In this episode, John Gasienica, LCSW, assists a client in uncovering hidden emotions that are hindering his recovery from chronic pain. Joining John is Christie Uipi, LCSW, a leading expert in pain psychology. Together, they dive into the powerful connection between emotions and recovery, offering deep insights and practical strategies for both clients and practitioners.
This episode of the PRT podcast, hosted by John Gasienica, focuses on identifying and addressing hidden emotions that hinder recovery from chronic conditions. Special guest Christie Uipi, an expert clinician and founder of the Better Mind Center, joins John to discuss the importance of emotional awareness in pain reprocessing therapy. The episode features a live session with Ben, a patient who experiences a significant breakthrough in his recovery journey. Listeners will learn about the impact of stress, fear, and self-criticism on chronic pain and explore effective tools to foster emotional healing and achieve sustainable relief.
00:00 Introduction to the PRT Podcast
01:41 Meet the Expert: Christie Uipi
02:40 Christie's Journey and Innovations
03:56 Understanding Pain and Emotions
05:43 Client Session: Ben's Story
10:29 Exploring Stress and Pain Connection
17:17 Emotional Processing Techniques
25:29 Inner Nurturing
28:15 Messages of Safety
29:04 The Complexity of Safety
34:43 The Role of Self-Criticism
36:18 Somatic Tracking and Self-Compassion
43:43 Final Thoughts and Reflections
Ep. 2 Do Emotions Matter Anyway?
John: [00:00:00] Welcome to the PRT podcast brought to you by the Pain Reprocessing Therapy Center, a training center where thousands of doctors, therapists, nurses, and coaches have learned how to treat and eliminate their patients chronic conditions. My name is John Gesenica, and I'm the Director of Clinical Research and Development at the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles, California, where I team up with medical schools, healthcare companies, and government agencies.
To conduct research and improve the treatment of chronic conditions with psychology. I'm very excited about today's episode. Not only do I have an amazing expert guest, but you'll also be hearing a session I conducted with a patient named Ben, who makes a breakthrough in his recovery using a method that I think will resonate with a lot of people.
This episode is focused on finding and treating Hidden emotions that slow down or get in the way of recovery. Over the last several years, particularly through clinical trials, focused on patients with more complex trauma histories and higher stress loads, we've developed some [00:01:00] very effective and efficient tools for processing the emotions that keep chronic symptoms alive.
I hope to show you one of those tools today, and going forward we plan on releasing episodes on a monthly basis. So if you like the show, please subscribe or follow me on Instagram at JohnG. Therapy, where I answer questions and provide information on the tools we cover in the episodes. Now, before we get started, a brief disclaimer.
This podcast is presented solely for general information and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist, or other professional health care service. If you have a specific medical concern or question, please contact your personal health care provider.
Now let's meet my guest for today's show.
Joining me is Christie Uipi. Christie is an expert clinician, the founder and executive director of the Better Mind Center and the host of the Like Mind, Like Body podcast. Before starting her own center, she was the associate [00:02:00] director of the Pain Psychology Center where she and Alan Gordon were the sole clinicians in the Boulder Back Pain Study.
Possibly the most important chronic pain study to date. I have the privilege of working with Christie on two chronic pain clinical trials with the university of Colorado and the upcoming trial of Mount Sinai. And we'll be teaming up in 2025, hopefully for some trials, expanding the scope of PRT to other symptoms.
If there was a Mount Rushmore for chronic pain therapists, Christie would be on it. But more importantly, she is a wonderful human being. that you kind of just want to be around. Christie, I'm absolutely thrilled to be talking to you today. How are you doing?
Christie: You already made my day with that intro. So I'm doing great.
So excited to do this with you.
John: Good. Um, one of the things I'm most impressed about with you is you have this really successful business. You have a large family life, but you also find time to just innovate and do research into chronic pain. What, what drives you to keep innovating?
Christie: I don't think it's an option not to.
As a person who recovered from [00:03:00] chronic pain, myself, like so many of us in the field have, every day in pain is a long day. Every day in pain is a long day. And when it can last weeks, months, or even years, mine lasted seven years. I know we've both worked with people whose pain or other symptoms have lasted decades.
We can't afford To be doing treatments that could be a bit more effective or could be a bit quicker or could get to the heart of breaking free from that pain, fear cycle in this way. So it's just the innovation is so directly tied to helping someone enhance their quality of life. So I don't have a research brain.
I just have a human drive to help my clients quicker
John: with all the time you've spent around other people in these research projects and just all the people, you know, in this community. Where do you see the next, you know, five to 10 years of innovation happening in this field? How do we get better at this?
How do we make it go quicker?
Christie: My hope is over the next five to 10 years, we go back to a [00:04:00] new type of simplification where pain, yes, as much as it's multifactorial and complex, it is also either being derived from some sort of structural injury or. Pathological disease process going on in the body and needs to be treated through the body or it's neuroplastic in nature It's coming from neural networks in the brain and coming back to that simple distinction I think it's gonna help a lot of people understand where to start You have to know what pain is to understand how to treat it.
