Everything you think you know about chronic pain is wrong. Featuring Daniel G. Lyman, LCSW, Executive Director of The Mind Body Therapy Center (Ep. 198)

Daniel G. Lyman: Our understanding of chronic pain has changed dramatically. And we now understand that pain, both acute and chronic, but more so chronic is triggered by neural pathways in the brain that can be stimulated by anxiety, they can be stimulated by conditioning. A number of different things can cause those neural pathways to be triggered. It's kind of like how, it's a little bit of Pavlovian and a dog will start salivating when they hear a bell, even though there's no food there. We can actually train our brain the same way. Not that we're like dogs, but our brain can get trained that same way inadvertently.

Daniel G. Lyman: There's also an experience where people can have the sensations of pain based on, and this is where people start to lose me a little bit, but based on emotional repression, which I know sounds kind of crazy, but what happens with your brain when you repress an emotion or suppress an emotion is your nervous system gets stimulated and you experience different sensations. Now some people sweat when they do that, some people have their heart rate increased, some people have a hard time breathing, some people experience pain sensations in their body.

Daniel G. Lyman: So I could go, as I said, a lot deeper into that, but what Dr. Schechter is saying there is basically our understanding of pain has changed so much over the last 50 years that we can't just look at somebody's body and say, oh, you're experiencing pain in your arm. That's because your arm is broken. It's an oversimplification that we can't rely on anymore because our brain has such a strong influence on the way we experience pain.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to the Elevation Recovery Podcast, your hub for addiction recovery strategies hosted by Chris Scott and Matt Finch.

Matt Finch: Welcome to the show. This is Matt Finch and joining us today is Daniel G. Lyman, LCSW who's a psychotherapist and mental health coach based in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California. He specializes in the treatment of chronic pain, anxiety, including OCD, depression and sexuality. He earned both a master's degree in social work and public administration from the University of Southern California. Integrating a sense of humor into all modalities, Daniel works to enable and motivate his clients to take steps towards creating lasting change and eliminating chronic physical symptoms.

Matt Finch: He has been working in the chronic pain field for nearly a decade and is currently a Clinical Supervisor at the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles and the Executive Director of Mind Body Therapy Center at mindbodytherapycenter.org. Daniel has worked with thousands of clients to overcome pain on six continents, although he's still waiting on Antarctica. And I myself feel so lucky and forever grateful that I am included in one of those thousands of clients. Around six years ago, I was suffering from chronic pain that would not go away with traditional treatments. But after working with Daniel for around six months, for the first time in many years, I was totally chronic pain free.

Matt Finch: Here's a quote from mindbodytherapycenter.org. The therapists and coaches at MBTC work online to help clients throughout North America and the world at large. Our understanding of chronic pain, anxiety and depression has changed dramatically over the last 40 years. We now understand that chronic pain and anxiety are triggered by misfiring neural pathways in the brain. Your pain and anxiety can therefore be decreased and eliminated through cognitive and emotional coaching. Our therapists and coaches are highly trained in the latest research to help you overcome your chronic symptoms, whether that be anxiety, back pain, knee pain, fibromyalgia, migraine headaches, repetitive stress injury, hand arm pain and many more.

Matt Finch: And without further ado, I now present you with our guest, Daniel G. Lyman. Welcome everyone to the Elevation Recovery Podcast. My name's Matt Finch and this is episode 198. Daniel, thanks so much for joining me. This is your second time on the podcast. The first time was kind of, I think, within a few months after the launch. And on that first episode for people that haven't heard it, it is around maybe episode 20, somewhere around there. You can go to elevationrecovery.com, in the search bar you can type in Daniel G. Lyman. That episode will also put a link in the show notes page of this episode and on the YouTube description for that and the other resources we talk about. Daniel, thanks so much for coming on again.

Daniel G. Lyman: Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm excited to be here with you and with [Papaya 00:04:20] there.

Matt Finch: Yeah, Papaya is here because Ashley's at work. She wanted to be a part of it and she loves it. She won't say anything. One day I'll teach her how to talk and then she can be-

Daniel G. Lyman: She can either be your co-host.

Matt Finch: ... my co-host.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, exactly. That'd be awesome.

Matt Finch: Yeah, she actually does chime in sometimes and she'll say chirp, chirp, chirp. And I always mention it too, whatever I just said or whatever the guests said, if Papaya perks up-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, there you go.

Matt Finch: ... that was something really important with the... Papaya was a fan of that. But soon-

Daniel G. Lyman: Papaya is like that octopus that can predict who is going to win the, whichever soccer match.

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: Now it's like Papaya can tell you what the most important information is.

Matt Finch: Oh, let's start. I'm not a gambler, Papaya, but she has that skill.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: Leverage and started making some money.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, exactly.

Matt Finch: Now but we find ourself here on video podcasts and audio podcast this time. It's been a little over a year of the pandemic. The last time I talked to you, you are mostly at the Pain Psychology Center in Los Angeles area and-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, based in Beverly Hills. Yep.

Matt Finch: ... based in Beverly Hills and you had helped me, for anyone that doesn't know, which is probably most people at this point, Daniel G. Lyman was my pain therapist. I had chronic pain for three and a half years after my opioid addiction. Most people that I've worked with about 60% of them got on opioids in the first place due to being prescribed them for acute or chronic pain.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: And so yeah, that's usually how it goes. With me, I used opioids for social anxiety, for energy, for depression, for euphoria just to create a shell of protective endorphins and dopamine to go through life.

Daniel G. Lyman: Oh yeah.

Matt Finch: And then right after I got off, about a month later, I had a rotator cuff injury, which turned into chronic pain. And then for the next three and a half years, I would have shoulder pain and then the shoulder pain would go away, then neck pain. Then shoulder pain with pectoral minor pain with trapezoid pain. And then it would just go all over the place. And it was a long battle. Luckily I found the right books, the right doctor who introduced me to you, Daniel.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, that's a shocker.

Matt Finch: And he gave me a list of the pain psychology therapists. And your name just, oh, check this out. I saw your picture. I work a lot on intuition in life. And I knew, okay, now that I've got the diagnosis from Dr. Schechter, that my pain was tension generated for myself personally, my personal pain.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: So nowadays you're up in Portland, Oregon and you're also doing stuff with Pain Psychology Center. And now you founded this Mind Body Therapy Center.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm a Clinical Supervisor at the Pain Psychology Center. So I'm still heavily involved there. I was one of the founding members of that team with Alan Gordon and Derek Sapico and a few others of us. And I'm still a part of that team. I just decided because of a couple of therapists that wanted to work with me, now I'm kind of leading the charge as it were in a group practice called the Mind Body Therapy Center focused on the very similar exactly the same stuff really as the Pain Psychology Center just slightly different with a little bit of my take on things versus-

Matt Finch: I noticed-

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Everybody's got a little bit of their own style. So I had to bring my own style to it. So-

Matt Finch: ... Yeah, I noticed that. I could tell, I was like, oh, this is so perfect. It's wonderful for me and I think for you as well. We're kind of we worked together many years ago and I was a huge success story of overcoming chronic pain.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: And then I wrote that article. We did a podcast. So it's fun. We check in it seems every year, a couple of years and-

Daniel G. Lyman: You have-

Matt Finch: ... it's just fun to see how things are progressing.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... You have been very kind and generous to me, Matt. That is very true. You are a very generous, warm man. That article you initially wrote, people would be like, "Gosh, you must be amazing. He spoke so highly of you in that article." And I'd be like, "Hey, I'm just a schmuck. He's just a really nice guy." So-

Matt Finch: No, I was a schmuck when I had chronic pain. So what I actually want to do today is completely different than anything I've ever done-

Daniel G. Lyman: Cool.

