Episode #119- High Alert

One habit that leads to the perpetuation of chronic pain is being in high alert.

 

Do you often go to the worst case scenario?  Do you habitually worry?  When you don't have pain are you thinking about when the pain may return? These are signs you are living in high alert, and making your pain worse.

 

When the brain is in a high alert, fear based state, then it can percieve normal signals in the body as dangerous and produce pain.

 

High alert can be reinforced by technology, facing uncertainty, or feeling trapped.

 

Listen in for more details about the high alert state and how we can rewire those neural pathways to ones of safety, calm, peace and freedom.

 

For weekly calls and community support integrating this work into your life, check out Alignment Academy:

https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-academy-membership

 

Plus click below for my special PRT-based group if you have back or neck pain specifically.

 

This six month group will walk you through PRT concepts, the latest research on back and necks, and even individual coaching sessions for deeper somatic work- all for an amazing low price:

 

https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/happy-back-&-neck-club

Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 119, High Alert. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become unstoppable body and mind. Hello, my loves. Today is an episode about this tendency of many people who have chronic pain or disease to be in high alert and how that high alert state affects our body. Spoiler alert, it does not do helpful things for our body to constantly be in high alert. As you may know, I've been doing a book club for Alan Gordon's book, The Way Out, and he has a chapter all about breaking the habit of being in high alert. And he has a couple of interesting quotes that 55% of Americans say that they are dealing with a lot of stress. And we know from neuroscience and studying chronic pain that when people are in more of a fear state, if they're on high alert, they're sensing danger, then their brain is less likely to interpret the signals correctly. The brain is more likely to interpret safe signals as dangerous when you're in a fear-based state. So decreasing this habit of being in high alert will decrease your chronic pain. Now, one area that can cause people a lot of high alert is technology. Our phones are something that we may check several times a day, maybe hundreds of times a day. And we have constant access to emails and social media and news and all of the Google information about medical conditions, all at our fingertips. So it's very easy to live in a state of high alert, thinking that everything is always dangerous because we're consuming information, teaching our body that things are dangerous, especially if it's like news that is cultivated to get us into a fear-based state. So you can look at how you're using your technology. You do not have to be perfectionistic about it. And I like to see that there are some benefits of technology. And even things like social media, you could follow people that are posting funny videos of babies and kittens and funny memes, and you could have a very different experience scrolling on social media than someone who is engaging in activating arguments and comments and ingesting a lot of fearful information. They've shown that your cortisol level goes up every time you hear your phone notification or think you hear your phone. And I've definitely expe