Phase IV

“Taking Back Your Life”

OVERVIEW OF PHASE IV

Many patients stop their journey at phase II or III.  Patients in chronic pain usually become socially isolated.  Although pain usually is minimal or gone it’s difficult to suddenly become social and re-establish friendships. This phase is intended to consolidate your gains and implement them into your life.  It is the foundation for phase V.

GOALS OF PHASE IV

Education

• Understand the magnitude of the loss of your former life.
• Learn the tools to regain it.

Sleep

• Should no longer be an issue.
• Re-do prior sleep steps if still a problem.

CNS

• Re-connect your nervous system to the best part of your life.
• Systematically engage in establishing the structure to re-create it.
• Improve relationships with your family and friends.

Medications

• Begin to focus on getting off all medications.

Goal setting

• Main focus of this phase.
• Get organized.
• Develop “personal business plan”.
• Immediate family issues are the highest priority.

Rehabilitation

• Gradually increase level of resistance training.
• Re-develop recreational activities that are physical.

FIVE STEPS:

Step 1—Connecting with the Life you Desire

When you are in chronic pain life becomes very heavy.  You evolve into a lifestyle that is just surviving.  You are just trying to keep your head above water dealing with a significant amount of stress.  Additionally, you are carrying a heavy pain burden.  You may have forgotten what it is like to live your life with deep joy and excitement about the possibilities.  I would suggest an exercise that I have personally found helpful.

• Find a quiet time and place where you can just think and possibly go into a meditative state.  Think back to a time of your life when you were the happiest.
  • Then visually take yourself back there, trying to remember every possible detail about that era of your life.  Remember:
    • Dreams/ goals
    • Attitudes
    • Friends
    • Activities
    • Feelings and emotions around specific events
    • Spend as much time as you can with this exercise and repeat it a few times
    • Once you have really internalized that joyous period of your life then sit down again and fully experience your present life
      • Compare it visually to the era of your life when you were the happiest
      • Note the gap between then and now
      • Make a commitment to get that vision back
      • Write it down in as much detail about the kind of life you want to regain.
        • Don’t worry about creating a specific plan right now.

Step 2—Personal “Business Plan

Once you have repeated the meditation described in Step 1 enough times to feel that you really have connected with it, develop your own “business plan.”   I did my first major one in 2008 and partially re-did it in 2010.  Just assume that your life is a “business” and that there are certain short and long-term goals you would like to achieve.  As with any business start-up the chance of success is low without a written plan.  The more specific the plan the better.  Here is the template I have used to start and it eventually becomes quite detailed.  I am also realizing that I need to do an additional one with my wife.

Step 3—Get Organized

As I mentioned in the second chapter I had been personally frustrated with my inability to get things done that I really wanted to accomplish or experience.  I was very disorganized.  I have since learned that organizational skills are learned and not inherent.  You will not be able to step back into the life you want to create without an organizational system. I would suggest the following steps:

• Pick an organizational system you feel you would like to learn.  There are many but take the time to learn it.  Don’t just purchase a day planner. You must learn the skills required to take advantage of it. I have found David Allen’s seminars and book, “Getting Things Done (GTD)” invaluable.
• Learn it.
• Decide whether you want to implement it on paper or use a computerized system.
• Use it.  Don’t let yourself off the hook.  It will become much easier over time.

Step 4—Family Issues

Pain = Frustration.  In chronic pain this frustration is usually intense.  When you are frustrated and angry you are disconnected from what is immediately in front of you.  Your awareness goes to zero.  Lack of awareness is the essence of abuse.  Although you may not see it that way your children are seeing it much differently. When you are angry your children who are completely dependant on you have no control and they are fearful.  At a minimum you have ceased to become the source of peace, joy and happiness within your family.  There is a high chance you are not volunteering to be their coach or taking an active role in their lives.  However it is manifested, chronic pain takes a terrible toll on those close to you. I have several beginning suggestions that I have used with success with my patients:

• Read the book, “Parent Effectiveness Training” by Dr. Thomas Gordon.   It is a classic and still the book that has made the biggest impact on my life.  It will not only increase your awareness of your children’s needs but also that of your spouse or partner.
• Do not engage with your family if you are angry—NEVER!!!!  Do not re-engage until you are completely calm.
• Ask your family what it is like to experience you when you are upset. Pain = Anger = Abuse
  • Write it down and look at it whenever you are tempted to engage them while you are angry.
• Only listen to your children and never give advice or an opinion unless you are asked. (Hyde School)
• Work with your family to create a vision of what they would like to have their family life look like.
  • Have a family meeting with an agenda once a week (Hyde school)

You need your family for your support.  Do not become a living weapon with them being your target.

Step 5—Somatic Work: Hoffman or Similar Process

There are many choices of personal growth centers and programs.  Hoffman is an eight-day in-house experience. It is unique because unbeknownst to them they view your whole life in terms of the Mind Body Syndrome (MBS.)  The essence of MBS is that you have neurological pathways that will become predictably activated by a specific circumstance or level of stress.  Essentially all of our responses to stress are pre-programmed so that a specific stimulus will elicit a fairly predictable reaction. Any time you are anxious you are probably in a “pattern.”  Hoffman teaches tools to break up and re-program your response.  In other words instead of having a scenario of “stimulus—response” it now becomes “stimulus—choice of response.”  The tools break up the compulsive link.  I feel that years of re-programming can be accomplished in the eight-day experience.

Hoffman is not for everyone and it is also not within the budget of many people.  Looking for other local resources that emphasize connecting thoughts with physical sensations can also be very helpful.  The term used to describe this type of process is “somatic work.”

RESOURCES:

• “Getting Things Done” by David Allen
• “Parent Effectiveness Training” by Thomas Gordon, M.D.
• Personal growth organizations emphasizing somatic work.

CRITERIA TO MOVE TO PHASE V:

• Visually and emotionally re-connect to who you were when you were the happiest.
• Write a detailed personal “business plan.”
• Learn and implement an organizational system.
• Read “Parent Effectiveness Training” and implement the concepts.
• Actively creating a family life that you desire.
• Engaged with an organization or healer that uses somatic tools for change.

NH