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Dr. Maggie Phillips RCP Online
Become Your Own
Best Healer
W
elcome to the online learning program for _Reversing Chronic Pain._
If you are reading this introduction, I'm guessing that you want
additional help in reversing your pain condition. You may have been
suffering for years from debilitating pain. Maybe your pain stems from
multiple causes an injury, a surgery gone wrong, perhaps an autoimmune
illness such as fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis, or maybe a
structural problem that you were born with. Or maybe you aren't sure
about the causes because the pain keeps moving around and changing.
It's normal to feel despair. Pain that keeps persisting and perhaps
becomes worse over time creates a lot of those feelings. It's natural
that you are looking for a "miracle" way out of the agony, one that
involves little energy because you don't feel you have any energy
left. Your body wants you to run away and hide from the pain, yet your
mind recognizes that that's not the answer either. Maybe you've all
but given up hope. Don't. Not without trying this program first. You
may have tried everything else that has been suggested to you. But you
haven't tried this. Is it worth 10 minutes of your time to try out the
program absolutely free of charge? If you answered even a tentative
yes to this question, please read on.
Why Try the RCP Online Program?
This program is special because it applies the latest online learning
technology to create a multi-dimensional learning experience. It is
designed to be used as a companion teaching tool to my book,
_Reversing Chronic Pain. _Therefore, you may get the best results from
putting together a comprehensive program that combines each book
chapter with an individual learning module. Each module includes video
and audio clips to help you apply the tools from the book and adds new
information and techniques not included in the book. In short,
participating in this learning program is the next best thing to
sitting with me in my office.
If you were meeting with me in person, we would evaluate your pain
condition in terms of its history, your responses to past treatments,
and review all of the techniques discussed in the _Reversing Chronic
Pain _learning program to determine a good place to start. Together,
we would set some initial goals designed to deliver the biggest
results in the shortest time with the least effort from you. When the
inevitable challenges arose, we would modify the methods we were
trying out, and continue to adjust each approach until it was in a
form that could unlock your unique mind-body potentials to give us the
results both of us want you to have.
With this online program, you will be able to have a similar
interaction with me and with the tools I have found to be most
powerful with persistent and chronic pain conditions. You will have
the opportunity to experience the best of online learning that has
already been piloted successfully with people in pain, to build on
your learning from the _Reversing Chronic Pain _book, to watch me
teach the skills live on video, and to listen to audio aids that help
you master the skills and integrate them as I would if you were
sitting in the room with me. Pairing the book's information with this
online tutorial may bring you the best of both programs, but you also
have the opportunity to try each format separately.
What makes me believe that you can succeed with the _Reversing
Chronic Pain _learning program even if nothing else has really worked
for you? First, there are the endorsements of many professionals who
also work with pain conditions, as well as those of pain clients who
have been successful in using the RCP program. If you haven't taken
time to read these supportive comments, please take time to read them
now by
THE ADVANTAGES OF ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT
Before you decide whether you are ready to participate in the
_Reversing Chronic Pain _online program, it might be a good idea to
remind yourself why an alternative pain treatment program may be right
for you.
Since 1993, research has documented the popularity of alternative
medicine. In a study published that year in _The New England Journal
of Medicine_, the authors determined that 1 out of 3 Americans were
utilizing alternative medicine. By 1998, that percentage had increased
to one out of two, and researchers documented that more Americans
visited alternative practitioners than traditional ones. Those numbers
have continued to increase exponentially in each calendar year since.
Why have millions of Americans turned to alternative methods for
healthcare? By and large, it appears that this trend has developed to
find solutions to our epidemic pain problem. Although modern medicine
has extended our life expectancies, it has not been able to cure many
painful health conditions such as arthritis and cancer. So, we find
ourselves living longer, often in pain.
Do alternative methods work? Often they do, but it's important to
remember that no one method works for everyone in pain. So whether
it's magnet therapy, reiki, acupuncture, Pilates, meditation, or
homeopathy, just to mention a few possibilities, it's important to
find the combination of traditional and alternative approaches to pain
that will really work for YOU.
The benefit of the _Reversing Chronic Pain _program is that if
offers you a combination of approaches that do not cost money beyond
the use of the book and the tutorials, and are completely natural,
without the risk of side effects that medications often have. The
tools are completely portable and require no previous study. You can
practice these methods wherever you travel in your day and in your
life. I wish I could predict which ones will work best for you, but
I'm afraid that is something that only you can discover yourself
through open-minded exploration.