Matt Finch: ... on a podcast. I just got a cool idea. I'm sure you've probably read this book, Think Away Your Pain by Dr. Schechter. His seven lessons of pain.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: I would just love to go through some of these and I'll just say the lesson and then I just want you to talk about it because-

Daniel G. Lyman: [crosstalk 00:08:50].

Matt Finch: .... Yeah, because I listened to you on the podcast crushing doubt which was amazing. And I noticed, I was like, man, if somebody didn't know about this type of mind-body therapy for pain and for other symptoms as well, other types of psychological or physical symptoms, they would have been lost. But it was great for me because I've been so immersed in that information for so long. So-

Daniel G. Lyman: You know this stuff quite well. You can teach it, Matt.

Matt Finch: ... No, maybe I could have a few years ago if I did a big, huge, a whole week of cramming. But this'll be a review for me.

Daniel G. Lyman: Cool.

Matt Finch: All right, so Daniel-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, this will be good for me. I haven't read this book since it came out. So this will be good review.

Matt Finch: ... Yeah, it will be good review. And then what I've noticed also as each specialist, whether it's a doctor or a therapist or even just someone that's an author, everyone also kind of has their unique terms. You know what I'm saying? Even the guy that interviewed you on that podcast, he was talking about crushing doubt. First, you have to have... First, you have to get crushed with doubt to overcome crushing doubt, something like that.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: Right, so do we go?

Daniel G. Lyman: Everybody's got their own language. So this will be good. Here we go.

Matt Finch: Again, this is Think Away Your Pain, Your Brain Is the Solution to Your Pain by Dr. David Schechter.

Daniel G. Lyman: Great doctor based in LA, yep.

Matt Finch: Yeah, and that's the doctor that I went and had a consultation with, who checked me out for 45 minutes and he assured me without a shred of a doubt, there was nothing structurally wrong with my left shoulder or maybe it was my right shoulder at that point. Its-

Daniel G. Lyman: I love that you can't even remember. That's the best part.

Matt Finch: ... I can't even remember.

Daniel G. Lyman: I love that, yes.

Matt Finch: It might've been this one. Nothing wrong with my neck.

Daniel G. Lyman: I think it was your right shoulder, but yeah.

Matt Finch: One of the most interesting parts was when he laid me down, I think on my stomach and he checked these different tension points or pressure points, these different points-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Matt Finch: ... all the way down my back. And that was one of the things he's like, oh yeah, it's tense here, tense here.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: So my whole goal with this session is number one. If anybody has pain to go to mindbodytherapycenter.com, right?

Daniel G. Lyman: .org. But yep, that's great.

Matt Finch: .org.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: Mindbodycenter-

Daniel G. Lyman: It's wrong. Mindbodytherapycenter.org. I know it's a long one. I might just switch to mptc.org.

Matt Finch: ... It's a good one. It's a good one. I'm kind of dyslexican far as how I say thing.

Daniel G. Lyman: It's wrong.

Matt Finch: And we'll put a link also to the article I wrote that has you and David Schechter in there for people that want to learn more. Some people might listen to this or watch this and say, oh, that has nothing to do with my pain.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: That's fine. If that's the truth, just discard this. Maybe you'll hear some stuff you'll like.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: Discard the rest. Ready?

Daniel G. Lyman: Here we go.

Matt Finch: The seven lessons of pain. Lesson one, the source of chronic pain is often the nervous system and brain, not structural injury. What does that mean?

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, that's a very simplified way. And it's good that it's simplified. It makes it clear to people. But it's a simplified way of saying that our understanding of pain has changed a lot in the last 50 years. And I won't ramble on forever because I could give a two hour lecture on this.

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: But our understanding of chronic pain has changed dramatically. And we now understand that pain, both acute and chronic, but more so chronic is triggered by neural pathways in the brain that can be stimulated by anxiety, they can be stimulated by conditioning. A number of different things can cause those neural pathways to be triggered. It's kind of like how, it's a little bit of Pavlovian and that a dog will start salivating when they hear a bell, even though there's no food there.

Daniel G. Lyman: We can actually train our brain the same way. Not that we're like dogs, but our brain can get trained that same way inadvertently. There's also an experience where people can have the sensations of pain based on, and this is where people start to lose me a little bit, but based on emotional repression, which I know sounds kind of crazy, but what happens with your brain when you repress an emotion or suppress an emotion is your nervous system gets stimulated and you experience different sensations.

Daniel G. Lyman: Now some people sweat when they do that, some people have their heart rate increase, some people have a hard time breathing, some people will experience pain sensations in their body. So I could go, as I said, a lot deeper into that. But what Dr Schechter is saying there is basically our understanding of pain has changed so much over the last 50 years that we can't just look at somebody's body and say, oh, you're experiencing pain in your arm. That's because your arm is broken. It's an oversimplification that we can't rely on any more because our brain has such a strong influence on the way we experience pain. So-

Matt Finch: There's a few things I want to go deeper in on there. This is really fascinating.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: Oh my goodness.

Daniel G. Lyman: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Matt Finch: One of the quotes at the beginning is... Let's see, here we go. The first... Let's see, here we go. Yeah, here's a few quotes actually. Study the patient rather than the disease. The physician should not treat the disease, but the patient who is suffering from it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, I know you're not a physician, but regarding... Let's start off with the Pavlovian part because that one, and I'll just do an example for myself. Back when I was experiencing chronic pain, I found certain t-shirts I wore-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... certain t-shirts I wore, I would not want to wear them because it would be more tense up here. And laying on certain positions with my arm a certain position on the couch watching a movie, I was like, every time I'd lay in a certain way.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: So I really remember that. And I knew I was like, this is some bizarre stuff going on. If it's a structural thing and it's chronic pain, how come the t-shirt I put on can make it worse. It was lots of different things like that.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right. Exactly, and if we look at the body and the brain purely from a structural perspective, that doesn't make any sense. You'd be able to wear one shirt, but not another shirt. That's just not how our bodies work from a purely structural perspective. There is some conditioning there and every single human alive is subject to conditioning. We can train ourselves to have a certain response with certain things. This happens a lot with food. People will get worried or we'll hear... Let me simplify this here. What oftentimes happens and I hear this every single day, someone will eat something and then they will feel bad afterwards. And it happened one time.

Daniel G. Lyman: And they will think, oh, I can never eat that thing again. And what I tell people is we want to practice good science here. We don't want to practice bad science. Good science means what we would do is then eat that same thing, 10, 20 more times to really see if that is the cause of that thing. But in the human brain, we eat something once and we think, oh my gosh, it must've been because of that, I don't know, fish that I ate that I feel sick and now I can never eat fish again. And then because we develop a fear around eating fish, for example, I've had people to say like, oh, even just smelling, it gives me that physical sensation, whether it be an upset stomach or a hurt stomach or something like that.

Daniel G. Lyman: And so what happens is we train our own brain to get stuck and to think that we can't eat this one thing or that we can't wear a t-shirt or that we... I mean, you name it. I've heard people talk about it like specific shoes. I've had people say, these tennis shoes, I feel totally fine in. These tennis shoes cost 10 out of 10 pain. And they're the same brand. They're just a year older or something like very, very specific things.

