107: How We Respond to Symptoms Impacts Our Feeling of Safety w/ Dan Buglio

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[00:00:00] Chazmith: Good day friends. Welcome to Our Power Is Within Podcast. I'm your host Chazmith, and my mission for this podcast is to inspire you to take your power back and to realize that you are the healer that you've been looking for. All along, we are capable of healing in mind, body, and soul. 

Today I just wanna start out with a shout out to a recent review on Apple Podcast.

Listener future here now says, “I love how each episode brings so much inspiration to keep going and believing that the body can heal. Chazmith brings a sense of warmth and encouragement that is truly welcoming. I highly recommend this podcast.” Thank you so much future here now for your kind words and for taking time out of your day to leave this feedback, and this will hopefully help future listeners find this message of hope as well.

If you are currently tuned into Apple Podcasts and have not left a review or a five star rating, please consider scrolling down and doing that for me. Right now I'm actually at 91 5 star ratings and I'm hoping that you all can help me reach 100 this week. Woo.

I've also been loving to hear from you guys for the feedback around our weekly challenges. And for those of you who have not set me any feedback yet, there's still time to provide your input and I look forward to hearing from you. Every opinion matters. However, in the meantime, I do have a challenge for this week too.

As a reminder, last week's challenge was getting into nature for a little bit, and I discovered that holding myself accountable to this challenge, I made it to three glorious sunrises. I make it to sunsets quite often and they're absolutely amazing. But there's something really different about the sunrise, especially over the ocean.

I feel like every time I show up and experience it, I just feel very satisfied and fulfilled. It just feels like there's this, I don't know, there's just this different feeling in the air, this peace, this stillness. There's not very many people on the beach. It's very quiet. You can hear the birds chirping.

It's really beautiful you guys, and it leaves me feeling absolutely filled with a grateful heart to start my day. So I really hope that you guys also got to experience the gift and the magic of nature this past week as well. And if not, no worries. It's not too late. She's still there waiting to connect with you.

And speaking of connect, this week's challenge is a different kind of connection. This week, I would love for all of us to connect with a friend or any person that we just genuinely care about and want to connect with. Maybe you can call a girlfriend or a guy friend or a sibling, or maybe you even reach out to your spouse and you set up a date to get together to really just be with the two of you.

You could do coffee or a walk, or maybe arrange an art date or just playtime. Connect and have fun. You are worth it after all. Yeah. And hey, listen, if you're sitting there right now or lying there in bed and you're thinking that sounds great, but I can't get outta my house, or I can't get outta bed, so this isn't really for me.

I wanna challenge you that it's possible to think outside the box. And make this work for you too. Maybe what you need is to invite somebody over to your house to sit with you and drink some tea and have a conversation. Or maybe the best you can do today is call somebody and set up a phone date. Set aside an hour where you can just really talk and connect and get lost in the dialogue together and just check in with one another and laugh and, just see what comes of that discussion.

Honestly, the options are really endless. So I hope that you will take me up on this challenge and enjoy this time and connection, and of course, have so much fun, right? And imagine this, you're gonna fill, you're gonna fill two hearts in the process. Yours and the person that gets to connect with you, because whoever you are that's listening right now, you're worthy and you're desired, and you're wanted and you're loved, and there's people out there who want to genuinely connect with you. 

Alright, shifting gears. Our guest today is back for round two, and I am absolutely excited to share this chat with you today. Honestly, it might be one of my favorites, and the reason is because Dan Buglio always keeps it so damn simple.

I'll link his first episode. If you have not caught that one yet, it's from, I wanna say it's from all the way back in Season one, but I love that episode and I think this one's even more powerful. So I'm excited. You guys, we talk about a lot of wonderful things, but truly the big emphasis is that we are not broken, and how we respond to new symptoms plays a very important role in the outcome.

Whether or not we feel safe. Dan also just has this very calming and safe presence about him and I, yeah, I just really think you guys are gonna enjoy this. So with that said, enjoy it. I'm gonna get to it. Dan, thank you so much for being here with me today and back for round two. It's been, gosh, it's been over a year and a half since our first chat for the podcast and I'm really excited to get this opportunity to get a chat with you.

[00:06:17] Dan: Wonderful. Thank you for bringing me back on. 

[00:06:19] Chazmith: Absolutely. I'm so excited. I know that a lot has shifted and I know that in the world of pain and pain science in the brain, we're just constantly learning new things and I know you're really involved in this community. So I'm really excited to see what comes through this conversation today.

What I was wanting to do is, I'm sure I have new listeners that might not be familiar with your work yet or haven't gotten to tune into the first episode. So maybe we could start out with you just giving a nice brief introduction to your experience of recovering from TMS and chronic.

[00:07:02] Dan: Okay. In my early thirties and I'm 57 now, to give you a little bit of timeline, so in my early thirties, I had a bout of back pain bending over to put on my underwear of all things. And that bout of back pain lasted about 13 years now. There was a lot of ups and downs along that journey. It hurt me.

It got really bad in the first few days and then over time it started easing up a little bit. Eventually, I think it went away after a couple of months, but then a month or two later, bent over again, wham the pain was back. And that series of, Intense onset of pain and then slowly getting better went on and off for the first full year for sure.

That's when I heard about this, Dr. John Sarno believe it or not, on the Howard Stern Radio show, Howard Stern claims that Dr. Sarno cured him and gave him his life back, as many people have said that. So I dug into Dr. Sarno's work, bought his books, read his books. Initially got better, but once again, pain came back and then it took longer to get better and then it would come back.

