term result. So we have this fight or flight side of the problem, then we have the, I like to call it the deeper even deeper issue, which is the changes that happen in the nervous system. And when we say nervous system, I don't just mean brain, because sometimes people just think brain and this is a mental thing, it's a thinking problem. It goes beyond that we have the peripheral nervous system, which is are those nerves that connect from your body, from your tissues, from the muscles, joints, whatever, up to the spinal cord, those nerves themselves become sensitized, they get better at detecting various different stimuli. And so they're, they're more easily able to fire with a smaller stimulus. So something that

they become more sensitive, right, so this is sort of the idea that the pain, then if, for example, I had chronic pain in my elbow, then then it would just become more sensitive in that area. Is that what you're meaning? Yes,

and so for a good example, would be, basically think about it this way, every nerve has its own baseline level of electrical activity inside of it. And in order for that nerve to fire, that electrical activity has to be raised up enough to reach a threshold, anything below that threshold doesn't cause the nerve to fire. If you raise that baseline level of electrical activity, a smaller stimulus is going to bring it up to that threshold. Hopefully, that makes a little bit of sense. Basically, when a peripheral nerve becomes sensitized, the space between baseline and threshold is reduced. So now, just to give an example, in order to feel pain, you'd have to really bump your elbow on something right versus touching it. So in to give that a real life example, touching it can cause that same nerve to fire causing pain, when you didn't have to point bang it as hard. Hopefully that makes sense. So that the degree of stimulation is less and still can cause the same amount of pain. And so other things start to stimulate those nerves as well like changes in blood supply, changes in temperature, immune system responses, pressure, vibration, light touch, stretch, so things that wouldn't normally cause pain can now cause those nerves to fire in the pain you feel is the same. So that's a that's one little piece of this sensitivity problem in the peripheral nervous system. Then we also have changes in the spinal cord and the brain. And I can talk about those if you'd like to, but you look like you're gonna ask a question. Yeah. Well, it's

interesting because when you were talking about the peripheral nervous system, I, I you know, I always try and think of concrete examples and I like the example that you you know, expanded on with the elbow but that immediately I went to the When, for example, like, I've had the experience of tweaking my back, and then get in the car, and a normal drive in the car to whatever the grocery store, when when my pain is, isn't present at all, it's like, whatever, it's just a drive. But when something's been irritated or tweaked, or whatever, like every bump, every turn, everything has some tightened, right? So it's, and you know, like, for people who don't experience for people like me who have not experienced chronic pain, I just have the, I imagine what it would be like to have that experience day in and how it would like literally, like, not await at your brain and sanity over to us.

Oh, yes. over it. Yes. And actually, what you described as an acute injury is the exact thing that is happening in your body is that peripheral sensitization, it is a natural, normal response to any injury. And it's our body's way of like letting you know, like, Hey, you just tweaked your back, or you just sprained your ankle, please don't go around that half marathon right now, because we're trying to heal that injury. So that is a normal, physiologic response to any acute injury. The problem is, like we said, one in four, to one in five individuals, that change just doesn't reverse itself, it doesn't go back to that original baseline. And so it stays and it just persistent persistent persists. There's multiple reasons why that might be we don't have to get into all of that right now. But it's a, it's a long, yeah, that's how that's one of the reasons why pain can become chronic, and that injury can heal as well. And you can still have that nerve sensitivity issue, ongoing, which can be very frustrating, especially when your MRIs come back normal. And your doctor was saying, well, nothing is wrong, nothing wrong.

And you know, and that's the other thing I really emphasize. And to our listeners, if they're listening to this, like, if you've had that experience of, you know, having the scans and having all of the things done, and all of the tests and, and people coming back and saying there's nothing wrong, it's all in your head. You know, please know that, that you are seen, and you're heard. And that that is a big piece of why Alissa is here today, because it's not in your head. And, and, you know, and so now, okay, I interrupted, now you're going to talk about the central nervous system?