Matt Finch: Wow. Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, and it's-

Matt Finch: 10 out of 10 pain. They're the same shoes more or less.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Yeah, exactly. And I mean, and again, we're all susceptible to this. So this isn't any judgment on anybody. I fall into this all the time. Again, for me, it's a lot of food stuff. That's why I use that as an example. I'll eat something and I'll be like, oh-oh, I can't eat this anymore. And I'll think, wait, no, I ate that yesterday and I was totally fine. That doesn't make any sense. So the conditioning is strong with all of us. I mean, we can see it in other animals like dogs for example. And again, I'm not... Some people will get offended if I'm comparing people to dogs, but I love dogs. But we-

Matt Finch: Me too.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Yeah, we can condition ourselves inadvertently. So one of the things that I work on with people is kind of paying attention to those conditioned responses that we have and reconditioning, retraining our brain to not have that same response. And it's actually not as difficult as people think it is. This isn't rocket science. It's just regulated exposure to the activity. So if I ate that fish and I felt upset stomach that one time, what I would then do is say, okay, let's eat fish a bunch more, but make sure that we're in a state where our nervous system is regulated, where we're not upregulated, we're downregulated, which maybe that sounds jargony, but I just mean that you feel calm essentially.

Matt Finch: Well, it makes perfect sense to me and I would expect at least our regular listeners-

Daniel G. Lyman: Regular listeners.

Matt Finch: ... [crosstalk 00:17:23] because yeah, I mean, that's one of the main things regarding quitting substances as you know as well.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: We're rebuilding your central nervous system because-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... drugs and alcohol destroy that so much. And so my thing was always sedative, CNS depressants so then. And the reason I use those is because I didn't learn this until I was in my mid 30s. I have something called sensory processing sensitivity, which guessing you do too because I can usually easily just tell who other people are.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: So if anyone doesn't know what that is, it's basically something to where we have deeper sensory stimuli, deeper processing of sensory stimuli. So since my nervous system is so overactive in comparison to other people who don't have it, and 20% of human humans and animals have SPS. It's also called highly sensitive person.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: So to regulate my nervous system, I would always do sedatives, things that would calm it down. It was only when I found out that I've got this innate biological trait, 20% of humans. So too many to be a disorder, but too few to be well understood by the masses. So I think that plays into it too.

Daniel G. Lyman: Absolutely.

Matt Finch: So regarding pain-

Daniel G. Lyman: Absolutely

Matt Finch: ... what we're saying is it's not a black and white thing to where, okay, my lower back pain for example. The reason I'm in low back pain chronically is because I've got two slip test and I'm waiting for a surgery in six months and that's going to cure my pain for good because they're going to fix those slip tests. But if what the good doctor and you are both saying is true and I know for a fact that it is that it's not so black and white, the source of chronic pain-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... this is chronic pain, not acute pain, the source of chronic pain, which is pain that goes on longer than three months-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: ... is often the nervous system and brain. Keyword, not structural injury. So our nervous systems, our brains can actually cause pain, exacerbate pain. And if that's true, they can also minimize and cure pain, correct?

Daniel G. Lyman: Absolutely.

Matt Finch: That logic, deductive logic.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes, so I oftentimes encourage people to look into the research of Lorimer Moseley who's one of the great pain researchers of the world right now. He's an Australian guy. He's written a number of books. And he's done plenty of research that demonstrates you can experience pain without any actual stimuli of pain, meaning you could prep somebody. If I was about to say, Matt, okay, I want you to push this button, but be careful when you do, you're going to get a small electric shot, shock, get ready. And if I kind of-

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... conditioned you to get ready for that and then-

Matt Finch: Primed me for.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Primed you, thank you. That's the word. If I primed you for that, when you push that button, you're going to feel that, maybe not the shock that you expect, but you're going to feel a sensation of some kind, especially for those of us with higher nociception, which is what you're talking about. That sensitization here. Nociception is the brain's experience of the sensations within the body. And some of us have higher levels of nociception, meaning we are more sensitized to feel those sensations than other people. So yeah, just reflecting back what you're saying. And I-

Matt Finch: [inaudible 00:20:33] trippy stuff. I bet some people right now are listening to this going, my doctor never told me about this. He gave me oxycodone or he gave me this. He said, get some steroid shots, do some stretching, maybe meditation on self.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Totally. Totally. And that's not to say, I'm always really careful. Everybody's just doing the best they can with the tools that they're provided. So I don't want to ever throw any doctors under the bus. But I've had a number of friends and now professional colleagues that have gone to medical school and you asked them how much time they actually study pain in medical school. And there's not a single semester long class about pain. There's usually about 10 to 12 hours of lecture just about pain, but that's it. And most of the reason people go to the doctor is for pain. So it's fascinating that of the eight years it takes to go from medical school to residency through all of that, they actually don't study pain that much. So we're really-

Matt Finch: Or nutrition or addiction.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Yes, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's interesting. And again, that's not to throw doctors under the bus. Everybody's doing the best they can with the tools they have. It's just we're learning a lot more very quickly about this.

Matt Finch: Yeah, but nothing wrong with the doctors at all. They're just not specialists most of them. There's not that many epic board certified addiction MDs. There's a huge-

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: ... shortage of it in America. And there's definitely a shortage of mind-body physicians that are aware of this type of stuff that have looked back at the research.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: It's so logical. If you're into the scientific method, this is stuff... I mean, the only people that are not looking at it or not talking about it are either ignorant. They simply don't know what they don't know or that and also they don't want to be associated with this mind-body stuff because-

Daniel G. Lyman: Right, it sounds like woo-woo or it sounds like people are saying you're crazy, which is not what we're saying at all because every human just have [crosstalk 00:22:23].

Matt Finch: ... My pain, real it's not in my head.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right, I mean, and I understand where people are coming from because we're evolutionarily wired, this is an Alan Gordon expression, we're evolutionarily wired to associate physical sensation with physical cause. That's how we protect ourselves. So if we happen to fall into a fire, we know to get out of it really quickly. It makes sense. Our first instinct should be to say, oh, what's wrong with me physically here? But another, this is another fun study research is, listeners can research is Northwestern University did a study that took FMRIs to people's brains. And they were able to accurately predict who would go on to have chronic pain based on the FMRI of their brain, which is fascinating.

Matt Finch: Wow.

Daniel G. Lyman: I mean, it demonstrates to you right there the actual anatomical structure of our brain influences the likelihood that we will have pain lasting more than three months. Fascinating. It's really cool.

Matt Finch: I mean, it really make sense to me.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: That's common sense because our brains are super computer control panel. I think our brain can cause or cure just about anything. Let's go on to lesson two.

Daniel G. Lyman: All right.

Matt Finch: Daniel, lesson two, the context and the interpretation of the pain by the patient and its perceived significance are crucial.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes, I think that's a great point. I talk about the nervous system being up or downregulated. That's kind of the language that I like to use resonates with me. And if we are in a constant state of worry or concern or hypervigilance about our shoulder being busted for example. Like, oh my gosh, my rotator cuff, it's never going to heal. The reason I'm having this pain, these sensations is because of this rotator cuff injury. If we're upregulated because we're constantly worried about that, that inadvertently keeps the pain alive.

Daniel G. Lyman: So essentially if we're worried about something, we're actually increasing, we're upregulating our nervous system, which in turn can stimulate various parts of your brain, which increases those sensations. Again, I know sounds kind of woo-woo, but if you actually learn to regulate your nervous system in response to those thoughts of, oh-oh, what's wrong with my rotator cuff, then those sensations will go away. You and I worked on this years ago. It was let's prove to you. And you had the diagnosis from Dr. Schechter. So that was the perfect foundation for it.