And after a while it just was fairly persistent at varying degrees, sometimes wild, sometimes mild, but it was persistent for the full 13 years. And I tried to implement the Dr. Sarno techniques. He's got his 12 daily reminders, of which a few of them are, talk to your brain, think psychological, reject the physical diagnosis resume, physical activity, and a number of others.

And it was frustrating because I was doing all those things and I still wasn't getting better. So accidentally, after about another 12 years of working with his stuff, I somehow was able to eliminate the pain and get better. In hindsight, I accidentally put together many of the things that I'm teaching now, right?

Things like indifference moving forward and living my life, not living small, not turning down opportunities to do things. Basically deciding that. Indifference, I'm gonna have a good time whether I have symptoms or not. And so a number of things like that kind of came together and I was able to get pain free.

And this time it stuck. And I've been pain free for 12, 13 years. I don't have the exact timeline, but thereabouts. And always remained fascinated by this topic. So I'd read books, I'd listen, and to keep in mind when I was going through my journey, things like Facebook, YouTube, podcasts Instagram, none of that stuff was even in existence.

So it was Dr. Sarno's books and that was it. So I've remained fascinated and as the internet grew and I got exposed to more and more information, I just kept drawing it in learning. And I've always had a desire to teach this stuff. And began coaching about five, six years ago.

Not very successfully because nobody knew who I was. And I had a mentor who was teaching me charge a lot of money, but you only need a few clients. But I couldn't even find those few clients because again, nobody knew who I was. About three and a half years ago I started publishing daily content, literally every single day, putting out a video, and been doing it ever since.

Haven't missed a day, and I think tomorrow's gonna be 1,290 videos in a row. Wow. So as a result, not only have I been publishing the content, but I've gotten incredible feedback from the community at large. Around the globe that the concepts and the way I simplify Dr. Sarno's work and add some of the more modern pain science into it brain science, how things work, how the human body works.

I've gotten tons of feedback that the way I explain it makes it very simple to understand and much more accessible to implement. And as a result, I've built a pretty large audience and a very successful coaching practice. And at this point I've got no plans to stop doing the daily videos.

And the one thing I'll add is that as a result of doing these daily videos and interacting with the community every single day for the past three and a half years, I've absolutely learned way more in the past three and a half years than I had in the prior 23 years or so, 22 years, just because of all the interaction from people actually experiencing this stuff.

So it's been a really interesting journey and. I guess I'll stop there and see if you've got questions. 

[00:11:47] Chazmith: So many, but yeah, I was gonna say it's like when you're interacting with hundreds and maybe even thousands of people and having these experiences, that's literally like conducting research.

It's just absolutely experiential research, it's just so powerful. 

[00:12:03] Dan: I probably get between 50 to a hundred comments on my videos a day. And just all of that input and I read every single one of them and I respond to the ones that warrant it. And yeah, I've learned tons from the audience.

[00:12:16] Chazmith: Yeah. That's really awesome. I do have a few questions, so I'm gonna backtrack and then work my way up. Of course. I was curious, because I know that this is a really common thing for a lot of people. You talked about the back pain. In your experience and throughout your journey, did you ever have any other commonly known TMS?

And for anyone who's listening, and this concept is new, TMS is the term that Dr. John Sarno coined for the mind body pain that he discovered. And it stands for either attention, tension myoneural syndrome or Tension myositis syndrome, which is basically the mind body syndrome. But did you personally have any other types of TMS mind-body symptoms creep in and out of your life?

Or was it really just the back pain? 

[00:13:05] Dan: During that time it was just the back pain in sciatica. Since then I've had two instances of back pain. And when I say I've been pain free for the past 12 years, what I mean is I've been chronic pain free. I had two instances of back pain that lasted about a week.

And based on the way I recommend people respond to their symptoms, I gave it zero fear, zero attention, checked in on what was going on stress-wise, emotionally, and put it outta mind and kept on living. And sure enough, it abated within about a week's time. In both cases. So no chronic pain. So I did have a few weeks worth of neck pain with some radiating stuff down my left arm.

Again, zero fear, zero attention, knew what it was, called it out for what it was. And I did have a bit of persistent headaches for a little bit, but again, same scenario was able to eliminate them through this mind body approach. The very one that I teach every day. So to look to your point, I know I mentioned back pain, but to the audience at large and doing what I do now, there is no end to the variety of symptoms that I hear about on a daily basis.

It's unbelievable. You could probably list hundreds, if not thousands of physical sensations or symptoms that can all be traced back to a brain that is perceiving danger. And therefore will respond with this type of a mind body approach. 

[00:14:39] Chazmith: And I think that's so powerful that we can point that out because I think that when people hear recovery quote unquote recovery or healing stories, I think they have this and sadly sometimes this is conveyed in the community, but they get this idea that they're going to never have a pain again.

And I love how you pointed out it's not when you say pain free, you're  chronic pain free. That doesn't mean that you’re not living a human experience. We're gonna have emotions, we're gonna have stress, we're gonna have life. Life happens. And so there is still potential for pain and or what seems like an illness or discomfort or dis-ease in the body, creep in.

And I think it's so important to emphasize and that's why I love your work, cuz I think this is what your work revolves around is. It's how we are perceiving those. Symptoms, that pain, those sensations and the energy we give to it and the mindset we have around it. And it's when we approach it with fear and worry or obsession or rumination or, all those things that it tends to go from what could have been just an acute, experience in the body to something per persistent and.

Dan: Correct. Absolutely. Yeah. 