Well, we can definitely talk about that. And I love that you said that it is not in your head. And that has been kind of the eye opening thing for me in my career. And what like one of the things that led me down this path is because I had heard, you know, all these patients are cuckoo, and it's just all in their head. And it's just anxiety are all and I heard that prior to really understanding this. And what I found is that neuroscience is the science of it's not all in your head, it is the like when you need something concrete and scientific to to prove this is real, the pain you feel is real, and you're not crazy, and you're not imagining it. And it is not your fault that this is happening. And you can't just think your way out of it and pull up your bootstraps and suck it up and get over it. It doesn't work that way. Because there is a physiologic explanation for what is going on here. And it is definitely on your head. Now when we say that, when we say what I say what's not in your head. To me, that means it's not in your mind. It's not in your cognitions it's not in your all of that. It is however, partly in your brain, like there is that element, but it is not in your it's not in your conscious control. Let's put it that way. So we were we were gonna go into some of those changes that happened in the brain and spinal cord as well. So one of the, let's see, should do spinal cord and then brain. Yeah, not, it doesn't matter. The spinal cord will one of the changes that happens as a result of long term pain. And this is maybe a little bit depressing. But one of the changes that happens is that the spinal cord will start allowing more messages, more danger messages to get passed up to the brain than before. And so the way that would suit our spinal cords are actually the very first layer of processing like neurologic processing before. So it filters out information before it even gets to the brain. So for example, the spinal cord would filter out certain information that the brain doesn't need to hear, such as you're wearing pants, you're wearing pants, you're wearing pants, you're wearing pants, you're wearing pants, your brain doesn't need that much information all the time. So the spinal cord will filter out that information. It just says no, we don't need brain doesn't care, thank you go away. As a result of long term pain, there's a change that can happen in the spinal cord where that spinal cord allows that information to start getting up to the brain. So now the brain is hearing Danger, danger, you're wearing pants, danger, danger, you're wearing pants. And that's a lot of information for the brain to receive. And the other thing that can happen too, is that because of the wiring of our spinal cord is not just, you know, like one nerve plugs into this muscle, and then it goes straight into the spinal cord and straight up to the brain. It's like, criss crossed. And it's, it's a complicated wiring system. So what happens is, when that change happens, the pain experience or those messages are getting passed up from other areas as well. So you can have that experience where pain spreads from one area, it started, let's say in your right hip. But now it's expanded to your left hip, and your right thigh and your right lower back because of that wiring problem. And so you may think, oh, my gosh, now I've injured my left hip, and it's spread up to my back, I don't know what's going on in my back. The pain can spread without having any injury whatsoever, because of that change in circuitry in the spinal cord. Which sucks.

So bad circuitry, then it's like, it just kind of it's like almost like an overflow. It's like, it starts here. And it's like, oh, you know what, like, let's just try and let's just spread it out a little bit. And is that what's happening is or is it

like, it's like, it's like it's opened up a gateway of communication. And anything that's connected through that gateway can get up in and get passed up into the spinal cord, it won't, it won't affect every level of the spinal cord, meaning it won't affect. That's why I said, if you have it starting in your right hip, it can spread to the opposite hip, and then the areas just above and below it to the thigh and let's say the lower back versus it's not going to skip up to like let's say it starts in your hip, and then now it's in your left shoulder, that kind of spreading wouldn't be happening through this mechanism that would happen through something else.

So that okay, so quick question. Okay, I know, we could go in a lot of directions. And I don't know enough about neuroscience. So I'm asking lots of questions, Alissa, but so what you're saying then is if someone started with chronic pain in their right hip, for example, they could the chronic pain could spread to their left hip and surrounding areas. And, and then it becomes like a larger problem, like realistically becomes a larger problem. If it spreads above and below, can it keep spreading? Or does it kind of have a limit around where

it's yes and no, but not through that same mechanism? Okay. So the reason that that change happens is when the peripheral nerve, the one that we said is sending from the but let's just say sciatic nerve, a lot of people are familiar with that one. So that sciatic nerve is sending a message to the spinal cord, that message itself in high quantities, is a neurotransmitter, it's a chemical, it's actually an amino acid that is toxic at high levels to the spinal cord. So where that nerve is inputting into the spinal cord is where it's actually causing that, that change to happen. And so unless let's say your shoulder is also causing, you know, that nerve in the shoulder is also sensitized. And it's been sending this message over and over, that same change can happen up in a different level of the spinal cord and cause some of those same issues. But that in itself wouldn't spread. Like you're we're talking about. Does that make sense? Yeah, no? Okay.

