- Alexandra, (laughs) I was talking to you
a minute ago about touch.
She was saying that touch doesn't cause discomfort to her.
Touch causes comfort.
Touch causes feeling better.
Touch causes pain to go away.
Well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And when you think about what I was saying before,
one of the other things we wanna do is we wanna say,
"Well, is there a message?"
Is there some message that maybe
you can just look inside and see?
Is there some meaning or message
that the symptoms may represent
that would be clear and obvious
if there's a message, if there's a guide, if there's a gift,
do you need to do what in your life?
Maybe if it's gentle touch for yourself
is making your brain turn off these sensations,
then maybe part of the message
is you need to be kind to yourself.
Take care of yourself, love yourself,
stand up for yourself, these kinds of things.
This can be very meaningful to people
as they begin to understand
and see the sensations,
not as a betrayal from their brain,
but as a message is guiding them towards something.
Okay, so Lumela for you, you know, you might ask yourself,
you know, is there some message here?
What is the brain maybe trying to say at a,
what we'd call a meta message instead of the message is,
"Oh, you have pain or discomfort.
The message might be, you need to address this,
or address that,
or do this in your life in some way, shape, or form.
And it's just another way of thinking about these things
and helping propel people
to be less focused on the sensations
and more focused on their life
as a way of feeling better physically.
So a lot of calming, compassion, techniques,
we'll talk more about this tomorrow
and with this guy, this is a patient of mine.
He said, "When you feel discomfort,
simply say, thinking.
All pain exists in the brain.
Condition your brain that the pain is only that, a thought.
You may have to do this 100s or even 1,000s of times,
but eventually your brain will become bored of this game.
You don't really care how many times you have to do it,
'cause you wanna be patient.
You don't wanna put a timetable on it,
because you have already completely accepted it
as a thought that can't hurt you."
So it's, again, thinking of it in a totally different way.
So as we go into the breakouts,
we're gonna use the same piece of paper
that we did for the morning one.
But instead of using that case as provocative testing,
or you can use your own situation, you know, obviously.
These are some of the techniques that I want you
to play with and practise the quiz.
Remembering the point of the quiz
is not just to make someone say
there's nothing wrong with them.
The point of the quiz is to bring out what the doubts are.
That's the point,
is to look for the doubts and then address those doubts
and then come back to see if you can help
telling yourself the truth.
The point of the affirmations is to be truthful,
and to do it in a fun way, a caring way, a loving way,
a singing way, a laughing way of different accents,
whispering, shouting, standing tall,
provocative testing we already did this morning,
so you're not gonna do that today.
You might wanna do some sematic tracking
or mindful awareness which we showed,
you might wanna explain the five F's or the six F's.
Give some analogies about the scared child,
how the danger signal may get worse
before it gets better,
how it may go up and down,
and just watching the ups and downs
is part of Pain Reprocessing to say,
to not be afraid, to not worry about it.
To say to your brain, "Bring it on.
I can take more, give me more.
That's okay, I'm not afraid."
To look forward to the sensations
as an opportunity to lean into them.
These are all part of PRT
that you can play around with in your breakouts.