John: I love this idea of simplifying everything I think one of the things we've done so poorly as an industry has just made things incredibly complicated. I think it's one of the reasons I'm really excited about bringing you on for the session today, because when it comes to emotion in pain reprocessing therapy, but just any chronic pain therapy, it's either described in my experience in like a very vague way.
Feel your feelings and then see what happens to your pain, or it's like super, super complicated where we start talking about this unbelievable terminology with the unconscious [00:05:00] brain. And so what I want to help do over the next couple of podcasts is just give a little bit more clarity on how to specifically target emotion in
Christie: Krabby Patty.
Well, I'm excited to be talking to you about this and I'm excited even just to lay the groundwork of this idea of simplifying. Um, which I do find very helpful for many of my patients. I'll also name, I think it's important as a qualifier and as a complexifier, like people are complex. Pain is multifactorial.
There, there are a lot of things that go into feeling your feelings, but I like to start with something stripped down so that people can sink their teeth into something that makes sense.
John: Well, why don't we get into this first session? I'm really curious to hear what you think about it. Let's start here.
Let's
Christie: do it.
John: Why don't you talk me through when this first started and what that experience was like?
Ben: Yeah, it started, um, I think about a year and a half ago. It started at the point where I tried to lift something really heavy in my back garden. I was terrified it was going to squash the [00:06:00] rabbit, so I tried to heave this giant pot.
in the most awkward way you can imagine. And I thought, Oh, my back, that didn't feel good. That didn't feel very nice. So I sort of stopped. And then it kind of rumbled on for a couple of weeks. I went for a bike ride with my son. And after that, it became really painful. Kind of gradually built up and um, at first, actually, it wasn't that bad at first, but it gradually got worse.
I have a friend who's an osteopath. I went to see him. He said, I think you need a, you've got to get an MRI. Really, you've got to know what's going on. So kind of naively off I went, got myself an MRI and then It told me I had a herniated disc, and then my kind of, my mind just, just kind of exploded with all these worries, fears.
I was like, terrified. I was kind of reading all this stuff online, thinking this could go on for a long time. This could be, this could be difficult. So really worrying. And years ago, I hurt my shoulder, which has never really got back to how it used to be, [00:07:00] rock climbing years ago. So I think somewhere in my head, I already thought your body can go wrong and you can't, you know, some things permanently.
Become a problem. So maybe I already have that in my head. Yeah, that that's been the story. It's probably totally common and Imagine lots of people have gone through this same kind of like feeling really terrified or worried about the future
Christie
John: what jumps out to you about this client right off the bat
Christie: first that I adore him. He's so relatable He's so relatable. I feel like we all are him and he speaks to a lot of the way that our brains work It jumps out how simple of a moment this was. It started with something so simple, like, oh, I'm just kind of lifting something in my back garden.
That moment in and of itself wouldn't seem profound in and of itself, but you can hear so quickly how the fear gets layered on top of it. Even in the moment, With the flowerpot, he used the word terrified. I was terrified that I was gonna squish this [00:08:00] bunny. It's like so, again, adorable and tragic. But the fear started right then.
Just in that moment of bending down and lifting the pot awkwardly, uh, his threat mechanism and his brain was turned on from there. And then you can hear the fear that gets added in on top of it the more he starts moving over the next couple of weeks and starts investigating what's going on. That fear and worry only continues to grow.
John: So one of the things that came up in the session was he'd been trying PRT for a while and send some other chronic pain therapies and felt like he was just kind of stalled and wasn't making much progress. What do you look for in a client when they come to you and say that I'm sure you see that all the time.
Christie: Yeah, it's tricky because lots of people feel that way and they're putting in really good effort. So it's not that they're failing or the treatment is failing as much as The fear brain is so remarkably sensitive, and fear can look like many different things. It might look like outright [00:09:00] terror of the sensation.
I'm terrified of feeling this pain. I know that I am afraid of it. But it might look like many other more subtle things, like in this case, This back of the brain worry that this might not go away, so it might not even be I'm afraid of the sensation I'm feeling right now, it's the background worry of permanence.
Or it might look like another client's frustration, why is this lasting so long? Or it might be just the subtlest way the client is or isn't approaching the sensation is accidentally creating more agitation than it is creating ease. So I try to offer clients reassurance, but just because it hasn't worked so far does not mean that we're not going to have progress.
It's likely that your fear brain is really sensitive and we just haven't found the right way in.
John: Yeah, the amount of things that can show up of what's kind of the ghost in the machine or what's blocking the progress. And I, it's, it's good to hear. You're just kind of like investigator brain turning on and saying, all right, we got to kind of turn over all these, these rocks.