Okay. Okay. So, okay. So I'm like, all I'm making you jump all over the place. So someone comes to you, they've got chronic pain, they're recognizing it spreading, they're starting to, or they've panicked Well, already, that's maybe probably not even a starting panic. I'm sure that a lot of your clients and patients come to you at their wit's end. And, and so as you're teaching them this, some of this basic neuroscience, how does this help them understand their chronic pain and move beyond that?

Well, one element of just learning the neuroscience can help you feel safer in your body because it will help you understand that the pain you feel is not entirely all related to tissue damage, and injury. And it certainly feels that way. Everything about it feels like yeah, I've re injured myself or I've tweaked my back or you know, some kind of tissue damage and I think what's important to note too is like a lot of people will still have something show up on their x ray or MRI, such as a bone spur, or a disc herniation, or arthritic changes their bone on bone, their spines, you know, the spine of an 80 year old, and all of that. We can't necessarily change that with these treatments, but we can change the response that nervous system has to those impairments to that bone spur to that disc herniation, we can change the nervous system's response to that. So it's not as big of a response. But but to somebody who is just coming into my world and thinking like, well, well, how does it benefit me to actually understand this neuroscience of pain, it can make you feel safer to move safely with the right, you know, understanding of how to move safely. Because you're not constantly subconsciously thinking, my back is being injured, every time I bend over, you're going to feel much safer to move when you know confidently, that my back is completely safe with this movement. And I know that it's my nervous system that's responding to that movement, it's not actually my disk, you know, shooting out the side of my spine. There may be a small element of that. But as long as we know that you're safe with those movements, then it's just a matter of really retraining that nervous system to calm down and not respond as much. So

well, and that's what I was thinking is okay, so if you learn that, and then you recognize that your body is safe, then is that is that the piece that the piece where you retrain your body to almost become less sensitive to it.

That is one case, it is definitely one piece. And there's plenty of pain neuroscience research and clinical trials that have shown that just doing the educational piece of like kind of like what we're talking about here, can result in less pain, better range of motion, more functional ability, less disability, just through that education alone can be really transformative. But there are also different drills and strategies that you can implement to actually reverse some of those changes that happen in the nervous system. So we did talk about the peripheral nerves. There are some drills that we can do to reduce that peripheral sensitization. And we didn't talk quite yet about the brain changes, but we can retrain the brain through various specific drills. And the way those drills work is by activating what we call mirror neurons. So when you look at movement, think about movement, or actually perform the movement in real life, your brain does the same thing, your brain is activating the same pattern, whether you're doing the movement, or not doing the movement, you're thinking about it. And so when we do these, well, let me take a step back. Your brain is a very smart, you know, piece of equipment, it learns things go for you. And so the brain will start to learn when you've had this pain for so long. It starts to form these connections between certain movements, activities, positions and exercises. And it makes that connection between, let's say, doing the dishes, and paying. And so that connection, we say, in our in the pain science community, nerves that fire together, wire together. So every time you do the dishes, you have pain, the brain makes that connection between those synapses, that connection gets stronger and stronger and stronger. It's so well rehearsed, it becomes automatic, just like when you learn to tie your shoes the first time, it wasn't easy, but the more you did it now it's automatic. You can't even sit there and describe to somebody how to do it. It's automatic. So the same thing happens when you rehearse that pain over and over every time you do the dishes.

That's right, because then it's like, and it is scary. Like it's almost like a reason to be slightly afraid of our brains, although it is encouraging because it means that if your brain can be trained, and trained, but it's the awareness, right? The fact that you can make that connection, so quickly, create that association and feel that pain in your body because of that association is wow.

Yeah, it is in a really it's so funny. We talked about the PTSD in soldiers. In a very small sense. It's almost the same as PTSD. If you think about it, if you're a really horrendous car accident, and every time you land, maybe it was raining and now every time it rains, you have symptoms. If you're a PTSD, you have flashbacks, you have migraines, you get vertigo, or anytime you drive by where that car accident would be you get some of those things symptoms are the same concept on a much smaller scale, because doing the dishes is not nearly as traumatic as that car accident, but the body doesn't feel safe when doing the dishes, because it's learned that pattern just like when that car accident happened, obviously, it was not safe. It was life threatening, maybe people got injured, maybe people died, it was very traumatic, it's almost the same thing, but on a much smaller scale. And so our brain base drills are fantastic, because they allow you to your brain, at least your brain can experience doing the movements, the activities, those positions, those exercises, for example, doing the dishes without having that experience of pain at the same time. So that pathway gets reduced, the strength of those neural connections is becomes weaker. And so your body can start to feel safer when doing those movements in real life. So there's a there's a nice safe way to transition from doing brain based drills to applying it in real life as well. And the other thing of brain based drills does is it strengthens the brains body map of that body part that's in pain. And so to understand what the heck that means, you had to have to we just repeat

that, again, strengthens the brains body map. So it can you repeat that again.

