It was the first session of my three-day pain relief event, and Vickie’s back pain was raging. She had volunteered to come up on stage and share the story of her diagnosis.
Tears streamed down her face as soon as she began to speak. “The doctor barely spent a few minutes with me before blurting out, ‘You’ll end up in a wheelchair’,” she shared. “It was just so brutal, so heartless… He didn’t have to say it that way.”
Vickie had gone to that doctor’s appointment full of hope but had left so devastated, she could barely even respond to the doctor’s words.
Just thinking about her diagnosis was enough to put Vickie into a state of panic – and her chronic back pain into high gear.
Millions of people receive diagnoses like Vickie’s every day, and the experience in itself can be traumatic.
Think about it. There you are, already stressed out from having chronic pain, sitting in the doctor’s office, hoping for good news in spite of the unrelenting pain you experience most days.
Then the man or woman in the white coat walks in.
They’ve got the degree and the experience to prove how qualified they are. Naturally, you assume they know best, that what they say is the ultimate truth.
So when you hear them say words like “you’ll end up in a wheelchair” or “your pain will never go away”, it’s already too late…
By then, your rational brain has lost the battle.
The second you hear those words, your amygdala, part of the mid-brain, goes on high alert, sending out distress signals throughout your body.
Your body floods with the “stress hormone” cortisol, which shuts down specific parts of your brain, your digestive system, and more.
As much as your rational brain tries to reassure you that everything is okay, that you can get a second opinion and find pain relief, by this point your body is in full-blown panic mode, making it very difficult for you to think logically or creatively.
As the hours, days, and weeks pass, the words your doctor said to you continue to ring in your ears, putting your body and your brain into a CHRONIC high-stress mode.
With so much of the “stress hormone” cortisol constantly flooding your system, you’re at even greater risk for pain.
So, while it IS critical that you go see a doctor and get a diagnosis, the experience of getting your diagnosis is now contributing to your pain, making it more intense and more frequent.
But wait, what’s really going on here? How is this even possible?
Research is transforming our understanding of chronic pain.
Researchers at Stanford University, UC Davis, and other medical research institutions are finding that our stress and emotions influence whether pain becomes chronic, or goes away once a physical injury or health condition has healed or been successfully treated.
As I’ve seen over and over again in clients with chronic pain, once the underlying stress and emotions are released, pain relief happens.
For Vickie, that process began with a “sliver of hope.”
After tapping with me on stage and releasing the emotions she felt around her diagnosis, Vickie shared that she went home with a “sliver of hope.” Although her pain was still there, for the first time since her diagnosis, she believed that pain relief was possible.
Several weeks later, Vickie joined a group follow-up call to that pain relief event and shared that she was still hopeful that her pain might go away. I then led her through several rounds of tapping to address the stress and overwhelm she was feeling.
By the end of our tapping, Vickie’s pain had completely gone away!
Her brain had heard the message and quieted the danger signals it had been sending to her body. That’s when the chronic pain she’d had for so many years just disappeared.
“So this is what it feels like!” she exclaimed once her pain had vanished.
“It feels like a beautiful vacation… I feel amazing!”
Thanks to the larger process we went through during that pain relief event, tapping through the underlying elements that contribute to chronic pain, Vickie and many others experienced pain relief. If you’d like to experience pain relief also, I’d like to recommend two resources:
#1 – Sign up for one of my “The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief” webinars by going here.
#2 – Download The Tapping Solution App and try out the Pain Relief Tapping Meditations in there. They’re extremely effective!
Until next time…
Keep Tapping!
Nick Ortner
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