Alan Gordon and Dr. Sarno mentioned in recent article

This article was posted by Vox in August, but I only just came across it. It quotes Alan Gordon, mentions Dr. Sarno, and interviews a number of researchers who are working on the FACT that our experience of pain is created in our brains, and that there is a growing body of evidence showing that our thoughts can (and do) affect the experience of pain.

"100 million Americans have chronic pain. Very few use one of the best tools to treat it."

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/17/17276452/chronic-pain-treatment-psychology-cbt-mindfulness-evidence (100 million Americans have chronic pain. Very few use one of the best tools to treat it.)

Some of the statements and quotes that really caught my attention:

It’s not that their pain is “in their heads.” The truth is much more nuanced: All pain can have both physical and psychological components. But the psychological component is often dismissed or never acknowledged.

Doctors have long known that pain can exist in the absence of any physical harm. There’s a famous case study that describes a construction worker who came into the emergency room with a 6-inch nail in his boot. It was so painful, the report says, that the patient had to be sedated with powerful opioids. When the shoe was removed, it turned out the nail had passed clean between the toes. There was no injury.

Likewise, doctors have known that pain can be suppressed without any real medical intervention. Fake surgeries will often produce the same pain-relieving effects as real surgeries. The placebo effect can account for much of a medicine’s pain-relieving power.

“If you get an on-the-job injury and you hate your job, you’re much more likely to become disabled by the pain,”

Research has shown that catastrophizing is associated with worse pain outcomes: more intense pain, and a greater likelihood to develop chronic pain. It’s also associated with higher levels of fatigue.

...received a therapy called pain reprocessing therapy, which is currently being tested with a clinical trial. It’s a psychological therapy that uses a technique called somatic tracking,...

The goal of the therapy is to get the patients to reinterpret the sensations they feel as non-dangerous.

In a sense, they (ed: Alan Gordon's Pain Psychology Clinic) are treating pain similarly to how they would treat an anxiety disorder. This idea draws a bit on the approach of the late Dr. John Sarno, who believed most pain was stress-related, but with fewer Freudian overtones and more academic rigor.

...don’t dismiss placebos’ healing power. Even powerful painkillers like morphine are much less effective when people don’t know they’ve taken them.

In the brain, emotional pain and physical pain interact. Just as people sometimes turn to opioids to mask their emotional problems, psychological therapy can help physical pain. “It’s time to recognize that there is so much overlap that we almost can’t treat one without addressing the other,”...

Back surgery for lower back pain often backfires. Doctors literally call this “failed back surgery syndrome” — around 20 percent of back surgery patients will still have chronic pain despite successful procedures, which can cost $50,000 or more.

There are similarly high risks and low rewards for treatments for other sorts of joint pain. In 2017, a clinical trial for osteoarthritic knee pain compared a saline injection to a corticosteroid shot. Both injections relieved an equal amount of pain (thanks to the placebo effect). But it was the steroid group whose joint damage actually grew worse.

... with psychotherapy, “we’re trying to improve the person that has pain, not just the pain the person has.”​

 

Hi Jan,
I'll read the article! Thanks for your great pickings from it, your time to do this. We are so blessed, those of us who know and use this approach.
Andy B

 

I liked it! Of course they had to take a dig at Sarno, though...

 

LOL. I know, right?
"... like Sarno but with fewer Freudian overtones and more academic rigor"

Is that what you were referring to? Should I be laying on a sofa?

 

Haha, yes, that part.

 

So much to hate about Freud! And Dr. Sarno was not "scientific enough!" Hah!

I see the article touches on some of the theories and practitioners we know, but still tends to be cautious in its conclusions. What it does not say, which is probably partly due to the writer's experience (or lack of) is "just go deep into Sarno's, Gordon's, or Schubiner's work or others known here, and you will be hugely benefited, beyond what is currently recognized in studies." Oh, I guess if it is standard reporting, it can't quite say that! Too bad...

 

Thanks Jan
Your posts always offer good information. I plan to read the article as well.
Ahhhhh, somatic tracking.....Alan is ahead of his game.
Lainey

 

I generally find that articles in the popular lit are often guarded in their conclusions. Lack of general information on the part of the writer and firm commitment on the part of the publication.
Lainey