So yeah, so the each and every one of us has in our brains, a little map of our own body inside of our brain. So you have a hand in your brain, you have a shoulder in your brain. And the brain based drills will strengthen that body map. And what I mean by that is, when you have this experience of chronic pain, one of the brain changes that happens is that body part in your brain shrinks down, it gets blurry, it gets munched and when sensory information that is now we all know is now flooding the brain. From that body part, that brain is receiving that information in this smudged, blurry area. And it's because it has lost some of its ability to correctly process all of this information it's going, I don't know, I don't know what this information is. I don't know what it means it's being flooded and flooded, flooded with information, but it cannot correctly interpret what is going on down there. So if your brain doesn't know what is really going on, it can either say, Well, I'm probably safe, and I'm good to go. Or I'm not sure if I'm safe, I might be in danger. The safer option of those two is to choose I might be in danger, I should protect me. So it's going to step in and turn on those fight or flight responses and say, We need to protect ourselves potential injury, let's let's activate pain, we need to protect ourselves and possibly be able to fight, flee or freeze. So let's activate all those other things. So one, going back to the brain based tools, but again, the brain may still strengthen that brain, the body map in the brain for your body part, so that that brain can then correctly interpret that information that it's getting from the body and be more confident when it's getting this information. It's going. That's just you wearing pants, this is not dangerous. I know that this is pants, I know that that's your left knee. And it's I know exactly what's going on here and we can be safe. This has nothing to freak out about. So again, yeah, this this is not a cognitive, like sub conscious sort of a thing that's going on this is this is in those deeper parts of the brain where you don't really have the, you know, thinking power to influence it's so it's, it goes deeper than that

works. So what I'm hearing is that, you know, like people who are listening might say this, this sounds like cognitive behavioral therapy in some way. And it's like no, no, no, no, no, no. This is you know, the Met actual messages from your body and, and your brains interpretation of them on that subconscious level on that operating system level. Not that conscious thought level, although you can introduce some of it with the awareness of conscious thought is when I'm hearing right, like you can, when your body's doing that you can actually go Oh, yeah, like, Wait a second. Hang on. I'm wearing pants and I feel safe. You know that. Really? Yeah. I'm wearing to

some extent there there is. There is definitely some overlap, I would say in that like conscious awareness of like, yeah, once you have that information, you can kind of almost pick up and go. This is not it's just one of those false alarm situations. Like I know that I didn't reenter my back. I didn't do anything physically that could have caused this Um, you know, we try to sometimes like before you really have an understanding of this sometimes you you sit there and you try to rationalize, like, where did this pain come from this time? I must have slept wrong. I must have tweaked it yesterday, even though I can't think of a moment where I did something wrong. Or maybe I sat too long yesterday. But really when you look at it, you're like, you sit the same amount every day. So how is yesterday any different? So it's, it goes beyond that of your that you're then able to identify like, Okay, this was not a physical thing. This is my nervous system doing its fight or flight thing. And some of that, yeah, you can actually cognitively think like, Okay, I know I'm safe. And I can kind of shut off some of that alarm response that's going on. And then there's the parts where you can't cognitively touch. And you just have to practice some of those other types of brain based drills as well. So,

okay, so talking about brain based drills. So can you give us an example or walking, couple of a brain based drill that you might use with one of your clients