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: We then demonstrated to you, oh, actually it's weird. I can do this movement and it doesn't hurt. I just do this movement and it does hurt. And they're basically the same movement. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. So when we proved to ourselves what's going on, that sensation can actually go down. So the cognitive experience of what we're dealing with is huge. That was a very wordy way of reiterating [crosstalk 00:24:59].

Matt Finch: No, I'm glad you explained it like that because honestly, it was a bit vague. I understood it, but I was worried that the audience would be like, what the heck? So yeah, regarding this one, my co-host, Chris Scott for this podcast, we do a lot of episodes just him and I together-

Daniel G. Lyman: I thought Papaya was the co-host, come on.

Matt Finch: ... Oh, well, she doesn't... She's in training right now.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: She's kind of-

Daniel G. Lyman: That's right.

Matt Finch: ... mirroring me in-person. She's learning how to do it. She'll get paid soon in the middle of extra minutes.

Daniel G. Lyman: She's an intern right now.

Matt Finch: Yeah, she's intern. She's loving it.

Daniel G. Lyman: Good.

Matt Finch: But yeah, anyways, he learned about healing back pain maybe from his dad or maybe he learned about it, then recommend it to his dad. I'm not sure. So he's had some little things with TMS symptoms for instance. All of a sudden, when he was visiting, a few trips ago, visiting me here, we went body surfing and he said that he stepped on... He's like, "My foot hurts all of a sudden." I was like, "What happened?" And his foot was just hurting and he didn't do anything to hurt or anything. And the pain just didn't go away.

Matt Finch: I think it might've been a week or two. And I was telling him and we talked about it on the podcast that we did when he was on vacation here. He was thinking, oh, it's probably just some kind of TMS stuff. So since he had read that book, he didn't obsess about it. He's like, checked it out. There was no infection or anything, there was no marks, just kind of just hurt. Nothing visibly wrong with it. So that would have led some people to obsessing and then the pain getting-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... People that are more neurotic, obsessive compulsive tendencies or OCD-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... I was fucking neurotic as hell, I was obsessive compulsive as hell and I was hypervigilant so much about the pain and so worried. And gosh, and a lot of times, my pain wasn't even really that bad. There was tension there.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: My main thing was a lot of the times, it didn't necessarily hurt really bad 10 out of 10.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: It was more minor pain a lot of the time, but I couldn't exercise in the way that I wanted to.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right, and that can lead to that hypervigilance, that OCD like behaviors. I really want to be able to do this thing and this is what's stopping me from being able to do it. I feel unsafe now, let me do whatever I can to get back to normal, yeah.

Matt Finch: Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, I do. I know. I have to laugh because this is the world that I'm in and I talk to people every single day about this. But oftentimes, I'll ask people like, "Oh, any signs of anxiety or OCD or hypervigilance around the pain?" And they're like, "Absolutely not." And then the next question or the next sentence out of their mouth will be like, "Oh, well, I do tend to research three to four hours a day about this." And it's like, okay, well, here we go. That's a sign of hypervigilance and I get it. We want to get out of pain as fast as we possibly can, but that hypervigilance keeps our nervous system upregulated. So-

Matt Finch: Oh yeah, and that's why for three and a half years, well, at least for the first two and a half years because I found my treatment team eventually.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: But for the first around two and a half to three years, why I couldn't make much progress by myself-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... because left to my own devices without someone doing counseling with me, medical interventions with me, you and Dr. Schechter.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: So when it was just me left to my own devices, not being coached on what the heck to do-

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: ... it was studying, reading, listening, experimenting, fearing, hypervigilant, obsessive, obsessive.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: And now looking back on it, it was I'm unhappy with my life the way it is. If I could just exercise without fear of pain or reinjury, then I'd be in a better mood, I'd get my physique back so I could be more confident. What can I do to be able to get out of this pain so I can go surfing and go to the gym? And that shit consumed most of my entire life. And as a result, I would get 80 or 90% better oftentimes-

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: ... and then full back into it-

Daniel G. Lyman: Kind of relapse.

Matt Finch: ... just one day. Yeah, relapse. And nothing physical would even happen. All of a sudden-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... boom, it would come back out of nowhere and logically, it's so illogical, but when you're the one in the pain-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... which you know this as well, but you weren't nearly as obsessive as me, when you're the one in pain for years just so obsessing, people that are logical telling you about it. It's still you kind of doubt it.

Daniel G. Lyman: Of course.

Matt Finch: Well, there has to be... Because you're the one experiencing this shit and you don't have a very healthy view of it. You have a lot of blind spots. So that's why I personally needed help from you and Dr. Schechter.

Daniel G. Lyman: It's tough. I don't fault anyone for not being able to see what's going on when you're dealing with pain.

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: I always say having pain is like having a fire alarm go off in your brain and we've all been places where a fire alarm goes off. You can't hear anything, it's so disorienting, you can't think clearly. You're like, let's just get out of here. So if that's going off in our brain, we can't think clearly about what's going on with us. That's totally understandable.

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: So yeah, you were in that place, but over time, you were able to kind of self-regulate and get to a place where you could see what was going on and that's what helped the pain. So much of that pain diminish, that discomfort.

Matt Finch: Yeah. Yeah, and you helped me a lot with being more kind of, not only super 100% confident in the diagnosis, which that was so-

Daniel G. Lyman: It's crucial.

Matt Finch: ... Once I had the diagnosis, I needed to continue to reaffirm it because-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... your mind plays tricks on you. So moving on. Lesson three, psychology and education can change the mind to brain and cure pain, not just manage it. Well, I'm certainly living proof of that.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about here is we call it psycho-education in my world and learning about how your brain works can help people see what's really going on with them. And a lot of that has to do with also just... I remember when I was younger, before I went to school, before being a therapist, I just kind of assumed everybody's brain worked just like mine does, which is actually totally logical when you think about it because everybody's physical body works differently. I'm 6'2 and a tall thin guy and I would never look at somebody who's four feet tall and be like, their body works exactly the same as mine.

Daniel G. Lyman: No, that's not how that works. But I just assumed everyone's brain and I mean, I thought that they thought the same way that I did. And it wasn't until I went to school for this that I realized, oh, wait, everyone's brain works a little bit differently. And in order to understand that we have to do some self-reflection and kind of go deeper into what our patterns are and how that might affect the way that we're feeling physically, both the way we think and the way we feel. So cognitive and emotional stuff. So-

Matt Finch: Yeah, I mean, and what we teach on this podcast is drugs and alcohol are physical substances that cause negative physical changes to a pretty important physical organ-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: .. the brain. And yet when you go to mainstream treatment or recovery methods, they're doing everything, but the brain. They're doing group counseling, individual counseling, self-help meetings, spirituality.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: Meanwhile, their poor brains have neuro-transmitter imbalances, deficiencies excesses, chronic inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, their prefrontal cortex has been eroded from drug use and their midbrain has been hijacked.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: And so I find that for addiction recovery, yes, teaching people not only about the brain and what their particular substance or substances they've been using has negatively changed their brain, but then all of a sudden, which things, natural therapies and-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... other therapies even can correct those, reverse them, what can treat symptoms. And so it's really a biopsychosocial environmental, spiritual treatment. And I think the same thing's perfect for pain rather than, okay, you're in pain, here's some pills and here's physical therapy-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... biopsychosocial environmental, spiritual for that too.

Daniel G. Lyman: You are so good and you are so good at helping people realize that. I really appreciate that about this podcast is helping people realize everything around you and your person can affect the way you're going to feel and the way you're able to manage getting off drugs. So-

Matt Finch: Right. Yeah, I mean, so people are loving, I just can feel that people are loving this episode right now because it's like we're just knocking down messages one after the other. People that have chronic pain that are listening to this-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... and it's making sense to them-

Daniel G. Lyman: I hope so.