A couple of [00:10:00] hints I had, one is that the client had shared that. He'd had a shoulder injury that never really healed in the past. So he already had this moment of kind of fragility. Um, and we had talked in the console call about some of the stressful things. That's usually the thing that I'm checking first is what stressful is going on during the moment of the, of the injury.
And so I want you to hear this next part of the session of, of when the client describes kind of what's going on, uh, in terms of his stress during the injury. And we'll go from there. I know we talked in the console call about. What had happened kind of around the time the pain flared up. Can you tell me what the stressors were like in your life during that time?
Ben: Absolutely. The stressors in my life, when I, when I think back to it now, I'm amazed that I managed to miss a huge, huge event in my life, which is that I was made redundant from a job that I really love. And this happened really quickly. Uh, it was, uh, it was. a bad, bad surprise. And, um, [00:11:00] and I was really, really scared at, at, at the time.
I was really stressed as well. There was a team, there were other people that I was trying to support, but I was so worried about my family,
about
Ben: home, um, And my thoughts were running wild. I was, I was thinking all sorts of terrifying scenarios. I was, I was kind of dreaming up homelessness and, and, uh, you know, everything you work for might be lost.
And I had these terrible feelings about the future and I had this back problem at the same time. And I remember thinking, Oh, this is, this is really difficult. I've got to. You know, I'm being made redundant. I'm in this, you know, this financial situation, which is really stressful. And, what are the chances?
I've got a really painful back as well. This is making me so hard. I can't, I can't even sit down. I, you know, I'm really struggling with the pain I'm in. But I never really connected those things.
John: I can imagine feeling cursed. It's like, not only am I being made redundant, but I, my back is feeling,
Ben: [00:12:00] yeah, yeah, it was, it was, uh, yeah, it was a really grim time.
I kind of laugh now, but at the time it really did feel terrible.
John: What happens in moments like that is that You know, as you were saying, you're thinking about homelessness, you have children, you have a family to feed, your survival brain takes over and any emotions you're feeling don't get taken care of in that moment because your brain's priority is let's survive, let's deal with these emotions later.
What tends to happen in this scenario is that there's a piece of your brain that gets really scared, has a lot of emotions and doesn't. Have the ability to express it properly because you're so focused on just getting through the next day And what happens in these scenarios is your brain learns when you're avoiding these type of emotions and avoiding processing this That they're too dangerous to deal with They're frightening and so the same way your brain can interpret signals from your back through this lens of danger and say you're in pain [00:13:00] It can interpret these emotions coming up as dangerous because it's learned from a year and a half ago We don't have time to deal with this, and if we let this kind of closet open, we might not be able to close it back up, and we might not be able to function.
And so this is a very common thing that happens in crises. What we want to do today is help teach your brain those emotions that were there are okay. They're safe. So that when your brain senses similar situations going forward, and it's not necessarily a one to one ratio, it's not necessarily when you encounter a difficult situation at work, it might be just something that makes you a little bit frustrated or a little bit scared.
We don't want your brain to get on high alert because it's learned in the past that it can't deal with these emotions. Does that make sense?
Ben: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, because there'd be lots of sort of moments. Since where I've had other stresses in my life, other things have happened, whether it's work related or outside of it, [00:14:00] where certainly my back can feel worse.
John: When a client tells you that they've been through a tremendously stressful period, when their pain cropped up, uh, what alarm bells are going off in your brain or what, where does your brain start going in terms of treating that person?
Christie: I think, perfect. This is so helpful as evidence. It's, it's, it can happen that someone has an accumulation of stress that's less noticeable than this client and pain can absolutely start in those moments.
You can have a nervous system accumulation from the time you're born and start having back pain when you're 42, right? But in instances where it's so clear cut. That there's a known stressor at the time of the back pain. I think, perfect, this is so clearly an indication that your brain was in a state of prolonged threat and stress and started to interpret lots of things in a funky way.
Once your, that threat detection mode is turned on, you can interpret anything and everything. Through that same [00:15:00] lens of threat. And when things are so stressful and uncertain externally, it only makes us more hypervigilant about what's going on in our body internally. And in the same way that this client probably was desperate for some sort of certainty around his financial situation, he was also likely desperate for some sort of certainty around what was going on with his back.
What's the diagnosis? How can he get better? And on exactly what day can you expect to have some sort of relief?
John: In a therapy session, do you always have to go back and relive the past, do you have to relive your traumas? What do you tell patients when they ask you that question?
Christie: It's one of my favorite questions, and it gets asked a lot.
Yes and no, I tell them. I don't think that we have to, item by line item, discuss every single thing that's been difficult or traumatic that's happened to you, and come to some sort of resolve. First of all, I just don't think that that is necessary for pain reduction. It also puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the patient.
To like achieve something that feels like [00:16:00] processing and or, or resolve. So no, no, I don't think that we need to do that. But yes, I do think we need to take a look at patterns. And I do think we need to take a look at, um, the overlap between the way you relate to your symptoms and the way that you relate to anything and everything else.