Chazmith: Yeah. And being somebody who's gone through so much of this myself, I understand how easy it can be to fall into those fear responses.

Because if we have lived life in our past with really uncomfortable, painful, chronic symptoms, it's easy when something new comes up to respond with fear because of all the fear that like, oh my God, I just got better. I don't want that life I used to live. I don't want this to last the next five years.

So it's sure, it's easy to default back into that and that fear of oh my God, is this gonna be chronic too? But so important in how we respond to not do that. 

[00:16:40] Dan: Yeah. It's so easy for people to say from the time my original pain started till the time I got better, it was five years.

Now I've got a new symptom. Oh no, it's gonna be another five years. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly not the case because right now that you know what you know about this mind body type of cause for symptoms, the sooner you call it out for what it is and say, oh this is a mind body thing too. So therefore I am not going to run to 18 different doctors over the next three months and get all sorts of medical treatments that stand no chance of working.

You can simply just go back to the foundation and say let me do some assessments and there are available assessments that can help you figure out is this a mind body thing or is it maybe a structural thing? And once you've done that, you don't have to give it any further concern.

And when you do it that way, these new symptoms fizzle out pretty darn quick. 

[00:17:37] Chazmith: Yeah. And even if it is a structural thing, we know the body has the capacity to heal. Like when I have something happen, like one time I, after getting rid of other pain, all of a sudden my hip, my other hips started hurting and I'm like okay I got to this point.

I was like, all right, worst case scenario. Cause I was working out pretty pretty actively, pretty intensely rigorously. So I was like, okay, I could have done a strain or something, but I also know my body heals. What is an average timeframe for a, even the largest bone in your body to completely heal?

Come back stronger. Oh, six to eight weeks. Okay. Exactly. Then I know that at the bare minimum, I mean at the worst case scenario, something structurally wrong, but it's gonna heal within six to eight weeks. And that's, that's how I look at it. I, but I wanna super interesting and amazing that you were actually, I wanna point this one out.

You were able to stay fear free when you had the neck aches with the radiating pain on the left side cuz so many of us have been taught to be so afraid of any sensation on our left side because we associate it with the heart. So I don't know if you have any insights on how, was it just the amount of knowledge and understanding you have around this, that at this point in time really helps you to remain calm and centered in these situations?

[00:18:48] Dan: That's certainly a huge part of it. I just realized that like there, I did nothing wrong. My heart health is good. I've, previously had a coronary artery coronary calcium score done, which is basically where they do an ultrasound of your heart and see is there any calcium buildup where you'd have a heart concern.

And that was perfectly fine. And so I'm not concerned with heart health. And so bottom line was, I just, I knew it was t m s. It was just too bizarre. I didn't do anything. There was no fall, there was no injury, no car accident. It was just like, wow. Weird feeling in my neck. And over the next day or two, it started going down, my, I guess the back of my left shoulder and then some radiating pain down the arm.

And it wasn't like screaming high pain, but it was annoying. And I just chuckled and says we've all had a crick in our neck that like takes a few days to work itself out. It was like that plus the radiating arm pain. And so I just gave it zero fear and zero attention and relied on what I know about this stuff to say.

I'm not gonna give it any fear, cuz I know that'll just keep it around. Hope that makes sense. 

[00:20:06] Chazmith: Yeah, that made so much sense. And something I wanted to ask about that also is, so you mentioned this kind of briefly, you mentioned that sometimes if something comes in, you just check in with yourself about your emotional state, maybe your stress levels, and then you move on.

I'm so guilty of doing this sometimes over over investigating to the point that like, okay, I'm not afraid that this pain is physiological, but I'm so convinced it's mind body. But now I go into like over investigation what could it be from? What emotion? What am I not feeling well, what am I not experiencing right now?

Do I need to figure out what exactly it is? What situation caused it? And I'm learning that is. Also counterproductive because that is also responding in fear in a sense, or like a heightened state. That's not, it's and unfortunately in some of the aspects of the mind body community, that's what we're taught to do is like dig and dig deeper and find out, what it is.

And so a lot of people take that approach and then they wonder over and over why they're not getting better. And I think that has a lot to do with it, is that it's still essentially coming from a fear state or a place that's not truly just calm and indifferent. 

[00:21:27] Dan: Yeah. So I've recently, meaning maybe around the first of the year, started replacing the term TMS with PDP, perceived danger pain, and it can be symptoms as well.

So perceived danger symptoms. And I'm really trying to simplify it because Dr. Sarno was a genius. He figured out that the brain was responding to overwhelming stress and emotions and creating symptoms in his description, pain to distract us. And I like the word, protect us from those overwhelming emotions that he says, the brain, doesn't think we can handle.

So he got the ball rolling in this regard, but in essence, that boils down to the brain perceiving emotions. It's dangerous. Yep. So pain was a perceived danger response. The key is, We can have all sorts of things being perceived as dangerous by the brain. And I think I remember at some point hearing somebody in the TMS community at the medical level, I don't know if it was Schubiner or Alan Gordon or somebody saying that only a certain percentage, I think it was Howard Schubiner, only a certain percentage of people have an emotional origin to their pain.

In some cases, they may have a physical origin, but then it becomes chronic. Due to the amount of fear and attention we give it. So I think explaining all of these symptoms or pains as a perceived danger response makes the solution much more simple. To your point, we do not need to go figure out the emotional trigger that started things right.

