Tag Archives: healing

Are you living with pain?

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When you’re living with pain, you may have been told by health professionals who can’t find a physical cause: “It’s in your head.”

Does that sound familiar?

Rachel Zoffness Smiling

Pain psychologist Rachel Zoffness, PhD

Well, it turns out, that’s the case, at least partly. Pain psychologist Rachael Zoffness says pain is at “the intersection of everything…. pain is never purely physical, it’s also emotional. And it’s not located in the body, ultimately, it’s produced by the brain.”

Knowing that is both incredibly exciting—because we have the power to change how we think and feel, and the tools exist to help us—and disheartening, because many medical professionals don’t know how to best treat pain.

Dr. Zoffness’ first patient was a teenager who’d been living with pain so long he’d given up hope. She says:

“… this was a child, and he was on Thorazine for his pain, and it would knock him out for days at a time. So, he wasn’t going to school, he wasn’t seeing friends, he wasn’t functioning… He’d seen more than 15 physicians… And I knew, especially as a pain psychologist, nobody wants to go to a psychologist for pain because pain is sold to us as this purely physical or physiological problem. If you go to a psychologist, the popular thought is, ‘Oh, they’re saying it’s all in my head, or they’re saying my pain isn’t real or I’m faking it.’ But that’s not true; there’s all these treatments that are evidence-based for pain that are non-pharmacological.”

Using one of these evidence-based treatments, the cognitive behavioral therapy protocol for pain management, Dr. Zoffness was able to help this hopeless student move out of pain into first standing on his porch and eventually into playing soccer and graduating from high school. “He still has pain episodes, but he knows exactly what to do, and he’s never going to be that kid who’s in bed for four years ever again.” Her former patient is now captain of his college swim team.

Where to learn more

Listen to this episode of the Ologies podcast to hear the whole interview: “Dolorology with Dr. Rachael Zoffness.” Or read the transcript here.

Dr. Zoffness has just published a book, which I’ve not yet read: Tell Me Where It Hurts: The New Science of Pain and How to Heal. And her website is packed with resources.

Core Principles of Feldenkrais: Norman Doidge’s Perspective

Adapted from The Brain’s Way of Healing by Norman Doidge, MD, 2015, pages 168-176.

How the Feldenkrais Method facilitates neuroplastic healingThe cover of The Brain's Way of Healing by Norman Doidge, MD

1. The mind programs the functioning of the brain.

We are born prepared to learn. We can adapt our brains and movement to particular surroundings. Even when we damage our brains, usually plenty of brain remains to take on damaged functions.

2. A brain cannot think without motor function.

Just thinking of a movement triggers that movement, changes tone in that part of our body. Using our brains triggers four components: motor movement, thought, sensation, and feeling.

3. Awareness of moving is the key to improving movement.

Doidge writes: “It may seem ‘magical’ to think that movement problems. . . can be radically changed simply by becoming more aware of the movement, but it seems magical only because science formerly thought of the body as a machine with parts, in which sensory functions are radically separated from motor functions.”

4. Differentiation—making the smallest possible sensory distinction between one movement and another—builds brain maps.

5. Differentiation is easiest to make when the stimulus is smallest.

The less effort we use, the more we can notice. If you’re lifting a piano, you won’t notice if a fly lands on it; if you’re lifting a feather, you will.

6. Slowness of movement is the key to awareness, and awareness is the key to learning.

If you leap too quickly, you can’t look before you leap.

7. Reduce effort whenever possible.

If you are straining, you aren’t learning: if strain, no gain. No pain is gain.

8. Errors are essential, and there is no right way to move, only better ways.

If you don’t make mistakes, you won’t learn. No one speaks her native language perfectly from day one.

9. Random movements provide variation that leads to developmental breakthroughs.

Sometimes it’s useful to wander!

10. Even the smallest movement in one part of the body involves the entire body.

When you’ve got a ball of yarn, whichever part of the yarn you take hold of, the whole ball comes along eventually.

11. Many movement problems, and the pain that goes with them, are caused by learned habit, not by abnormal structure.

Often there’s nothing to “fix.” Improvement can come from changing your movement patterns.

About Norman Doidge, MD

Norman Doidge, M.D., is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, author, essayist and poet. He is on faculty at the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry, and Research Faculty at  Columbia University’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, in New York. He is the author of two New York Times bestselling books on neuroplasticity. Learn more about Dr. Doidge on his website.