Matt Finch: ... they probably already reaching out to learn more about you. Anyways, lesson-

Daniel G. Lyman: Oh, before I forget, you did mention earlier TMS, I just want to make sure people understand what that acronym means. It's stands for tension myoneural syndrome or tension myositis syndrome. That was an acronym that a guy named John Sarno came up with. And actually, we talked about that in the previous podcast from, I don't know, a couple of years ago. But that's an acronym that people talk about as a way of describing mind-body issues. It means the same thing as mind-body syndrome or yeah, mind-body issues. So just so people are aware of what TMS means.

Matt Finch: And then also PPD, Psychophysiologic Disorder.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, man, you know all this stuff. I love it. Yeah, PPD. That's another one. They're Psychophysiologic Disorders Association, which is a professional group of doctors, physical therapists, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, all that understand pain from this perspective and physical sensations from this perspective. And they have a great website with hundreds of research articles all demonstrating this. So that's a great place for people that are looking for more research or resources.

Matt Finch: Yeah, it's very holistic. I mean, let's look at the whole person, let's look at their biopsychosocial, spiritual-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... and even the environment-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... even the community-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... or even the state of the world right now, the kind of collective unconscious going through this worldwide pandemic. There's so many... It's very kind of Eastern modality stuff because they figured this stuff out 1,000 years [inaudible 00:34:56]. We're catching up. All right, I love this one too. Lesson four, pain does not always mean disease or damage.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, I'm actually curious. What does that mean to, can I ask you, what does that mean to you? You said you love this one. So I want to hear what your response to that is.

Matt Finch: Yeah, so a lot of people that think... So for me, I thought my pain was... I remember when I was doing incline dumbbell press and I had drank a really, really powerful... No, sorry, the first time I hurt myself, I was doing incline or, what do you call... Wide-grip pull-ups.

Daniel G. Lyman: Okay. Yeah.

Matt Finch: I was doing wide-grip pull-ups and I did a few of them a month after I quit heroin and Xanax and alcohol and all that shit. I was skinny. I looked horrible. I was like, I got to start working out. Warmup, first time I did that, I felt a snap. I felt it. I heard it. I felt it and I heard it. I don't think I smelled it.

Daniel G. Lyman: Good.

Matt Finch: I felt it. I felt the pain, I heard it and then I-

Daniel G. Lyman: That's intense.

Matt Finch: ... and then I got scared.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: So my amygdala was like [inaudible 00:36:02]. So yeah, as a result of that... And then another time, I was doing incline and I felt this up here. And so, but then, yeah, that's a reason for acute pain. But two years later, three years later that really should have healed and you can heal a broken bone in what, six weeks, eight weeks?

Daniel G. Lyman: Correct. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Finch: How come this [inaudible 00:36:24]-

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: ... is taking the rest of my life to do a little tiny partial tear. So that I love because, like you said, evolutionarily, I love evolutionary biology-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... we are wired, we have evolved to be able to notice that. So if we put our hands in a fire and hurts, ah, ah, ah. So our brains keep us alive, they're not evolved to make us happy and pain free.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right. Right, it's functional. We're just to here to... Our brains are just trying to keep us going to the next day. But it's a lot more complicated than that in terms of understanding pain and those sensations. But yeah, you're spot on that it's natural to associate physical pain with physical cause, but that's not always the case. We're still evolving to be able to process feelings for example, which I know sounds out there, but we're still evolving in order to be able to process those in a healthy way. And if we don't process them in a healthy way, it can cause all parts of our body and brain to go haywire.

Daniel G. Lyman: Again, you walk up to somebody who's angry, tell them to calm down and see what happens. That's an unhealthy way of having somebody express anger is just to tell them to calm down. They get angrier actually. They get more upset. Whereas if you allow them to express their anger, then their nervous system actually downregulates and they feel a lot better. But human nature, we're still really bad at processing those feelings. So 90% of the time when somebody gets angry, somebody just says, it's okay, calm down, calm down, which again, only makes things worse.

Daniel G. Lyman: So that even if we don't process, that's just a small example of a way that we don't process feelings correctly or in a healthy way, it can make things worse in our body. And of course, everyone knows what it's like to feel angry. You feel flooded with adrenaline, you feel your heart rate goes up, all kinds of physiological sensations change based on feeling angry. Think I'm wandering off here a little bit, but I think you get the point here.

Matt Finch: No, you're not. Papaya just started... I'm glad you brought this up because this is something that I was hoping we would-

Daniel G. Lyman: Wind up.

Matt Finch: ... wind up at eventually is-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... and Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about this a lot is-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes, he does.

Matt Finch: ... people are living through the lens of their stress hormones, right?

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: So you're living through these. If you're getting angry or getting anxious, you're getting resentful or whatever, a lot of the world's like that right now, you're releasing norepinephrine and epinephrine and cortisol. And those brain chemicals that you're being stimulated with fighter a little minor fight or flight, ugh, ugh.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: Well, with those, I feel like that's going to exacerbate pain. And he says that it's really pretty much impossible when you're living through those stress hormones to feel love and inner peace and gratitude-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... and fulfillment.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: And a lot of people are living like that on a regular basis. They just haven't learned how to regulate the nervous system yet. It took me a long time to do.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: Daniel, and I think it was probably... I don't think I had total stability until about 18 months ago maybe.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: And that's seven and a half. Now that's not because it just takes that long, it's because I had a lot of slips into things and workaholism-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... chronic pain, caffeine addiction, that crazy relationship I was in at the time-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... when you were helping me. So I went through a lot. Now my life is balanced. I've built a good lifestyle and I'm enjoying the shit out of it. So-

Daniel G. Lyman: Good, it does take awhile for, not for everybody, but the process is different for everybody. So I want to take the pressure off to-

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... people. People feel like they need to find ways to-

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... get regulated to normal as fast as possible. And that's just not how we work with. It does take time and actually putting pressure on ourselves to feel better ASAP usually makes things worse actually.

Matt Finch: Yeah, that's the main thing is it's going to take what it takes-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... but it's okay because it can be a fun, it was a fun journey. I don't regret any of it.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: It was like, it made me who I am. And there was mostly a lot-

Daniel G. Lyman: It brought you here.

Matt Finch: ... It brought me here. And now all this stuff I've suffered from in the past, hopefully I can help other people deal with some of the similar things. Lesson five, we just got a couple more, the severity of the pain does not always correlate with the severity of the condition or the potential for damage to the body.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes, I mean, as I said it or I may use the example earlier of wearing two kind of very similar shoes and 10 out of 10 pain with one of them and zero out of 10 pain with the other one. There was actually no fundamental damage to those persons, I'm thinking of one client in particular, that person's feet. There was no damage whatsoever. At one point they were told, oh gosh, I'm blanking on the diagnosis. It'll come to me in a second. They were told a few different diagnoses, but it never actually really made sense. We looked at the evidence there and doctors doing the best they could trying to come up with a diagnosis there.

Daniel G. Lyman: And when actually we looked at the MRIs or X-rays of his foot and looked at his experience of pain, none of that made any sense of why you would get 10 out of 10 pain with essentially nothing wrong with his foot. So again, that's our amygdala overreacting right there thinking that there's something majorly wrong with our foot when there actually isn't anything wrong, majorly wrong to cause pain. You mentioned it earlier about back pain. I mean, this is a very, very common thing. And even the general population of doctors are accepting this now that bulging discs, minor disc herniations, even slipped disc, those things don't correlate directly to pain.