So what did you learn about how to show up in your space, in your body, in your life, in certain relationships? How did you learn to protect yourself? How did you learn to be on guard? How did you learn to be adaptive? In what ways did those mechanisms create and instill fear? The way that we relate to our symptoms is often the way that we relate to literally everything else in our lives.
John: I love that because it seems like you have a very intentional approach. I'm like, we're not just reliving trauma for the sake of reliving trauma. We're going in to find some answers or to discover what we actually need to fix some of these patterns you mentioned.
Christie: Yeah, absolutely.
John: And so in this theme of simplifying things, I want people listening at home, at this part of the [00:17:00] process, what we're doing, and you'll hear this with Ben next, is just being very, very curious.
We're being curious in a very intentional way, because we're looking for some answers that are going to help Ben's unconscious brain feel a little bit safer. So let's take a listen.
What I want you to do is just go back to that period of time a year and a half ago where you were feeling wounded. There was this surprise at work. I want you to just picture that version of you, almost like you're looking down on him from above. I want you to watch him and I want you to just notice what is he feeling in that moment?
What are some of the emotions that are coming up for him?
Ben: I mean, when I think back, he's very frightened. He's um, feels like he's carrying an awful lot of responsibility, an awful lot of stress and strain. I think there's also sort of mixed in. Some shame. [00:18:00] Poor guy losing his job being made redundant really was nothing to do with him and it wasn't his fault but I can definitely remember those feelings of Shame.
And I'm, you know, I'm going to have to tell people this has happened and an embarrassment of shame around that as well.
John: As you watch him right now, do you feel any issue with him? Do you feel embarrassed of him? Do you feel any like shame or guilt when you look at him?
Ben: More than anything, I really feel for him.
Really, you know, that's my strongest. I do feel for him, but maybe there is mixed in there still some shame and guilt about that. But you know, I really do. Yeah. I just know. I just, I just feel for him. It's a terrible situation for him to be in, for me to be in, quite emotional thinking back to that. I can imagine.
John: I want you to just stick with those emotions, even if it feels a little uncomfortable. There's, there's two fears that come up in this exercise with everybody. One is if we open this emotion, we can't close it. And two, if we [00:19:00] open this emotion, it's going to become so intense. That it's just going to explode.
And so I want you to just use your breath as a way to just calm your system down. And I want you to imagine that you're with that version of you right now. You're with him. And I want you to just get really curious, almost like you're interviewing somebody you're fascinated by. And I want you to just ask him, what are you feeling shame about?
Ben: Yeah, I think the, uh, the shame is a sense of letting someone down and shame is a sense of, um, how has this happened to me and not others? Does this say something about me? Does it say something about me making a mistake or not seeing this coming? And how have I, how have I let myself fall into this situation?
And
John: I want you to just let them know, of course you feel that way. The point of this part of the exercise is just to allow that emotional piece of your brain to feel like it's being [00:20:00] heard. You are becoming the really good parent to your emotional brain right now, and I want you to ask that piece of you.
Are you angry about anything? And this might be a harder one, but just see if you can probe. Do you feel any frustration?
Ben: You know, I feel frustration. I feel frustration with myself. I feel, I feel kind of angry with myself for feeling like this about myself.
Um,
Ben: yes. You know, I feel, I feel frustrated and angry about feeling those feelings at that point.
Yeah,
John: here's what I want you to do. I want you to ask that version of you that that version of you from a year and a half ago. If he's in front of you right now, I want you to ask him, how does it feel when I judge you for being emotional? How does it feel when I judge you? We're feeling frustrated and sad and shame.
Ben: It was awful. It feels unfair and unreasonable, you know, it makes me feel smaller. [00:21:00]
John: So I want you to make a deal with him right now. I'm going to suspend judgment for this exercise. I promise I am here for you because I've spent so much time not giving you an ear and just ask him if he's frustrated about anything in that situation outside of yourself, any body, any person, any situation, it could be just at the universe around how unfair it is.
Just as he feels frustrated. Yeah, he feels hugely frustrated.
Ben: He feels really unfairly treated. It feels like there's too many things happening to one person at once. He feels, uh, he feels quite angry that this has happened and can't do the things that he used to love doing to release some stress from running or paddleboarding or, you know, walking and the things he used to do to just make himself feel happier.
That's been taken away from him. Yeah. Just when he needs them the most, you know?
Mm.
John: I want you to encourage him for a moment, just to let that [00:22:00] anger out. Just to get super angry. Encourage him. You have every right to feel this way. There is no danger in this, just imagine him screaming or yelling and just releasing that anger he felt at the moment that he couldn't express.
And every once in a while, just put your hand on his shoulder and let him know, I get it. I'm with you on this.