Fortunately, there are guidelines that can help, and that's what the
RCP online program provides you. Each module contains up to date
information that stretches beyond the book, along with audio and video
guides to help you apply the methods more effectively, and
opportunities to chart your progress in a journal, either on your
computer or in a separate book that you use every day. Because this
program is multi-modal (that is, it combines multiple approaches in
ways that can boost the effects of each one), you have the advantage
of making many choices on your own behalf, and of changing those
decisions and intentions based on the results you are getting, so that
you develop a fluid, flexible program that fits your ever-changing
needs. You will also learn how to track your responses to the multiple
methods you will be trying out so that you can determine what is
working best, and what does not seem to be helping you get the results
that you want.
You may want to make use of the additional resources that accompany
each learning module, including suggested books, links to numerous
other websites, podcasts and radio interviews. You may also find it
helpful to consult the ongoing blog posted on this website, where I
will share information that is even more current than the learning
modules. The discussion board may be a good support so that you can
share your discoveries, learn from other participants, and find
companionship on your journey 24/7.
Most of all, I hope you will find daily inspiration to help you come
home to your body. Pain is one of the greatest challenges to our
acceptance of embodiment in this life. Yet bringing ourselves back
into our bodies is necessary for the practice of fully grateful,
joyous living. When we do this, we allow healing power to flow through
us, and appreciate our full aliveness as the greatest gift we have.
For more inspiration to help you feel at home in your body, go to .
And now, to learn how you can participate in RCP online.
As good as this program is, it will not help you to the maximum level
if you are unable to become an active, open-minded participant.
Essentially, you need to become your own best healer. You've probably
had experiences with medical professionals that have been frustrating
or marginally helpful. Even if you've worked with the best, they may
not have known how to help you or been able to pinpoint why their
treatments did not deliver the best results possible for you. After a
few of these encounters, it's hard to get your hopes up about a new
approach. You may not have enough energy for anything except crawling
through another painful day. More than anything, you want to stop
hurting, and you aren't sure where to turn to get what you need. When
everyone around you seems to have given up on you, it's very difficult
not to give up on yourself.
THE BIOLOGY OF HOPE
Did you know that there is actually a biology of hope? Dr. Jerome
Groopman, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a staff
writer in medicine and biology for _The New Yorker _magazine. He has
also written several books, including _The Anatomy of Hope_, published
in 2004. The information that follows is excerpted from a speech
prepared by Dr. Groopman on this topic in October, 2003.
Dr. Groopman shared that through his experience with patients, he'd
come to believe that "giving a patient hope was as important as any
prescription I might write or any procedure I might perform." He began
a serious quest to understand how to distinguish true hope from false
hope, whether a person should ever relinquish the right to hope, how
what we hope for might change during the course of an illness, and,
most important, whether there was an authentic biology to hope.
Early on, he was a major skeptic, turned off by new-age claims, such
as the belief that meditation can help your pancreatic cancer go into
remission, or that positive thinking can boost your immune system and
bring your HIV condition under control. Yet Groopman also realized
that if there is a biology of fear, a biology of anger, and a biology
of depression and other emotional states, there must be a biology of
hope.
He began by asking himself what he had learned from his patients. He
believed that the core of medicine was to create circumstances where
hope could flourish as the belief that the actions each person can
take can bring a future different from the present.
One of Dr. Groopman's greatest lessons came from one of his physician
mentors, who specialized in the treatment of stomach cancer. When this
colleague himself was diagnosed with stomach cancer that had already
metastasized, he insisted on fighting the cancer aggressively even
though he had only a 1% - 3% chance of living as long as 12 months. He
not only surpassed that benchmark, but went into remission and lived a
long and healthy life. It turned out that Groopman's colleague was
well aware of the odds against him, but because he wanted so much to
live, he decided that he must fight with a full arsenal of every
possible treatment. The kind of hope his story illustrates is the hope
that fuels determination and the strength to fight illness and health
imbalance, hope and strength to sustain the battle, and the will to
prevail. Such a full-on assault is not for everyone, but it is
important that you know that it is a workable option.