Daniel G. Lyman: We can look at MRIs of 10 people's backs off the street and I forget what the stats are, but it's six to eight of them will have all kinds of weird stuff going on, but only a couple of them will have pain. So we can't draw a direct correlation or causation between some sort of physical issue and the experience of pain. And for somebody, well, they'll have mild disc herniation of, let's say two millimeters. The next person will have the exact same thing, but one of them will experience a nine out of 10 pain. The other one will experience eight out of 10 pain. So we can see it right there, it just doesn't make sense from that direction. So-

Matt Finch: It does hold up to science.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Right.

Matt Finch: It's been proven in my opinion.

Daniel G. Lyman: It has been time and time and time again, but it's a lot easier, and I completely understand where people come from, but it's a lot easier to just say, this looks like a problem. Let's just fix this.

Matt Finch: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Daniel G. Lyman: But nine times out of 10 and this is how many people maybe have experienced themselves or seen in a book nine times out of 10 say we fixed that mild disc herniation with surgery, with a fusion, with whatever, symptom shows up somewhere else. So their back stops hurting and then all of a sudden their shoulder starts hurting or they get migraines or they get bad IBS, something like that because if we-

Matt Finch: Or addiction.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Or addiction.

Matt Finch: Or promiscuity or binge drinking-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: Or shopaholism.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes, exactly or workaholism.

Matt Finch: Why is that, Daniel? Why does that happen? That's what happened to me. I had all these different things throughout my life. I won't bore the audience with all of them, but it was just issue after issue after issue.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: And then even after chronic pain, there were other issues. Why did... And a lot of people, I see that. They're just going from one thing to the next, one thing to the next.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: So talk about why people, all of a sudden their pain goes away one place, then usually pain will show up somewhere else or one of these other equivalents, these mind-body things will come out. Why does that happen? That sounds crazy.

Daniel G. Lyman: It does sound crazy to people. And when I first started this work, I was like, really? Is that common? And then you start seeing it everywhere with everyone. It's really amazing. You'll start seeing once and go away. And then within a few weeks and then a few months, another symptoms shows up and that sticks around for a little while. There are, again, I could give a two hour lecture on this one too, but there are a lot of reasons why that happens. But the simplest way to think about it is if we're in an upregulated space, whether it be because we've just had some major trauma in our life or we're upregulated because we're worried about our shoulder and we don't learn to manage that upregulation, we don't manage to downregulate our nervous system, even if we get surgery to fix our back or to fix our shoulder, we're still in an upregulated state.

Daniel G. Lyman: And the brain is basically flooded with anxiety at that point, we'll develop another symptom as a way of telling you that things are not okay. If we're upregulated, things are not okay. Things are not... That means that we're saying something is wrong. Our brain perceives our environment, our bodies as having something wrong. So until we actually learn to downregulate, we're going to get those various symptoms as a way of telling us, pay attention, pay attention, there's something wrong here. You see this a lot with trauma, with people that have... Somebody close to them die or are going through a terrible breakup, weeks or months later, people will develop a symptom. They'll go to the doctor, they'll get it taken care of. And then another symptom will come up and then they'll get that one taken care of.

Daniel G. Lyman: And then another symptom will come up. Until we actually process the emotional content underneath that. This is a terrible example. But last night, I was opened up Netflix and I was like, oh, I just need to watch something kind of mindless as I sit here just kind of zone out for the day. And I watched a show years ago, but I haven't watched it in forever, but I've turned on Hoarders, which is a ridiculous show. I mean, I do feel it's all exploitative. So I have problems with it. But right away within the first two minutes of this episode, they talked about this woman, this poor woman who houses filled with stuff, her best friend had committed suicide in the house. And of course, then three months or six months after that happened, the house just started filling with stuff.

Daniel G. Lyman: So that's not a physical symptom, that's not physical pain, but that's another manifestation of somebody not being able to process feelings, not being able to manage that trauma. So then the kind of our world starts falling apart in a way. She also did have chronic pain too, but that wasn't the focus of the Hoarder's episode of course. Anyway, I digress. What I always encourage people though is go back through your own history and say like, have I had various symptoms? Have I had this before? And usually people will say like, no, no, no, it's just about back pain. And then once they start really thinking about it, they'll say, it was weird. I did have migraines for a few months. And before that, when I was a kid, I used to always have IBS issues or that kind of stuff. So I always encourage people, look back through your own history and see if there is a pattern of this.

Matt Finch: Yeah, when I looked at, I think it's the appendix and The Great Pain Deception, that text-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... I had probably 20, 25% of those different-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... mind-body ones. It was nuts.

Daniel G. Lyman: That's a great book by Steve Hosanna for those don't know. He's a great guy, written a couple of different books on pain and chronic pain. He's a guy who went through a lot himself. That's why he was inspired to write a book.

Matt Finch: That book is my favorite TMS book on the planet, The Great Pain Deception.

Daniel G. Lyman: Steve O.

Matt Finch: It took me a long time to read and I'm a voracious reader, but that book-

Daniel G. Lyman: It's dense.

Matt Finch: ... I mean, it's long, it's dense. The pages are huge. The words are small. It is not user-friendly at all.

Daniel G. Lyman: [crosstalk 00:47:17]. Yeah.

Matt Finch: But the stuff on the subconscious and freud and young and-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... I love that stuff, but now I'm more kind of the science because that stuff, that way of talking about it, I know turns a lot of people off-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... and it is a lot more scientific than that. So that's why I'm using this book because it's more digestible for most people, for the masses.

Daniel G. Lyman: And I should speak-

Matt Finch: That it'll help the most people.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... I totally agree with you. A lot of people get turned off if we speak into out their terms. So more abstract terms or abstract ways. So I try to be as-

Matt Finch: Unconscious ways.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Yes. Yeah, exactly. Actually, so at the Pain Psychology Center with Alan Gordon, there was a team of people. They did a research study in Colorado basically working with people in back pain. And so they had the, gosh, man, it's still early. So I'm kind of blanking on all the terms, but they had basically three different groups. It was a triple blind or double blind. I'm forgetting now. Anyway, the whole point of this, I'm going to be embarrassed when I watch to this later and I don't get-

Matt Finch: No, you're not. It's really cool.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Well, the whole point of this study was that they demonstrated that the psychotherapeutic intervention to back pain, which is essentially everything we're talking about here-

Matt Finch: Yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... was way more effective than any other intervention, which is... That study is about to be released. It will be released this year-

Matt Finch: And it was either double or triple blind.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Yes, exactly. And I got to go back and look again I'm going to be embarrassed later.

Matt Finch: This is recent, this is not-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, the study, it was with a colleague of mine, Christie Weepy, somebody I work with and Alan did the stuff, did a lot of the interventions as well. It was all stuff that we all came up with and Alan came up with a lot of it himself early on. But it's all this stuff that we all practice in the mind-body world, it's all of this stuff. And he kind of conceptualized it in a way that said, let's do a study. And they took FMRIs to people's brains to see how their brains would change during the study. And it turns out it was incredibly effective to get people out of pain and for a long period of time not just out of pain for a day or two, it still lasted up to, for most people, up to this day, which is now 18 months later I think. So-

Matt Finch: Oh, I can't wait til that. Yeah, please send me that.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, I will. Yeah, definitely. So that's why I say like, it's not all abstract. We have actual science, tons of it demonstrating how effective this is.