As an emotional repressor myself, who spent years being very frustrated with the idea that I have emotions and I can't just be this like perfect logical brain, I relate to him so much. Can you relate to this, this patient at all?
Christie: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, John, I didn't know that you classified yourself like that in a previous lifetime.
It's so different from how you're just so endlessly, genuinely validating of all people. Like, the way that you are in session is exactly the way that you are in real life. I experience that with you all the time, so that's pretty incredible to hear your name. Um, yes, I relate to him in, in many [00:23:00] ways, including this, uh, self criticism trap that he keeps finding himself in.
He was self critical during the stressful period when he was, in his words, made redundant by his job. And you did such a beautiful job, John, of catching this in your exercise with him, that when he was reflecting on that time, he got into the self criticism again in the moment. He went to self criticism.
I'm angry with myself for Feeling that way for not feeling differently just as an immediate defense. Um, and I don't think people always know that, that self criticism and just moving into that cognitive trap of going over and over all the things that you did wrong or could have done differently is a form of avoidance of feeling.
That's not, you're not feeling anything when you're in that plate.
John: Why do you think it's so frustrating that we have these emotional brains? Why do you think our logical brains get so annoyed with the idea that we have emotions or we feel things?
Christie: I think emotions are messy, and it does not complement the way [00:24:00] that our fear brain works in this dichotomous way.
When your fear brain is turned on, there's a part of your brain that's just trying to decipher, Is this thing? Is this experience? Is this person? Is this situation? going to harm me, hurt me, or kill me, or is it safe? Can I survive it? And there's no wiggle room. If something is life threatening, either is it or it isn't, you should avoid it or you can engage with it.
So that part of our brain operates on a big dichotomy. And if that part of our brain, our fear brain, is turned on, it can't tolerate the messiness of emotion. It's too complex. It doesn't know where to put it. So it's safer to put that messy emotion in the box of dangerous, could harm me, could kill me. We better err on the side of caution and just avoid it all together.
John: Oh man, that's, that's the best way I've heard this put so far. If people are listening at home, just to step this out in the most simple way, what we're doing with Ben is we not only want to get curious about what his unconscious brain is still [00:25:00] feeling upset about, and secondly, and more importantly, what What Christie noted is allowing that piece of our brain to feel heard and not criticized.
And one of the best ways for us to block this process is just to criticize our emotional brain. And so the more that Ben can just allow himself to just feel these feelings, uh, even though it doesn't feel. Productive at first, it can actually feel pretty awful at first just to give his unconscious brain, this experience of you're not alone.
Uh, if there's one message I give about this section, it's just, we want our brains to feel not alone before we go in and fix Christie. I know you have young children. Do you ever experienced that? Where you just so badly want to go in and fix it, but you kind of just have to sit with your daughter.
Yes.
Christie: This just happened last night. I ask her most nights during our bedtime routine. Uh, is there anything that you need help with? Is there anything stressing you out? And a lot of times she says no. Something she tells me about who she played with. [00:26:00] But last night she was telling me all about some drama that happened in her preschool and I have to just sit there?
And reflect, like such a big part of me wants to be like, who did what to you? I'm going to go down and sort this out. And I really have to train myself to just reflect like, wow, Kala, that sounds so stressful. It sounds like you had a lot to sort through today.
John: And so if you're feeling like it's difficult to parent your emotional brain in a very empathetic way, you're not alone.
Um, and any parents can share this experience and it's probably even harder to do it with ourselves. Um. So let's see this next section. Let's see how Ben can start providing some empathy to that piece of him.
What I want you to do right now is make him your absolute priority and just ask him, What do you need to hear from me to feel supported or to feel a little bit better? What assurance, what information do you need from me that'll make you feel [00:27:00] safer?
Ben: Then none of this is It's my fault. Your fault. Uh, but you're not being judged and your children didn't judge you.
They were fine. They, they were, they, you know, they were emotional, but they were. They were on your side, and people, no one was judging you, thinking this was a problem of your own making. That people love you, people back you, and that I love myself, you know, I'm there to put an arm around myself. You know, we can do it together, and uh, we're not split on this.
I'm
John: with you. And this is integration, this is your logical brain and your emotional brain getting on the same page, and I want you to just reinforce that to yourself right now, just let them know, you're not alone in this. Your family loves you. This is not your fault, and I have your back. You are not gonna be alone in this anymore, that's how I feel.
That feels feels
Ben: good. It feels really good. It feels healing. It [00:28:00] feels, uh, it was like I needed to hear it. Yeah. It's good saying the words out loud. It's good hearing you repeat them back to me as well. Good.
John: In PRT, there's this really high emphasis on messages of safety where you're saying, I'm not hurt. I'm not injured. My back is fine. Do you see this with clients where they need a little bit more of an in depth message of safety where it's not just, I'm healthy, my back is okay, but also my family loves me.