when you're Yes, so in my program, I teach four different brain based drills, with different variations in each category. So there's a whole bunch of them, but the one that most people might have heard of, is actually stolen from treating amputees. Have you ever heard of neurotherapy? Yes, yes. Yep. So Nero therapy was initially invented, I guess, I don't know discovered that's the right word, but to treat people with phantom limb pain after an amputation, basically, if you don't know what phantom limb pain is, people who have had amputee amputations might still feel pain in the bottom of their foot, they may have an itch that they can't scratch, every step they take, it might feel like there's a pebble in their shoe. But as you know, they don't have the foot anymore. So there's nothing actually sending that message from that body part to cause that sort of a sensation to begin with. And nonetheless, you can't scratch the itch, you can't get the pebble. So you can't treat it. And so there's been this big, like, how do we how do we solve this problem? Well, the thing is, when you think about it, when you remove the foot, you don't remove the foot from the brain, the brain still has that body part in it. And that means that those synapses, and those hardwired connections that that brain has practiced up until that point that was amputated, they're still there, they're still getting activated in different ways. And so basically, near therapy was invented, it's gonna be hard to describe without any visual because basically, they put a mirror down the midline, you reflect this side that is still has the limb, and the your eyes, you're going to be looking at the reflection of the intact limb, and performing different movements on the intact limb that the brain sees that the amputated side is the one that is moving, and it's moving safely. And so you can actually scratch the itch, and you can start performing some movements to stretch that body part, and to activate that part of the brain in a safer way. And so it does some of that retraining component. And so the way that again, the way that this works is by activating those mirror neurons in the brain, so the brain truly believes that it is performing the movement in real life, even though it is not. So that's one of the brain based roles and it's of the four that I utilize, it's the one that I would not recommend starting with, because it does actually involve movement and so it is the of the four it is the most likely to provoke pain. So I usually have people start with the easier versions and then work their way up progressively as with each one one step at a time, just so that we know that it's not going to cause any pain we do not with any drills want to cause more pain. So we do it safely progressed slowly back into movement. And then once you can successfully complete those mirror therapy drills without causing more pain and we would also be then working on incorporating more movements into the that approach as well. So it's, it's progressive, it starts with, you know, just retraining the brain and then getting your body ready for movement and then actually incorporating movement in a safe way. So yeah, like that's clear as mud.

You know what, it's fantastic. And it's very interesting because, you know, what I'm hearing is that, you know, the and I really like that you've described it as the picture of your whole body is complete in your brain. And so what it is, is connecting with that picture to help your brain understand what is real pain and what is. I'm not saying that it's not real pain, right? Sorry, I'm not. I want to be very, very careful around that and say that your pain is real. I am not for any one second saying that your pain, anyone's pain, that's false. But what you know what pain is? How do we describe it? What pain

injury caused by an actual injury or tissue damage versus pain that in there, there sometimes may not be a differentiation between the two, I think the analogy I like to look at or to utilize is that some people will ask me like, well, is this my nervous system doing this? Or is this my disc herniation, like, well, that's my disc herniation pain, but that's my nervous system pain. And they'll try to like identify like to tease out the two. I don't believe that there is, it's not like a light switch. It's not like either, or, it's not either your nervous system pain or the injury pain. Instead of it being a light switch, it's more of like, one of those dimmer switches that you can kind of turn up or turn down, you're, you're somewhere in the middle, you're, then you can change on that scale, day to day, hour to hour. So for example, one day, you might have done three hours of gardening and yard work and pulling weeds on that day, you're going to have a much more structural physical response. And that's going to be much more physical injury, sort of pain related day. But on the next day, you could have had done nothing physical to provoke this pain, but had a really bad incident at work. For example, a really, you know, your boss was an asshole, and beat you down. And, you know, just some, I don't know, something really terrible happened,

it was a shit day period was a shit day.

And so that could have provoked the pain. And that would be a much more nervous system sort of a day. Another thing you know, like, it could be the change in the weather, it was a really cold and rainy day, it had nothing to do with stress, it was purely just environmental factors that could also have that would be a nervous system day. And then your, you know, on a day to day basis, you're fluctuating, fluctuating between those two polar ends, but you're never on one and completely at it's never all in your nervous system or all in your body. So it's,

it's the dial, right? It's somewhere in between. I like that. So clients come to you told me a little bit about the programs that you offer, and and what kind of results people get when they work with you?