Matt Finch: Yeah, that's what I love. I love the science. Okay, lesson six. Pain signals are a two-way, pain parentheses sensory signals are a two-way street. The mind-brain plays a crucial role in what you feel. So we don't really need to go deep into that. It's kind of all the stuff we've been talking.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally. Yeah, exactly. I was going to say, I feel like we've hit a lot of that.

Matt Finch: Oh, and then I think we've hit this one too. Lesson seven, mind-body pain keeps coming back until you're firm in your belief-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... that there are no physical causes.

Daniel G. Lyman: And just to speak on that briefly, I won't go on too long because I know I talked too much as it is, but the reason that is is because when we are confident that it's a mind-body issue, it downregulates our nervous system. If we're constantly worried and terrified that our shoulder or our back is broken, then we're going to stay in an upregulated place and we're going to stay hypervigilant. Whereas if we know, oh, this is a mind-body issue, I don't need to worry about it, inherently it's a lot more relaxing to believe that and I think there's something really wrong with our back or shoulder or neck or whatever. So-

Matt Finch: Ooh, okay. Yeah, let's continue to go deep on this before I lose it to you. At the beginning, I didn't like that.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: When I first read Healing Back Pain-

Daniel G. Lyman: By John Sarno. Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... one of the first books I read, yeah, one of the first books I read, I didn't like all this stuff. I was hoping that my shoulder pain at that point could just be fixed with traditional stuff.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: I didn't want this other stuff to be true. No, I just wanted a quick, quick, simple thing. Okay, how long does it have to heal? What do I have to do?

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: Then move on.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: So initially, I hated that. Like, oh man. And for actually, for probably years after learning about it, I still didn't like that.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right.

Matt Finch: But the reason I've been pain-free for years and the reason I'm pain-free today is because I have mastered this one, pain keeps coming back until you're firm in your belief that there are no physical causes.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: The pain's not coming back. Every once in a while-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... there'll be a tension, a little tension. That's not chronic pain, that's just-

Daniel G. Lyman: That's being alive.

Matt Finch: ... Yeah, that's being alive. But if I wasn't confident, if I was still not confident in this stuff, I'd be like, oh man, what's going on? And I'd be hypervigilant.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: I better keep an eye on this. I'd start focusing on it. And we feel what we focus on. Then the next day maybe the pain gets worse. Then a week later, I'm making a doctor's appointment like, oh, I need neck surgery or neck... So-

Daniel G. Lyman: Exactly. Exactly, your response to those sensations would change the experience of them quite a lot.

Matt Finch: ... Yeah, so the more I learn about, and not just the physical stuff for the brain, feeding yourself good healthy foods and exercising the physical brain part, but also just our beliefs-

Daniel G. Lyman: Beliefs.

Matt Finch: ... our thought processes, our self-talk-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... those kinds of things can play a role too. And I'm still developing skills and tool as I go along.

Daniel G. Lyman: And we all.

Matt Finch: But when I first started this journey, gosh, it seems so hard. And then I found tension myositis syndrome-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... tension myoneural syndrome, Psychophysiological Disorder, all the different names.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: Mind-body syndrome.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: And then even then it took a while, but I'm glad that it all happened because now I've got this podcast and this audience, a lot of people have chronic pain that are listening to this or anxiety or depression or-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... many other different things. Certainly knowing just how much power our brains and our beliefs and our environments and the people around us and our animals-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... it's just everything-

Daniel G. Lyman: That's your fire, yes.

Matt Finch: ... Yeah, so-

Daniel G. Lyman: I got my dog here too.

Matt Finch: ... Yeah. Yeah, now before we close off and go about our workdays, let's talk a little bit about pet therapy. Just throw it in because-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... because I feel like nature and pets, loving with pets and nature, those are pretty good ways to downregulate your nervous system, right?

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes, I always talk about, they've done so many studies on this and you can Google it. It's all over the place. But one of the most simple ways of understanding it is that when, they've done plenty of studies, when somebody sits around a dog for about 10 minutes, their heartbeat starts to match the heartbeat of the dog. So you actually start having the exact same rhythms as the dog, internal rhythms as a way of soothing you.

Matt Finch: Oh, so-

Daniel G. Lyman: And I'm sure the same happens with birds. I'm sure the same happens all kinds of animals that it actually slows you down. It's pretty... Yeah, I love that. That's amazing, yeah.

Matt Finch: ... So I put Papaya and I've done this in the podcast a few times now.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: I hold her like this and she's smiling right now.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: I can feel her purring.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes, oh my God.

Matt Finch: And now I'll give her showers every night too. And I got this little extension and I'll make-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... a little waterpark for-

Daniel G. Lyman: That's awesome.

Matt Finch: ... she loves it. And water raises animals vibration, their energetic vibration and humans vibration too.

Daniel G. Lyman: Interesting.

Matt Finch: Yeah, so then once we get her out, we'll put her in this white little soft towel and then I'll wrap her in there, she's not, but then I'll just put her right here in my neck.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: And I'll hold her like that for 10, 15 minutes and be petting her-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... and you can feel her and so we sync.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally, yeah.

Matt Finch: So it's like-

Daniel G. Lyman: It sounds abstract, but we actually have a sign.

Matt Finch: ... me doing that to her-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: Yeah, I'm feeling it too because I want to feel love, but I also want to give love.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: So as a result, there's this exchange.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: And we do that a lot. Ashley and I and Papaya and I, well, I was 11, so she's not all huggy like that.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: And the fish, we don't have the fish because that'd be kind of gross, but yeah, what's your dog's name? I've never even talked about your dog.

Daniel G. Lyman: This is Emmy. Let's see if I can show her off right there. She's passed out right now.

Matt Finch: Oh beautiful.

Daniel G. Lyman: She's an old dog. She's 12 years old, but she's a happy one. So-

Matt Finch: Oh, I love it.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: And Chris, my co-host, he has two dogs, a male and a female.

Daniel G. Lyman: Nice.

Matt Finch: And he just dropped them, I think within the last year around that. And he's become some... He's this big buff-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... mixed martial artist training dude who's like hardcore, but then he's got these dogs and he's making them all softer.

Daniel G. Lyman: All right.

Matt Finch: And he's reading books on spirituality and stuff. So he's at least 10, around nine or 10 years younger than me.

Daniel G. Lyman: Okay.

Matt Finch: And so I see a lot of myself when I was his age.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: All that energy and he's bigger than I was at that age. But yeah, and so he's getting into his dogs and he just-

Daniel G. Lyman: And softening them up.

Matt Finch: ... Yeah, softening them up.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: Papaya soften me up years ago as did Ashley. And then, so there's studies. I never heard that. 10 minutes-

Daniel G. Lyman: Tons.

Matt Finch: ... sitting next to a dog.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes, and if you just Google it, you'll see it actually. And they've done it mostly with dogs just because dogs are so the most common pet. But I mean, there's plenty of research about pet therapy and how that affects people. There's also a tons of research about loving-kindness meditation and stick with me here. I'll explain this. But loving-kindness meditation is a form of meditation where you actually sit and try and feel love essentially and project that out towards other people. They found that there's a very similar process too when you're in a loving-kindness meditation versus hanging out with an animal is that essentially there is love coming out of us because how can you not? You've got a bird on your shoulder. That's adorable. How can you not just kind of fall in love with this creature right here and want to take care of it. So you actually emanate love, which does, again, this I know sounds objective, emanating love does have an effect physiologically on the sensations you feel within your body. And that can be very downregulating in the best possible way. So-

Matt Finch: Well, I used to take opioids to get a hit of dopamine and endorphins.