And the reason for that is because now you're staying in the stress response, the fear response, you're now digging and analyzing, and you're ruminating on all sorts of things that have happened already that likely are no longer an issue. We go digging up the skeletons from our past and wondering why we're not feeling any safer in the present, because now we're emotionally experiencing all of these past, emotional insults.

And as long as we still hurt, the only conclusion we come to is I'm missing something. I must not have found the thing yet. Yeah. The issue is you may have found the issue, but you're still terrified of the pain. So your brain is still perceiving danger and therefore continuing to keep the pain going.

So I think the desire or the desperation to go find the trigger causes people to spend an exorbitant amount of time searching for something that's not necessarily curative. I have met very few people over the years who said, Dan, I found this one thing that happened to me in sixth grade, and poof, the pain was gone.

I almost never see that, and so I think it's more important to go up several layers to say, okay, the brain is perceiving an emotional response as dangerous because emotions might make you bad or crazy, or outta control, or weak, et cetera. We all have self judgments about ourselves if we get overly emotional, and so that may be interpreted by the brain is dangerous.

Once you get pain, you get medicalized. You. Dozens of doctors, all sorts of treatment's not working. You're no longer afraid of the emotions. You're afraid of your body in all of the medical diagnoses and imaging studies you've seen and have been told. And so now movement can become a perceived danger, right?

Body positions, social engagements, standing for too long, walking too far, you name it. All of those things can become perceived dangers that we're completely ignoring because we're digging for this long lost emotion that triggered something six weeks ago, six months ago, or six years ago, right? We're not doing anything to teach our current brain that those other things that are keeping that perceived danger going are not truly dangerous because there's nothing really truly wrong with the body in the first place.

So my entire approach is all about. Not identifying this specific danger, but just recognizing at the high level, if your symptoms are behaving like TMS or perceived danger, pain or symptoms, we don't have to figure it out. Let's focus on teaching the brain. We're safe and once we do, the symptoms can let go.

It's it shaves months or years off of the recovery timeframe because you're not looking for that needle in a haystack, right? So I think it's really important to just say overall high level, perceived danger is a problem. Safety's a solution. All the little stuff, don't sweat it. Don't sweat the small stuff.

We don't have to figure out every single little trigger. Because if you start to identify triggers, let's say it's movements, let's say it's body positions, let's say it's exercise. Let's say it's this. The problem is when you start to identify a whole list of triggers, What's the natural tendency? I better eliminate and avoid all those triggers.

I better avoid getting mad. I better avoid getting sad. I better avoid this person cuz they're toxic and they trigger me. Before you know it, you're never leaving your bedroom. Your life has shrunk so much. So the key is not to identify triggers so you can avoid them. The key is to just, in my opinion, teach ourselves and our subconscious brain, which is run in the show by the way, overall that we're safe.

We're safe emotionally, physically, and mentally. I think when you focus at the high level, what's going on, what's the solution? We don't have to get lost in all these little details that can literally drive us nuts. Absolutely. 

[00:27:34] Chazmith: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it's like some of us. Get some, have something happen and we freak out and think, oh my God, what did I just do?

Did I just eat this? Did I just sit, did I do this too long? Or we go, oh gosh, what emotion am I having? Or what am I not feeling? What do I need to experience? All that. And you're just saying, let's go past all that. Let's move beyond all that and just get up to this higher level of consciousness where we literally don't respond in fear and just go straight to Hey, let's just accept that maybe there's some level of the brain not feeling safe right now.

And how can we create that safety? Yes. What are your insights for that? Like, where do people begin with that? Because I can sit here and say over and over to my brain, I'm safe, and I can rub my arms and be like, you're safe. You're safe. But like that's usually not enough. 

[00:28:23] Dan: Oh, it's totally not.

As a matter of fact, in the past two weeks literally did a video that says, just saying I'm safe is not enough. Literally, same exact thing you just brought up. So we create safety in a number of ways. The foundation of that must be the accurate knowledge of what is actually going on. Cuz it doesn't matter how many times you say, I'm safe, if you think you've got a jacked up body or back, or neck or whatever, your brain's not gonna buy it.

Foundationally the brain's job is to keep us safe and alive and it will do it without our permission. If the brain perceives that we have a neck problem and you're going, I'm safe. The brain's gonna say, no, you're not. Here's a pain, don't move it too much. Go lay down. Go relax.

[00:29:11] Chazmith: Yeah. And how about this? Even now with all this information in this community, even if I say I'm safe, but I'm still feeling like it's anger or sadness or an emotion that I feel might be repressed that I can't get to that that might cause pain. That's still sending a message of not safe to the brain.

Yeah. Because that's saying that emotion or that repressed emotion or whatever I'm not feeling or am feeling or could feel is not safe.

[00:29:40] Dan:  Yeah. So here's where I differ slightly from Sarno's original theories. He was saying it's all about the repressed emotion, which causes a lot of people to go if it's repressed, how am I supposed to get to it?

And that causes problems, but at the higher level, even under Sarno's theory, it perfectly fits the perception that emotions are dangerous and therefore I need a pain or some other symptom to distract was his suggestion from that emotion. Do we need to find the exact emotion or can we just teach the brain that emotions are safe?

I believe we can do the latter and it's working now. We don't have to go digging up every past trauma. We don't have to go fix our traumas. I don't even know what that looks like. But how do we actually teach our, right now brain that emotions are safe? By actually feeling them without judging ourselves as being weak, crazy outta control or too emotional.

So I focus on allowing ourselves to feel the right now emotions without judgment. Why do we do it? Cuz it actually feels good when we do it. The emotions release and the net result is if you do this consistently, your brain says, wow. Look at that. She's feeling all these intense emotions and nothing bad happened.