Well, my program is called the chronic pain breakup method, it's 16 weeks long. And in that program, you get to go through a series of learning lessons and action tasks. The way that that works is, each lesson you'll you'll learn through those were neuroscience lessons, certain aspects of the pain problem. And then with the action tasks will teach you exactly how to address each individual nervous system change one at a time. So each week, you're going to get a new action tasks, you're adding a new tool or strategy or drill into your routine. And those those drills build on each other. So it's not like you just do it once and then you're done and you move on. They build on each other. And by the end of the program, we put all of those pieces together so that you have a simple routine that you can utilize on a day to day basis, we tweak it and customize it so that it fits your lifestyle because not everyone can just practice it all within a 20 minute time chunk. So we may have to modify that. But yeah, so So that's sort of that side of it. You also I incorporate weekly coaching calls to get that customization that personalization, because everybody is different, even though the whole program just focuses on treating and addressing central and peripheral sensitization like we talked about. But you may have those questions of like, how does this apply to me? Which which specific drills? Should I focus on for my headache pain? You know, you talked a lot about back pain. What about my headaches? Or what about my pelvic floor pain? Or what about my weird foot pain that no doctor can seem to figure out? So we customize it through those coaching calls. we deepen your learning and your understanding to make sure it makes sense to you and your story. And then I have a lovely commute. To the group that you'd have access to as well to get all of that community connection meeting people who has have struggled just like you because you're in a world where literally no one seems to understand what you're going through. So you get to meet some people who are going through that and understand it. And so, yes, what else do you ask me about it?

But and no, I love this because people I know that there will be people who are listening who are going, Okay, does this mean she is going to solve my chronic pain problem? She's solve my pranic chronic pain problem. Is she a magician? Right? No, thank you so much for saying that.

No, if anyone ever tells you, they can cure your chronic pain, and you'd be zero out of 10 pain in a matter of weeks, you should be running in the opposite direction, because that's not how pain works. That's not how the human body works. I don't want to be in any way Negative Nancy or Debbie downer, but you may never have zero out of 10 pain the rest of your life. But that doesn't mean that it can't be a hell of a lot better than it is right now. So the results that you know, and I can't, I don't make any guarantees of like, Yep, you're gonna have zero pain. At the end of this program, we're gonna cure you or anything like that. The results that my clients do get is less pain, lower intensity of pain, fewer and shorter flare ups, longer stretches of good days between those flare ups, when a flare up happens, they know exactly what to do, to immediately shut it down so that it doesn't last two weeks, three weeks a month. They they're spending less time in bed because they can't move or think or do anything else. They're those flareups go from that month to 24 hours, and they're back on their feet. So there's less days of missed work, they're getting back to work, they can focus better at work, they're better employees, they're better business leaders. They, they're doing more with less pain, I think that's one of the biggest things that everybody wants to get back to is being able to exercise to go on hikes with their friends to kayak with their their kids and family members and be able to travel, get on an airplane and not have to worry about your pain, ruining your entire trip. Those are the kinds of things that we get people back to doing. And yeah, it does start with the simple things it starts with, let's get you to be able to empty the dishwasher first. And then we take it the next level and say okay, how many blocks do you want to walk every day? For? Alright, let's get there. Let's work on that goal now. But it's so it's one step at a time, baby steps First, you know, you can't come in and say like, my baseline is I can walk to the mailbox and back. And that's about it. And come in with the goal of I want to run a marathon, we have to kind of let's get you to the mailbox and then a little bit further first. But those I mean, that's the kind of results I'm seeing with my clients. I've I've helped medically managed people get off their medications, they I had a client who was taking painkillers, narcotic painkillers four to five times a day. And she's off of them safely. Obviously, she was being supervised by a physician. So I wouldn't to do that without that. But we got her there. And the one of the biggest transformations, I think that a lot of people don't necessarily recognize because they're everybody wants pain relief, like helped me relieve my pain. One of the things then the first thing that I see and the biggest transformation that I see in my clients is their relationship to those fears, stress, anxiety and negative pain beliefs. Negative health beliefs, the the fear of I'm going to deteriorate, I'm getting I'm going to get worse. I'm afraid to move. I'm afraid to get out of my house like all of that, like more of the mental components.

I call that I'm broken and I'm fucked. Yeah. You know what, like I have in my life, I have had many people, it different points in their lives, and that is that I'm broken and I'm fucked failing. It's like, I'm terrified that this is the trajectory to the end, and I don't get to live my life the way I want to anymore.