Christie: Absolutely. I, I really place an emphasis on catering the messages of safety. The way that I usually describe it to clients is here's, here's our vanilla. I am safe. What, what flavor do we need? How complex do we need to get? Do you want vanilla with a dash of cinnamon and sprinkles on top? Because the safety is safety is complex.
That's one thing I can't say is simple. [00:29:00] Safety is complex in someone's relationship. to safety in their body is super complex. So some folks, even the word safety to land so poorly with them, it's like my message of safety doesn't include that word. It's I am calm enough or I am supported enough in my family.
And absolutely, we're not only talking about messages of safety as it relates to the body, it's as it relates to any situation in which you have historically felt threatened or currently feel threatened. And we could get a specific as feel supported. And
John: I want people just to hear how receptive he is to some of these messages after his unconscious brain feels like it's been heard.
Christie: Yeah. Yes.
John: Have you had that experience where like, uh, you know, somebody just like listens Empathizes with you, listens to you. And now when they're about to give you advice, like you're so much more open to it, rather than
Christie: just like leading. Absolutely. That, that was so clear. And you're saying it was like, he became so thirsty for it.
The second he had one sip of your validation of you [00:30:00] are opening that door to allowing the feelings. He was like, Oh my God, wait, I'm actually so thirsty. I'm so dehydrated. But you had to offer that, that first step is he was so dehydrated for so long. He must've just trained himself to not even think about it, to not even.
Think about allowing those emotions in. So when you open that door, I was one of my favorite moments of the session.
John: You know, early on in my career at pain psychology center, I was one of the only male therapists and I just got into this rabbit hole of getting like all the macho guy clients.
And
John: one of the things I would bump up against is you would try to give somebody who was very resistant to messages of safety messages of safety.
And it would just be like, they would just be swatting them down left and right. But if you could just allow their unconscious brain to feel heard for a moment and just wallow in the emotion, all of a sudden there's the softening that comes up. So for, for people listening at home, if we're stepping this out, this first step of getting very, very curious and listening to the emotions going on in the [00:31:00] unconscious brain, give the brain a little time to just express, don't rush.
And then you can start mining for what are the messages, safety you need to hear. And all of a sudden the brain will start being very open to telling you what it needs to hear to feel safe and calm.
Christie: Big time. All right. What, when we think of the word fix in that there's a problem, right? We don't fix something that's not broken.
We don't fix something that's not a problem. So when our approach is. How do I fix this feeling? How do I get out of it as quickly as possible? We are reinforcing every threat message that our brain is already throwing at us. So I appreciate you naming that. If you can allow for the feeling to be in the room, you're inherently neutralizing it and moving it towards something that is tolerable.
And then the fixing, that word softens as you go.
John: For sure. So in this next section, I want to show people how to take these messages of safety they've gotten and really target.[00:32:00]
Let's try one more exercise, just to show you how to like really specifically target this. Yeah. Okay. And so I want you to just close your eyes again, feel your breath, slow down and just feel those exhales getting nice and long and bring your awareness down to your back. And what do you feel?
Ben: I feel some discomfort, uh, in a part of my back.
Interesting that I talked to you earlier about it being in three, usually it was in these three parts, but this is kind of, yeah, this is kind of verging on not being in one of those three.
John: So we got it on the move.
Ben: We got it on the move, yeah. Sort of the center of my back, it feels quite flat, um, and in one particular place.
John: Just watch it. And what I want you to try to start doing is just giving yourself those really specific [00:33:00] messages that you're. unconscious wanted before. What are some of those things you remember your unconscious brain needed to hear?
Ben: Needed to
John: hear
Ben: that none of this is your fault. You're not to blame for any of this.
No one's judging you. No one's blaming you. You're not on your own. Your family are there. Your friends are there. They love you. They want you to feel, feel okay and get through this. Good. You're okay.
John: Amazing. And last question I want you to ask that wounded piece of you. Is there anything else? That you need me to hear.
You need me to acknowledge. Or is there any emotion you just need to get off your chest? Ask that guy.
Ben: Just think overall, I would like to ask him to not worry so much. Not, just to not take it so seriously. Just relax and enjoy those parts of your life that are good. You know, just don't take it so seriously.
John: [00:34:00] Here's the negotiation I want you to make with him right now. Let them know, I want you to feel more relaxed and at ease and not take it so seriously. But when you do take it seriously, I'm going to be there to listen to you now. And I want you to tell me about it. I want you to express what you're feeling and tell me how scared you are and tell me how frustrated you are.
And in return, I'm going to provide you safety. I'm going to let you know it's okay, but I want to make that deal with you that it's no longer inappropriate for you to need to express yourself because I can't have you feeling like you're alone through this whole experience.
So Ben was doing so well and you could see him fall back into this trap of self criticism.
Yeah.
John: What do you tell a patient? When they come to you and say, like, I'm just so self critical, or I have a lot of patients come to me and say, like, I'm so critical of everybody else, like, how do I handle this? How do I deal with this?
