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Today's post seems to have stirred up a mix of things: some clarity, some confusion, some hope, and a good dose of fear. I want to start off by saying that this process is messy by nature, and we are all learning to sit with that uncertainty. For anyone feeling overwhelmed, please give yourself the grace of working through all of this new information and know that you have lots of support here as you do so.

To help break all of this down in a simple way, I'd like everyone to conceptualize two prongs of this program: 1). Helping you feel fundamentally safer, and 2). Helping you feel safer in response to, or in the face of, the pain symptoms themselves.

Let me start with the big one first: Helping you feel fundamentally safer. To elaborate on this, I'd like to take a moment to to address how Alan's program (which focuses largely on safety versus danger) differs from or converges with Sarno's work (which focuses largely on feeling your feelings versus repressing them). One does not dispute the other, so I'd like to help integrate the two. I think we can all agree that we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Dr. John Sarno. I'd like to think of what we are doing as as taking the gift that he gave us and adding in everything else we have learned about the mechanisms of pain/anxiety and the brain since he wrote his books to create a clearer picture of what's going on.

Sarno talks a lot about the connection between repressed rage and chronic pain. When I read his books, I saw myself on every page, but found myself asking: But why does one cause the other? Why does my repressed rage cause pain? The answer comes back to the idea that pain is a danger signal (See Day 2). We feel pain when we perceive something to be dangerous to us. For many people, emotions themselves (including rage, but not limited to rage) can be interpreted as dangerous. There are lots of ways our brains can learn to perceive emotions as dangerous. Maybe we got in trouble when we cried growing up. Maybe one of our parents expressed anger in a scary way. Or maybe our parents never expressed any emotion at all. There are lots of ways we could have gotten the message that emotions are scary. This is how repressing emotions can lead to chronic pain. If your brain is constantly sending emotions away because they feel threatening, your "danger switch" will be turned "ON", and the result will be pain or anxiety. Watch this short video from Day 2 to review this idea.

This is a huge concept, so please take it in slowly. There is no right way to learn to feel your feelings. This program can help, journaling can help, working with a therapist can help.

As reviewed throughout this program, emotions aren't the only things that we can be fearful of and perceive as dangerous. We could have a fear of confrontation, or of intimacy, or of loss. We could scare ourselves through pressure and criticism (See Day 7). Again, this program will provide as many tools as it can to help you tackle these fears (i.e. cognitive soothing, overcoming uncertainty, fostering empowerment), but change requires lots of reflection, support, patience, falling down, and getting back up. It takes time to learn to feel fundamentally safer in the world.

Lastly, of course, we all have fear around our pain (See Day 5 and Day 6).

That's why the second prong of this program is meant to help you feel safer in response to, or in the face of, your pain symptoms. I'll make another post about that in a moment