The biology of hope is rooted in the placebo effect, which depends
on belief and expectation. Dr. Groopman cites studies conducted on
pain by Fabrizio Benedetti in Italy. Researchers inflated blood
pressure cuffs around the arm of volunteers and bring it up high
enough to create a measurable pain stimulus. The volunteer is
medicated with a low dose of morphine, which helps to reduce the pain.
Then as the procedure is continued, patients are told that they are
receiving more morphine; instead, however, they receive saline. Most
volunteers report a dramatic drop in pain levels. This occurs because
the placebo effect, created by the belief that the morphine will help,
releases endorphins and enkephalins that diminish the pain response in
the brain.
Similar studies in asthma look at the positive effects of belief and
expectation on respiration and the opening of bronchi. And, a study on
Parkinson's disease that appeared in _Science,_ examined patients with
moderate Parkinson's disease. Patients in the research group were
given a drug that released the drug dopamine and, of course, they had
more voluntary muscle movement. Then the same patients were given a
placebo but they believed they were receiving the dopamine drug again.
What happened? A large number of patients got better with the placebo.
Their belief and expectation caused the same pathways in the brain to
release dopamine. Hope in this way improved them in an objectively
measured way.
One of the scientists investigating this area is an experimental
neuropsychologist named Richard Davidson. A rigorous scientist,
Davidson sees hope as having two components: one a cognitive component
and the other an emotional component. To have true hope means to have
information that allows you to meticulously examine everything in a
given health situation--all the obstacles, all the pitfalls--and then
find that path that can bring you to the future. That's the cognitive
part. The second part is the affective part. We talk about wings of
hope, or being uplifted by hope. There is an energizing feeling that
we experience with hope. Davidson and other scientists now are trying
to develop experimental methods to assess the biological impact of
that energizing feeling, of that uplifting sense on cortisol levels,
catecholine levels, and other important physiological parameters.
So the hope in the _Reversing Chronic Pain_ learning program is to
provide you the kind of experiences that will feed your beliefs
related to hope and help you discover the uplifting feelings of hope
as well.
HOW IS NOW DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER TIME IN YOUR LIFE?
One of the first things a careful clinician does is to take a
thorough history of your pain--when it started, what happened to make
it worse, your current diagnoses, what you know and believe about your
pain, the medical options you've been given for treatment, and what
has helped reduce your sense of pain.
You may not know that the real hope for reversing your pain
condition can be found in your own past experiences as well as in your
current attitudes and beliefs. When I listen to pain clients describe
the history as described above, I listen closely for the ways they
have propelled themselves forward as well as the obstacles that have
derailed their progress. This information may be outside of their
awareness and is important to consider at a full level of
consciousness.
One way you might begin to explore these ideas is to ask yourself,
"How is this time in my life different from all other times that have
come before now? What made me consider the _Reversing Chronic Pain
_learning program right now? Which part of me has been nudging me in
this direction even though I'm not sure anything will work?" You may
want to pause here, and spend a few minutes answering these questions
honestly because the answers that come may well be a part of your
biology of hope.
Now, I'd like to invite you to think about the different decisions
you have made during the course of your pain. These may give you
further clues about what has helped you to move forward in your
recovery from pain and what may have held you back. Consider the
following example.
JERRY
_Jerry began working with me to resolve his chronic back pain
stemming from several herniated discs. Part of my preliminary
evaluation involved asking him to make a list of the major decisions
he had made related to his pain condition. He listed the following:_
*
My Dad and grandfather both had back problems. Growing up, I was
really good at sports. I could have excelled in football, basketball,
or soccer. Instead I played baseball because I thought I might not be
as likely to hurt my back. I liked baseball but I didn't really love
it.
*
When I had just graduated from college, I was riding with one of my
fraternity buddies back home from a party. I didn't know that my
friend who was driving had had too much to drink. He lost control of
the car and we rolled off the road. My friend was critically injured,
and I suffered serious whiplash, which triggered a lot of neck and
lower back pain. I went to a well known chiropractor, which helped a
little bit, and tried acupuncture, which helped a little bit more, but
not enough. I began to really feel scared that I was going to relive
what had happened to my father and his father, who both became
semi-invalids in their later lives. I kept going to see doctors, who
all recommended something different. Finally, I found a physical
therapist who himself had a back injury, and he gave me some excellent
exercises to try. It was hard work, but finally I felt I had found
something that I could do that made a difference.