I guess they're safe and therefore I don't need to protect this person from those emotions. At its core, that's as complicated as it needs to be. If the brain thinks emotions are dangerous, how do we teach 'em? They're safe. It's exposure therapy to emotions. Feel your right Now stuff don't go digging, I don't think, and I know there's people in the t m s community who are gonna vehemently disagree with me but at the end result, they're trying to get to the same point I am.

I'm just skipping 67 steps. And so if I can expand, you were asking how do we, what insights do I have on teaching the brain? We're safe. I believe we experience the world in three main ways emotionally. We covered that physically and mental. We can agree that every human being, whether they're six months old or 96 years old experiences emotional and physical and mental states.

And so it stands to reason to me that if we can feel safe emotionally, physically, and mentally, that's gonna settle the whole system down. So I, we already talked about how we settle the emotional state down, not by avoiding or running away from emotions or any of that, but by actually feeling them, welcoming them, sitting with your emotions without judgment, because they will pass if you allow it.

The next state is a physical state, and I'm not talking about what's the state of your body? I'm all full of pain and this and that. I'm not talking that. What I mean is generally you're either very relaxed breathing, comfort. Like you might be sitting on the beach on a beautiful day with no worries in the world, or you're very tense and tight, your shoulders are hanging out with your ear lobes, you're breathing shallow, you know you're clenching the steering wheel, you're clenching your jaw.

That's a physical state of tension. If we look at the subconscious brain interpreting what's going on, the relaxed, sitting on the beach, breathing comfortably is perceived as safe. The clenched, tight tense, breathing shallow, the brain has no choice but to interpret danger. And the brain's gonna be looking around vigilantly for that danger.

And as a result, the nervous system's cranked up. The brain's always hypervigilant, and a hypervigilant brain tends to find danger all over the place, even when there is none. So my suggestion there is notice your physical tension. Notice your shallow breathing and simply relax your body so you can breathe.

When you do it sends a message directly to the subconscious that says, Hey, I'm okay. I'm safe. All right? That's way different than walking around the house, clenched in a tight body, going, I'm safe. I'm safe. That just doesn't, it doesn't convey the same message to the subconscious, which by the way is running the show.

We don't have conscious control of these symptoms, and so these things allowing ourselves to feel emotions without judgment, relaxing our body so we can breathe comfortably. These are messages that go directly to the subconscious and say, we've got this. We're all right. And the last state is the mental state.

Mental state is thinking. And as thinking can sometimes get us in trouble, right? We have a mental state. Sometimes our thoughts are racing a mile a minute in circles inside our head, and other times we're chill and relaxed and at peace with ourselves. So the key is awareness of all three of these states.

Have an awareness of your emotional state. Feel 'em awareness of your physical state. Relax so that you can breathe and awareness of your mental state. And if it's spinning on all this fearful, catastrophic stuff, we don't have to stop the negative thoughts because if you've ever tried that, impossible, we also don't have to fix the negative thoughts because if we try to do that, we're gonna be new.

Doing nothing other than trying to catch all these negative thoughts, reframe them, make 'em positive, and release 'em to the rainbows and unicorns up in the sky. That could be absolutely exhausting because we have 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. So who's got time for that? So my approach is this. It's just to understand and recognize that if we have 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day, it's highly likely that many, if not a large majority of those thoughts, especially if you're racked with chronic symptoms or pains, many if not, most of those thoughts are either not true or not helping you in any way, shape or form.

So why do we feel like we need to act on a negative thought or believe a negative thought when in fact much of them are not true and not helping me? So my approach to that is not to stop negative thinking or to fix it, is to simply decide, okay, that was a negative thought. I'm gonna let it fly by at the speed of light and then let it go.

Because if you tried to stop and correct all of the negative thoughts, That's akin to saying, I have a thinking problem, so now I need to fix my thinking problem with more thinking about my thinking problem. Cause I have a thinking problem and that thinking problem's causing me problems. So let me think more about, and you see how quickly you can go in circles trying to fix a thinking problem with more thinking.

That's called rumination on the belief that you've got a mental issue. 

[00:36:35] Chazmith: Yeah. And it brings up a few things. One, it brings up the belief of I'm still broken and need fixed when we're trying to come to the reality. That we're not broken and we don't actually need fixed. Correct. And two, it can lead to more fear because, and I admit I've been here like fear of my thinking, fear oh my God, that thought just came and that's gonna cause that's literally Yeah.

Having a fear response to our thinking that we're, no different than a fear response to an emotion. Yeah. So it keeps us stuck in this loop, we are fearful. 

[00:37:08] Dan: Yeah. We're fearful of our emotions, we're fearful of our thinking. And the TMS community at large kind of propagates that to say you have to solve your emotional problems.

You have to stop your negative thinking. There's even, some neural retraining programs that literally say, stay in a state of elation. No negative thoughts at all. And I'm saying that's not possible. So you're setting your clients up for failure, so I say have all the negative thoughts you want, but you don't have to believe them.

And guess what? The less significance you place on your negative thinking, the less negative thinking you have because you're not always judging your thinking as making you crazy outta control, a whack job or whatever else people think about themselves. My core message is, you're not broken.

Not mentally, physically, or emotionally. You're having a normal human experience. And if we can do that with less judgment, things are gonna get better. The issue that I see a lot is that people come, come into this mind, body space and say, oh, my body's all broken. And then they figure out this TMS perceived dangerous stuff.