Yeah, yeah. So it's beautiful to see. I use a scale to measure the, I'm fucked in in the program. And out of all of the metrics that I track. That's the number one like most drastic change that I see. And it's the first change that I see. So there if, if I can put that data into words, I would disagree write that as, like, having confidence in your body, again, feeling empowered in your body and not just feeling so broken, and defeated and hurt and afraid, you're confident again and you that's giving you that freedom, again, it's making your body feel safe. And the way that I look at this is in terms of the transformation journey, that step has to happen first, in order for you to get moving more, in order for you to have less pain, because it's going to turn down that body's like, I'm so scared, I'm so afraid I'm so broken, I can't safely move. First, before you can safely move. If you try to skip that step, and you try to start moving, your body is just going to push back and say, no, no, we're not ready, I'm not safe to move. So you have to get that piece in first. Otherwise, it's just gonna hear, that's why PT doesn't work. That's why I'm not a physical therapist anymore. Because we weren't forcing the body to do something. It's not ready, ready for.

And I'm so glad you said that. Because, you know, we say that it's not all in your head. And yet, so much of it's your head. And a big piece of that is the trust, like what I hear. And that's what I talk about with my clients, right? Any clients that I work with, I say, like, the first thing we do is we start to build a relationship with yourself, where you actually trust yourself. And what you're describing is, is your clients moving into that place? of trusting? Right, and that is that that place of being able to be in that space of trusting themselves and trusting their bodies and trusting the awareness of now for what it is to be able to move forward?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Trusting and and in? Guesses subcat subcategories, that safety, trusting, and I'm safe.

Right? And that trust, the safety, right, the trust is I am safe. I am okay.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not broken. And that, and then that, you know, you can take that into the next level of like, is, is it part of your identity? Is this the thing that has become? It is it isn't, it isn't? Like, yes, the 10 years of pain and disability have absolutely shaped who you are now. But it doesn't have to be so ingrained in that part of your identity to where you're not willing to break up with that piece. Because if you're so tied into like, This is who I am, I'm this disabled person, and I am always going to be this way, then you have to start to want to let go of that part of your identity and move on and say maybe, maybe it was a it it did it shaped everything up until now, but I'm ready to change that and start a new chapter. And you can still use that experience. And I love this about so many of my clients that they want to after they've seen the other side. They want to use that experience to inspire others to do the same thing. Because they're like, holy shit, there are so many people out there like me, that have no frickin clue that this is possible. And so that is one of my favorite favorite parts about helping people on their journey is seeing them get to the other side and start helping other people. I just see that exponential growth of like, extend the healing beyond myself, you know, beyond what I can do

video of healing, right? The beauty of healing is that when we spread the love and the light beyond and can empower other people in their own process, absolutely. Oh, Alissa, this has been such an incredible conversation and I am so thankful that our listeners are going to have the opportunity to hear this conversation and and understand chronic pain possibly for themselves and for people that they love. And please please tell us how they can get a hold of you. What's your website again?

Well, my website is alissawolfe.com that spelled A L I S S A W O L F E.com and I'm on social media Instagram, I'm on Facebook and I'm on Tik Tok. And on all platforms, I am at Pain Crusader. So

Pain Crusader, my friend, give her a follow make sure you double tap everybody likes to see somebody likes their stuff. And you know what? Absolutely. If you suffer with chronic pain, if someone in your life is has chronic pain challenges, check out Alissa. Follow her get in touch with her. She's a beautiful human who is a crusader or people on the chronic pain path to be able to live their lives richly. Alisa, do you have any closing thoughts for our listeners before we say goodbye

Um, like you said, I would love to have a conversation if you're listening to this podcast at please do not hesitate to reach out I check my messages on Facebook and Instagram Tik Tok not so much but definitely reach out message me, I will respond to you personally. And I'd love to have a conversation with you, you won't be wasting my time, we'd love to find out if this is something that would help you. Because, you know, we say it's not a quick fix. It's not a bandaid solution. But relatively speaking, if we can get you feeling better in 16 weeks, it it relative kind of is a little bit of a quick fix. So if you

train for like 20 years and suddenly you've got some relief like holy crap, that

is a quick fix. Exactly. I would. I would love to have a conversation with you. So don't be shy, reach out. Let's chat. I want to I want to talk to you see if we can help you feel better.

Beautiful. Alissa, you are awesome. This has been such a gift to be able to share with our audience. Thank you so so much from the bottom of my heart and friends if you are listening, don't hesitate to reach out to Alissa Wolfe if you two have chronic pain challenges. From the bottom of my heart Stay awesome. Thank you for being you. And take gentle care of yourself from the bottom of my heart. I love you till next time.