Daniel G. Lyman: Right, now pet Papaya-

Matt Finch: Now I feel like Papaya is probably giving me oxytocin, endorphin and dopamine. That's the love cocktail.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... When I was a kid, I would have watched this podcast and been like, oh my God, these guys and their pets, they're crazy. But I love it. So-

Matt Finch: Didn't you want to be a therapist from when you were in second grade or something, but you just forgotten about that?

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Did I say that in one of the podcasts? Yeah, there was-

Matt Finch: From the podcast from a month ago you were on, yeah.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Yeah, there was... Just surprise you listened to me. You remember it. Yeah, I found an old, like a yearbook from second grade that said, I want to be a therapist, which, who knew that that was in my head at that point. But here I am. So-

Matt Finch: Back then I think I wanted to be a writer and it turns out I-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, you-

Matt Finch: ... technically a writer.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Totally, you write all the time.

Matt Finch: Yeah. Yeah, so it's cool.

Daniel G. Lyman: Really pressure.

Matt Finch: Now let's talk about nature. Do you know any cool studies about that? I mean, I've read lots of them-

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: ... but just nothing here-

Daniel G. Lyman: Off the top of my head.

Matt Finch: ... popping up.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, I mean, there's tons of research out there about how being in nature affects you. Just even they've done one study that comes to mind and I'd have to Google it to remember who did it. But I think it was at Northwestern again actually. They just had people look at a photo of nature of either the ocean or a forest. And they measured the physiologic response in their body. And it had a calming effect, which is fascinating. Even just looking at a photo, not being in nature had that effect on people. So I used-

Matt Finch: Why do you think I have this [inaudible 00:58:11].

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Yes, as a server. I mean, yeah, that's amazing. Yeah.

Matt Finch: Yeah, and so all around, and this is the benefit of having Ashley as a girlfriend for the past, going on two years now-

Daniel G. Lyman: Nice, congrats.

Matt Finch: ... as she is very creative and interior design stuff.

Daniel G. Lyman: Cool.

Matt Finch: She's so creative. So this place is... I've been a bachelor a lot of my life.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yep.

Matt Finch: I wasn't in a whole lot of relationships. I was single a lot. So I lived alone a lot or with guy roommates.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: And as a result, I just wouldn't decorate. And funny thing, I had no idea that a certain interior design of your home-

Daniel G. Lyman: Actually effects [crosstalk 00:58:49].

Matt Finch: ... can have such impressive, fast and consistent optimizations to your mood-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... to your energy, to your clarity, to your passion for life, to your love-

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally

Matt Finch: ... having certain things around certain sense, essential oil diffusers, scented candles, WoodWick candles, incense, lots of different mood lights and candle lights and-

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: ... pictures of nature and pictures of family. So just even people optimizing their own space of where they live cleaning and organizing it and setting it up in a way that helps their nervous system-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... to come down from that upregulation. And there's even those 4K and HD videos on YouTube where it's like you're taking a nature hike, someone's wearing a helmet cam GoPro.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: So I'll do that sometimes if I'm working a bunch and I can't get out into nature-

Daniel G. Lyman: Just flips that video.

Matt Finch: ... looking right out the window. But if I'm on the couch in the computer, those are the things I do because it's not as good as being in Hawaii. But you're looking at Hawaii-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah.

Matt Finch: ... on the beach and I can tell a noticeable change. So these are simple hacks that people don't even have to leave the house.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: Get a pet if you don't have one, spend lots of time with your pets, going to nature if you're living in a suburban jungle-

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: ... like Manhattan and you don't want to go to Central Park and set up nature stuff in your home. What are you doing for fun these days in the time that you're not working up there in Portland?

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, well, the pandemic has changed a lot of fun stuff. I love to go see a movie. So that's changed a bit. But I'm outside all the time. I'm a pretty active person. I used to lead hike therapy. I would have clients meet me in parks and we'd go for hikes. That was what I love to do.

Matt Finch: That's awesome.

Daniel G. Lyman: I haven't done that as much of course during the pandemic. But yeah, on my own, I go... I mean, my dog's getting older here, but hiking with her is still my favorite thing. We go outside and I live right across the street from a park basically. I'm out in the woods all the time. And the ski season is just ending here, but I've been skiing a ton. That's really my-

Matt Finch: Oh, nice.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... Yeah, skiing is really my happy place. That's what I look forward to every year. So-

Matt Finch: Wow. Or you're in the perfect place for it then.

Daniel G. Lyman: I am.

Matt Finch: Perfect place.

Daniel G. Lyman: Though there's plenty of stuff. I lived in Southern California for a very long time and I love the skiing down there too.

Matt Finch: [crosstalk 01:01:06].

Daniel G. Lyman: So-

Matt Finch: Yeah, Mammoth big bear.

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally. Yeah.

Matt Finch: Well, Daniel, where can people find you and what other... So here you can plug your website or websites, any resources that you think for people to learn more, for beginners, where would they go? I would definitely go to your website first.

Daniel G. Lyman: That's nice of you. Yeah, I mean, I guess, my website is mindbodytherapycenter.org. That's the site for the group practice that I'm the director of. So definitely check us out there, we got tons of information there. Even if you don't want to see a therapist, there's tons of information just to read. There's so much research on there, which is great. Also the TMS Wiki is a good place to learn more information. Check that out. The Psychophysiologic Disorders, which I believe is ppdassociation.org is a great website. And if I'm getting that website wrong, just Google Psychophysiologic Disorders Association. Also my dog is snoring. So I'm sorry if you're catching that in the background.

Matt Finch: I can't hear.

Daniel G. Lyman: Okay, good. Where else? Oh, a couple of things. There's an app, a new app called Mayv, M-A-Y-V, that is all about pain and all about teaching health. So I recommend Mayv. And the Curable app is really good. Curable is all about specifically chronic pain and they lead curable groups. And they're really good too. So both of those apps, I definitely recommend. There's tons of information out there. I'm also happy to talk to anybody individually if they have specific questions about what information they'd like to learn for themselves. Use the contact from one of my website and I'll happily get back to you. I'm the one that checks that email. So happy to do that too.

Matt Finch: Perfect.

Daniel G. Lyman: So-

Matt Finch: Perfect, and I also saw on your website too that you have links to information about links pointing to-

Daniel G. Lyman: Totally.

Matt Finch: ... a lot of good information.

Daniel G. Lyman: All over the place.

Matt Finch: And the article I wrote-

Daniel G. Lyman: Yes.

Matt Finch: ... and the first podcast on there, thanks for those links out.

Daniel G. Lyman: Of course.

Matt Finch: That's so cool. I mean, those are good resources.

Daniel G. Lyman: That's good resources. The more people learn, the better we all are. So yeah, that's why I say, even if you're not interested in therapy, check out the website, there's tons of stuff on there. There's even-

Matt Finch: Yeah, exactly.

Daniel G. Lyman: ... free meditations on there and there's all kinds of stuff. So-

Matt Finch: Oh, I didn't even see those. I'm going to go use one of those right now.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, well, it's my voice. So if you've heard enough of me today, you probably don't want to do this meditations. But thank you so much, man. This has been really fun. So-

Matt Finch: This has been really fun. It doesn't even feel like work.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, totally. That was great.

Matt Finch: It's just really cool. So thank you. Have a wonderful day. Papaya says it was nice to meet you too.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, it was great to meet Papaya. I love that.

Matt Finch: Tell your dog goodbye. We're a fun chronic pain patient.

Daniel G. Lyman: Yeah, thanks so much, man. I appreciate it.