What do you say to somebody like that?
Christie: What an adaptive strategy you've developed over time. I'm sure it's served [00:35:00] you extremely well in some Past circumstance and they don't notice that they're doing it. He didn't notice he was I I felt for him so bad in that moment When he said I'm just gonna I'm just gonna relax I'm just gonna let it go cuz he's he's really genuinely trying like he didn't think that that was a bad thing to do He thought he was encouraging himself and it just slipped in The emotional avoidance and suppression just slip back in.
So it's such a pattern for him as it is for so many of us. And self criticism is a survival strategy. When you're self critical, you can't allow your nervous system to relax. It keeps you hypervigilant. You have this constant stream of criticism coming at you. And every time you hear a self critical thought, even if you're the one delivering it to yourself, there's like a little increase of stress and cortisol and your nervous system stays activated.
So if you grew up in or existed in for any period of time in an environment that was not safe. Self criticism is an extremely helpful mechanism for maintaining a highly activated nervous system.
John: Can people break this cycle? Do you see it?
Christie: Absolutely. I mean [00:36:00] I I did by still a work in progress. I catch myself, of course, but Absolutely.
Absolutely. This is why I always say they're not think self compassion is a negotiable part of chronic pain treatment You you you can break it with practice and with Learned and practice compassion toward yourself.
John: So this was a little test for Ben, and this is why I have people do somatic tracking, a tool of PRT, where they bring their awareness to their pain.
Cause it's easy to be compassionate toward yourself, but all of a sudden, when your pain is ripping. It becomes a lot harder, so just to step this out for people to simplify it. This last step is okay. You have the self compassion down. You figured out what messages of safety your unconscious wants you to give it.
Now, can you feel your pain and at the same time be very, very self compassionate to yourself? And like you saw with Ben, it's a lot easier said than done. So I wanted to give Ben one more chance. Let's see if he could really step it out and see if he could really pay attention to his pain while being compassionate.
And let's hear how it goes.[00:37:00]
And just bring your awareness down to that sensation in your back and just imagine every moment that goes by, you're teaching your brain that this sensation is not dangerous. And in fact, that can actually feel really good. And I want you to just kind of move around in your chair without any fear that you're hurting yourself.
Feel that strength in your back and let yourself know, I'm not fragile. This thing in my shoulder, it's probably the exact same thing on my back. It's just this lingering unconscious fear, and I know I'm going to be okay. And when you watch the sensation, when you feel like this, what does it do? What's it doing right
Ben: now?
It's not so noticeable. It's really not there very much at all. And the bit of it that is there, It's fine. It's okay. Um,
John: yeah, that's the most exciting thing. Any of my clients say to me, I don't care if the sensations there or not, your brain will take care of that in due time. But if you can watch it right now and say, yeah, there's something there, but I [00:38:00] don't really care.
It's fine. We are having an experience where your brain is learning. You're safe. It's interpreting these signals through safety, and that means you're going to get better in a very sustainable way. This is not a flash in the pan where you go to Portugal and you feel relaxed for a few moments and it goes away.
This is now sustainable where you see it and you say, this is not dangerous, and I promise you, your brain will stop paying attention to it so much because it doesn't view it as something that's going to hurt you. So just take one or two more breaths, and I want you to just see if you can enjoy your back for the first time in a while.
Enjoy that feeling. Enjoy this feeling like you're going to be okay. You have your confidence back and feel it on a gut level.
Ben: Yeah, it's a good feeling. I feel lighter. I do feel lighter. I feel,
John: yeah,
Ben: I feel, I feel like I can be more confident about what's coming. I feel like I can, I can do it, which is great.
Which is, which is where I want to be, John. Good.
John: Just open your eyes.[00:39:00]
Ben: Yeah, it's great. It's quite good. It's quite emotional. Um, but good.
John: What emotions coming up for you right now?
Ben: Well, I felt, I felt really emotional when you were saying, You said something like, um, I can't allow you to feel like you're on your own, going through these situations, sort of, because struggling alone, and you know, when you were, when you was, it was that, it was kind of that moment, those words, and that, that piece, um, made me feel really emotional, made me feel like, you know, this isn't the first time that's happened to me, Jon.
Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, it's not the first time that I've I've done that to myself. I've closed myself down for some reason to make something work for someone else to make something better or easier, or I don't know what really, but, uh, probably a multitude of reasons. But yeah, seeing that, seeing myself, looking at myself and talking to myself and, and, [00:40:00] uh.
That made me feel quite, quite sad for myself, I
think,
Ben: quite emotional, but, but just good, good to see it. I mean, I don't have to carry on being like that, you know, if I can see it, then I can change it. So that was, that was a good thing.
John: I feel emotional when I go through these exercises because I've had so many circumstances in my life where I felt that way, where I've just abandoned myself to appease somebody else or to take care of a situation.