Makes a lot of sense. Oh no, what's wrong with my brain? Yep. And my answer is not a darn thing. Emotions make you human. They're justified. Feel 'em so they can pass without judgment. Your physical body, if you're tight and tense all the time, your brain is no choice but to think there's a tiger in the room with you.

So stay on guard, stay vigilant, crank up the nervous system. So every little tiny sensation gets amplified in the brain and you go, oh no, what was that? And then mentally, We walk around thinking we're crazy when we're not. Yeah. But I'm hearing voices in my head. Yeah. That's called thinking.

It's not a big deal. Sometimes the thoughts are gonna be negative, and that's okay. You don't have to believe them or act upon them. You can literally just let them go, because guess what? There's thousands more coming the rest of the day. If you want to grab onto a thought, grab onto the one that goes, Hey, there's actually nothing wrong with me.

I'm, I think I'm good, man. Do I love my family? I love my life. Everything's good. Hang onto that stuff. Ruminate on that stuff. Why would you ever wanna ruminate on the negative stuff? Because you gotta fix your thinking with more thinking about thinking.  

[00:39:29] Chazmith: I love how you explain that, it’s so true.  That's what we do.

[00:39:31] Dan:It is. And the last of this equation here in teaching safety is how do we respond to the symptoms? And the three main things I always talk about are the default for people who are terrified is to freak out, oh my God, I'm hurting so bad today. What's freaking out?

That's a lot of catastrophic thinking. So if you don't take your thinking seriously, you're gonna freak out less by default. But freaking out, never got anybody better, right? I've never seen anybody that had a complete meltdown, panic attack, and poof, their pain or symptoms went away. Just doesn't happen because the freak out is basically screaming to the subconscious brain, we're in trouble.

We're in trouble. Whatever you don't calm down. And the brain says, got it. We're in trouble. We're gonna stay vigilant. The nervous system will stay amplified. So freaking out never works. So I recommend freak out less. Now notice I didn't say stop freaking out. That's setting the bar too high because.

We have a particularly colorful day, we're gonna freak out a little bit. But my recommendation is freak out less and less over time. You'll get better at catching it, pulling yourself out of the freak out, calmly, reassuring yourself. And then, over time, you'll just notice that yeah, the freak out doesn't help.

And boy, when I jump immediately to the next response to pain, which is calmly reassuring myself that I'm good, then I notice my symptoms don't flare quite as much or as high or for as long. And so freak outs one, don't recommend it. Calm reassurance, that's the next best thing. It's really very useful. Now, how do we reassure ourselves with the accurate knowledge, the foundational knowledge, that I'm not broken in the first place.

This is all just a brain perceiving danger. So why, why can't I calmly reassure myself? Use that knowledge to dial down the fear. And the last way to respond to pain is ideal, but it's tough to get to, which is indifference. When you literally shrug your shoulders and go, eh, so what I hurt today, I've hurt for the past 6,000 days in a row.

So what I'm hurting today, I'm not gonna give it much fear or attention and I'm gonna do my best to enjoy my day. Indifference is a very powerful thing because what does it teach? The brain? Hey, look, Dan's not concerned about his pain. The brain might go, if he's not concerned consciously, maybe we don't need to be concerned either.

Cuz look, he's doing normal things within reason, within limits, but he's doing normal things and he's kinda living his life. So I think those three different responses to or other symptoms are very instructive because one's not helpful at all. The next one's getting you much closer. Your ability to calmly reassure yourself with the accurate knowledge that you're actually okay.

And if you can do that with a relaxed body, calmly breathing, now you've got messages that are congruent. In other words, imagine walking around saying, Dan, it's okay. We know this is just perceived danger, pain. And there's nothing wrong with your body and you're intellectually right on the money, but your body is tense and tight and your shallow breathing, your brain's not gonna buy that message, even if intellectually it's accurate.

That's just why walk, that's why walking around saying, I'm safe. With a tight, tense body doesn't work. Your brain doesn't believe it. So all this stuff works together. It's not one thing, it's all of it together, but none of it is terribly complex. And the last piece of the puzzle I recommend is as much as possible, shift your focus from fixing yourself.

Cuz there's nothing to fix back to living your life, right? Start to do more normal things and if the symptoms show up, choose your response. Ideally, calm, reassurance or indifference. Try to stay away from freak out cuz that just keeps you in that fierce state. And overall it's like an iterative process cuz you're gonna have ups and downs and speed bumps along the way.

And if things go sideways, try not to freak out and say, oh my God, I'm starting from square one. This pain's as bad as it was when I began and I was feeling a little better. Okay. All it means is the brain perceives some danger in the moment. Best thing to do, get right back to safety. Does all this stuff make sense?

[00:43:55] Chazmith: It makes so much sense. I love, that's why I was excited to have you come back cuz I love your message. I love how you simplify it all and break it down. And just make it, yeah. Like just really understandable and achievable. 

[00:44:11] Dan: Yeah. Accessible. Because the other stuff gets really deep, and there's all sorts of stuff that's saying this is a trauma response.

That's a trauma response, and if this happens, that's a trauma response. Now people are like, oh my goodness, do I need trauma therapy? And yeah, how do you know if you've got the trauma fixed? If you still got symptoms, you're gonna decide I didn't, so I need more trauma work. But then we go back and terrify ourselves over and over again, reliving and revisiting the traumas, and I don't see that as necessary.