*
When I was in my 30's, I pulled my hamstring when I slipped and fell
playing coed softball. Even though I didn't feel much pain afterward,
my back started acting up again. I began to worry that I
couldn't/shouldn't exercise or I'd make things worse. I stopped
playing softball, I felt very depressed, and I started limping around
feeling about 90 years old. My wife was upset that I felt so bad and
was withdrawing from her. She wanted me to go see a therapist, but I
felt so defective, I was afraid I'd feel worse. Finally, when it
seemed like my marriage might be on the rocks, I did go to see a
psychiatrist and started on antidepressants. I have to admit they
helped me, the pain got better, and I became more active. Yet I never
returned to the level of physical activity I had experienced before
the injury. I still feel bad about that.
*
By the time I was 40, I had been promoted to more of a desk job,
where I spent long hours typing at my computer. I liked the work, but
I started developing tendonitis in my wrists and arms and was afraid I
would end up with carpal tunnel syndrome. The back pain returned, and
I felt very depressed again. This time the antidepressants didn't
really help that much. I started going into a downward spiral. What
saved me was a friend at work, who had been through similar problems.
He talked to me about having a more positive attitude, and he checked
in with me every day to see how I was doing. I guess the support
really helped, because I finally pulled out of my slump. My company
installed an ergonomically balanced computer table, and I went to the
osteopath that my friend recommended, who was able to help me with
both my arms and my back. My friend Dave also got me involved in a Big
Brothers program; together we coached a basketball team for that
group, and I began to feel better again.
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That brings us to the present time. I came to see you because I
realized in the last few months that I was avoiding playing sports
with my two sons in our backyard. They really love it but it seems to
aggravate my back. I'm only 51 years old, and I don't want to end up
like my father, sitting in my recliner watching TV and not able to
connect the way I want to with my boys.
When Jerry and I looked at these "stepping stones" that had brought
him to his current decision to work with me, we were able to see
several important patterns: a) His anxiety about repeating history had
been present throughout his life and had never been treated; b) taking
charge of his own health needs with the physical therapy exercises had
really paid off; c) social support from his friend Dave had made all
the difference at work; and d) structure really seemed to help Jerry
in the form of the PT exercises and the Big Brothers program.
Once we identified these factors, we were able to construct a plan
for using the _Reversing Chronic Pain_ program that would meet his
needs. I told him that the focus of his treatment right now needed to
be self-treatment, where he would commit to working daily with the
_RCP _tools that seemed to make the most positive difference in his
pain levels in a structured, sequential way. Secondly, he would need
to expand his base of social support, perhaps finding a men's group
where he could get encouragement for his desires to be an active Dad.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we decided to work on his
conflicts about ending up like his male family members, as these
worries might be likely to block our efforts.
Jerry was able to execute our plan to reduce his pain significantly
(from an average rating of 8 out of 10 to a liveable 2-3). Even if
your situation seems to be nothing like Jerry's, you can still benefit
from identifying your own stepping stones.
STEPPING STONES EXERCISE
_Take a few minutes now to type out or write down the 5-7 major
decisions you have made related to your pain condition and its
origins. Consider all types of pain, including emotional and physical
pain, and follow this thread through your entire lifespan. Once you
have listed these decision points, go back and consider how each has
served as a "stepping stone" to lead you to your current place in
life. How has each served as a "stepping stone" for you? What patterns
do you see? How can you use the RCP program to plan to address these
issues? You might want to use the following format:_
Each decision:
How it's been a stepping stone:
What patterns of vulnerability and strength does it reveal?
How can you use these insights to begin the _RCP _learning program?
Now, please to learn how you can participate in RCP online.
Take the Next Step in
Reversing Your Chronic Pain
and/or
Pain persuades
us that we are its prisoners. It is liberating to heal,
to begin to feel good, reclaiming choice and resilience again.
the actions each
person can take can bring a future
different from
the present.
the real hope for reversing your pain condition can be
found in your own
past experiences
as well as in your current attitudes
and beliefs.
One way to
change your pain experience is to focus your breath when
you notice that your stress and/or pain
levels are starting
to increase.
click to hear
Stepping Stones
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INTERVIEWS
Dr. Maggie Phillips discusses hypnosis, pain relief, and health
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