And that sadness is a good thing you're feeling right now. Cause it's a motivator to say like, I don't want to do that to myself
Ben: anymore. No, no, I really don't. So that made me, yeah, that made me feel quite, quite emotional and, um, quite, quite sad for myself. But I liked being able to, I liked being able to see that so clearly.
And seeing it so crystal clear, like, that made me think, well, actually, do you know what? I can do something differently. I can, I can sort of approach this differently. And just, yeah, again, just seeing my pain in my back change and be in a different place and not be as painful as it was. [00:41:00] And That means it can go, if it can move around, it can keep on going, you know?
100%. It can definitely go. Yeah, that's good.
John: Well, let's pause there then. Yeah, let's pause there. You can hear Ben's lightness at the end. Why do you think it's easier to access some of those emotions like joy and confidence and relaxation after you've gone through a difficult emotion or gone through a difficult memory?
Christie: Yeah, you take the threat out of the room. If we're coding unconsciously, an emotion as dangerous as something we can't tolerate, as something that's not survivable, or will make us unlovable for some reason, it's like a tiger. Living in the room with us all the time. And when you can approach the tiger and recognize, Oh, this, this is a baby tiger.
This is a kitten. I can, I can hold this for a while. When you can neutralize the threat in the room, fear brain switches off, then you have access to joy. It breaks my heart when clients in [00:42:00] pain and inactivation feel like they've lost their joy or lost their ability to feel lightness. That's not a personal failure.
That's the way the brain works. You can't access positivity and joy when your threat detection system is turned on. That is the way the brain works and it is not a personal failing.
John: At the end there, Ben shared That this is not just something he's done when he lost his job, this feeling of like abandoning his emotional self, and it was this lesson that he learned from going through this experience.
Can you share what you've learned from your pain experience with, uh, as pain is such a good teacher and going through these exposures is such a eye opening experience, but what did you learn in
Christie: I could not have said this while I was in pain, so if you're in pain, please return to this when you're out of pain, and I believe you will get there.
It's I'm so freaking grateful I had that pain experience. I am so grateful that I learned to stop putting [00:43:00] so Much pressure on myself so much. Just reading every single situation as a five alarm fire and expecting myself to be the one to put it out the fastest, the best, the quickest. Uh, it was just an honestly unbearable way to live.
And if it weren't for the pain, I'd still be doing it. It's the only thing that stopped me. It's the only thing that got me to invest in myself because I wasn't willing to say my heart is hurting or I'm heavy, but I was willing to say my neck hurts bad enough to get help.
John: I love that. I really, I agree with your sentiment that if, if you're still in pain, it's very difficult to think of this as a process that's going to lead to some sort of breakthrough.
Um, Well, it's just been an absolute pleasure having you today, Christie. To people listening at home. Any, any final thoughts?
Christie: Uh, two, two brief things. First, thank you, John. This was so special. You are such a talented clinician and [00:44:00] I am, I know that the reason why you're, you're doing this is to educate folks and to offer them resources and let them hear themselves in these.
episodes and understand PRT, but it really also beautifully just highlights how talented you are as a clinician. It was very special to be privy to one of your sessions. I'm grateful to you and to your client who was willing to share that and share his work. What I'd like to offer the audience is just a message of I always say, keep at it.
It's not even a message of hope, just reminding people to keep at it. If self compassion doesn't come as easily to you as it came to Ben with some, with some prompting from you in this session, that's also normal. If your brain defends against it for a long time, that's also normal. It does not mean that you're not going to get there.
It just means that your defense mechanisms were put in place for a reason and the softening can come over time.
John: I think that's so important. And you know, when I. Was going through my neck and shoulder pain. I didn't really have to use a lot of emotional work. It was kind of just your basic retraining.[00:45:00]
Pelvic pain. I really had to start looking at some of these emotions and some of these things my unconscious brain needed to hear. And at so many steps of the way, I just felt like I'm, I'm incapable of doing this. Like my defense mechanisms are too strong. My self criticism is too strong. And I can't agree with that anymore.
This idea just to keep going, keep trying. Um, because I've just seen it too many times in myself and my patients that it does click eventually. And when it does, it was so worth it. So thank you so much again, Christie, for having the
Christie: time for us today. Been a pleasure.
John: Thank you for listening to the PRT podcast brought to you by the Pain Reprocessing Therapy Center. I want to thank our guest, Christie Uipi, for joining me today. You can find her therapy center at bettermindcenter. com or on Instagram at betterwithChristie. Finally, I want to give a special thank you to Ben for allowing us to broadcast a piece of your journey.
Be sure to [00:46:00] subscribe to our show, and if you'd like to partake in a session for the podcast, message me on Instagram at JohnG. Therapy, where I answer questions and provide information on the tools we cover in the episodes. Thanks again for listening.
Could you please provide more details on what text you'd like to add and where it should be placed within the script? This helps me better understand your editing needs.