Some people may find value in it, and I'm not saying trauma work is not valuable, I just don't think it's a required part of recovery from your brain being in a place where it's perceiving danger. Actually revisiting the trauma can make the brain perceive more danger. So that's my take. So I try to keep it as simple as possible, as trauma free as possible.

And so far it's working. People are getting better around the world. 

[00:45:11] Chazmith: Absolutely. And what I wanted to highlight too is okay, so we know through Dr. Sarno that there's, there are some common personality traits, right? Some that we often do see in the, in this pain community chronic pain community and the type A perfectionism, the people who put a lot of pressure on themselves.

And so what I love about your approach as opposed to a lot of other approaches is that what I see happen in a lot of other approach. Is that the way it's taught and conveyed and then the way it's approached, we are often approaching our attempt to quote unquote, heal with these same High pressure personality traits that may have contributed to us getting pain or some type of dis-ease to begin with.

So like how you said, if we are putting this constant pressure on ourself to notice every thought and try to change it that is heavy, that is exhausting. And we are constantly setting ourself up for failure, which then leads to guilt and shame, blame and judgment, and more pressure. Or we are doing things and not getting rid of the pain and then we go, what am I doing wrong?

Pressure, guilt, shame, judgment. And so we end up in this constant chronic cycle of pushing pressure trying so hard, but not getting results, then beating ourselves up. And it's there's, it's so exhausting and there's nothing that feels safe about that cycle to get stuck in. And that is a widely spread approach.

For, so many of these things, we've learned it with the emotional oh my God, you need to dig, be afraid of the emotion, or you be afraid if you can't find or locate the right emotion or, oh, I dug through everything, but I still have pain. Okay, now we're literally sending a message of if I don't find this, I'm fa a failure, I'm doing something wrong, I'm still not doing something good enough.

And that goes for the mental state as well. 

[00:47:16] Dan: Yeah. One of the challenges that I see is the tendency to beat ourselves up is very common among people with this TMS perceived danger stuff. Yes. It's just, and it all really comes from. I guess our childhood experiences where we're taught by others that we're not good enough.

That we're not perfect enough. That we're this, we're that. Yeah. So the challenge with that is, and I truly believe it the challenge is that self-esteem issues and feeling not good enough are not our, that was given to us by other people. Have you ever seen a two-year-old with a self-esteem problem?

Again, it's raised in a reasonably, non chaotic home. No. Two year olds love themselves. They're God's gift to the world. They're amazing, and so you have to be taught that you're not worthwhile, that you're not good enough, that you need to be perfect. That's learned, whether it be bullies at school, teachers, parents, siblings, you name it.

We pick up those habits of thought and beliefs about ourselves. And one of the things that I really just try to emphasize is just saying, you are good enough. You can do this. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing to fix, and one of the things I joke about is, people are spending like hours a day, sometimes a full-time effort trying to quote, unquote fix their TMS or perceived danger pains.

And I'm saying, there's nothing to fix. Why are you spending all that time? That's the equivalent of going into your garage and rebuilding the engine on a brand new car that you just bought that's working perfectly. Why would you do that? You've got a perfectly functioning body and brain. It's just operating on.

And here's a key thing I say all the time. Your brain and nervous system is working perfectly. It's just operating on misinformation, aka bad data. And. It's our job to correct the information so your brain can make better decisions and with better information, you can dial down the fear, the whole system can calm down.

This is not complicated. It's really not. Better data, accurate knowledge. Dial down the fear. Live your life as much as you can normally. If symptoms flare, respond calmly. Teach your brain you're safe. Feel your emotions. Relax your body so you can breathe. Don't take your own thinking. So seriously, that's the whole process in a nutshell.

And I just blasted through that in 20 seconds. It's not complicated. Yeah. 

[00:49:55] Chazmith: Yeah. And it might not always be easy, but not complicated. 

[00:49:59] Dan: For sure. Yeah. It's definitely not easy, probably takes practice.

[00:50:02] Chazmith: Yeah. And compassion while you're practicing, as opposed to beating yourself up if you don't get it right one day.

If I freak out one day, I don't need to beat myself up for freaking out. 

[00:50:16] Dan: Correct. Which is why I don't say stop freaking out. Yeah. It, I say freak out less. That's achievable. Stop freaking out is impossible cuz it's just setting the bar so high you're thinking, I've been freaking out a lot.

So if he says I can't freak out at all, I'm never gonna get better. That's like saying never have a negative thought. Oh I'm never gonna get better cuz I still have negative thoughts. Why would you possibly set the bar so high that people just believe that there's nothing they can do. Inch by inch.

This process works, baby steps, and even if your symptoms haven't shifted yet, you're still making progress. If you're thinking more clearly about the cause, you've got more clarity and confidence that you're actually okay. Your brain's just misinterpreting bad data. As you become more comfortable feeling your emotions more able to relax your body more likely to not take your negative thoughts so seriously, let 'em fly by, respond to your symptoms in a calm, reassuring manner.

Now, this stuff doesn't happen overnight, but it does also doesn't have to take years. You I see people recovering in weeks or months when they truly get it and they anchor themselves on that accurate knowledge that, holy crap, there's really nothing wrong with me. So it, yeah, it's very accessible.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be complicated. I will say it is challenging, if you can go easy on yourself, cut yourself some slack and kind of stick to the fundamentals. This this stuff really does work. 

[00:51:49] Chazmith: Yeah. I have a couple questions regarding this. All of this stuff, what I'm wondering is if you have some suggestions, speaking of freak out less do you have any insights into healthy ways that people can potentially pull themselves out of a freak out moment or help themselves to freak out less?

Because we all know that sometimes when you're in the midst of intense freaking out rumination it's okay, I'm here. How do I pull myself out of this? 

[00:52:17] Dan: Okay. So great question. When you're in a freak out, what's really driving it? Adrenaline cortisol, but what's driving that? Catastrophic fearful, oh no, I'm gonna be this way forever type of thinking.

Now, when you're in a freak out and you're in that state in almost in near panic, you're not gonna be able to think your way out of it. You're just not. That's like saying to somebody who's having a panic attack. Think logically. You're okay. Not gonna, we can't think our way out of a freak out, which is based on catastrophic thinking.

But what we can do is go back to the body and just say, all right, time out. My brain's flying. Let me just relax my body consciously so that I can breathe. And guess what happens to the thinking? When you get your body to relax, get out of that clenched, shallow breathing, almost hyperventilating state.

When you can relax your body and breathe, what happens to your thinking tends to slow down, doesn't it? And when you can get to that point where your body is relaxed and your breathing has become a little bit more natural, your thinking will slow down. And all of a sudden you're gonna start seeing the opportunity to come out of that freak out.

And that's when you can move right from that into calm reassurance, which is the ability to teach yourself, I'm okay. How do I know that? Because I understand this perceived dangerous stuff. I understand tms, I've done the homework, I've done the assessments. It's clearly got my name written all over it.

And so when you can get out of the freak out by slowing things down into your body, slow down the thinking, that's when you can start to shift to the intellectual, calm, reassurance. And guess what? You've already got the relaxed body, which is what I was talking about before, being congruent with the message and the body.

It's a matter of having awareness and awareness covers this entire thing. If you're not aware of the fact that you're getting all emotional or that your body's tight or that your thinking is going offline, going on a loop, it's gonna be very difficult to influence things and make changes.

But awareness of all this stuff, you can make these gentle changes. Oh, I'm feeling really angry. Ooh, gentle change. Let me give myself permission to feel it in the bathroom, the bedroom, wherever. Notice your physical say, Ooh, let me relax my body. You can do that at the grocery store. On at the checkout line.

Doesn't have to be a dedicated practice where you go sit in a corner for 30 minutes and do your, guru hums and ums. We don't have to stop Thanksgiving dinner and say, all right, family, I'm feeling a little bit stressed out, so excuse me, I'm gonna go meditate in the corner.

Don't bother me and try to keep it down. We don't have to do that. The family will look at you like you're nuts. We can relax our body and breathe a little more comfortably and not let our thoughts carry us in a way. If when we're really angry and we need to make some angry faces in the mirror, then we can excuse ourself, go to the bathroom and for two, three minutes do just that, allow it to pass, and then you can come back in and carry on.

[00:55:29] Chazmith: That's such a good point. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:55:32] Dan: We don't have to freak out at the family screaming at the top of our lungs and saying, I've gotta go meditate now. I hate all you guys. That's called expressing our emotions, which is, I joke, it's like vomiting your emotions on the people around you.

We don't have to do that to get better. But feeling the emotions and teaching the brain that emotions are safe is the way forward from the emotional standpoint. 

[00:55:57] Chazmith: Speaking of feeling our emotions, what is your insight and advice when you're coaching somebody or working with somebody who is just so disconnected from their emotional state that they're like, I don't even know what I feel, or I don't know what, I don't know.

How do I tap into that, Dan? 

[00:56:12] Dan: Sometimes that statement comes from a story in their head that says, I don't know how to feel my emotions. And they've been telling themselves that story for so long. They actually believe it. And I'll usually just try to cut through that by saying have you ever gotten pissed off?

Yeah. I was like, then you know how to feel your emotions. Have you ever gotten sad? You ever have a dog or a cat die or a grandmother? Yeah, I got sad. Then you know how to feel your emotions. Stop telling yourself you don't, you do. And I think it's the type of thing where emotions or feelings, meaning we feel 'em in our body.

If you're all choked up, feel that in your face and throat. If you are in grief, feels a little bit heavy on your chest, right? A heavy heart. If you had your feelings hurt, feels like a kick in the gut, right? So most of the emotions are felt between our face chin and our belt of our pants.

So sometimes you can just sit and observe what are you feeling in your body? And that may give you a clue. And I don't have a chart that says if you feel this in this part of your body, but it can give you a clue. And if you're just feeling this weight on your chest and you can't really identify it or label it, so what allow yourself to experience that anyway.

Cuz sometimes anger and sadness pile on each other and it's both of them. And you can't really identify, you don't have to. Label everything. And more importantly, you don't have to say, I am feeling anger because story. Look, if you're feeling angry, allow yourself to sit with the anger. But you already know why you're upset.

You don't have to tell yourself the story. Cuz oftentimes, every time you tell yourself the story, you recreate the anger. Cuz I've had people say, oh, I allowed myself to feel anger and it's lasted three weeks. How come that, how come my anger won't leave? Two things. One, you may have had so much stored up anger that you've never allowed out, that it continues to pour out or you're pissed off about the same thing over and over again cuz you're ruminating and telling yourself the story.

Yeah, that's like driving in your car and having an argument in your head with somebody who's not even in the car with you that you talked to three weeks ago and you're still going, boy, next time I see them I'm gonna say this and I should have said that. And you're still fighting with the people in your head and.

The experience was three weeks ago. But yet so many of us, all of us do that to an extent. So notice your emotional state. Allow yourself to feel the emotions without the story, without judgment.

[00:58:43] Chazmith:  I love that point because it's so true. The story is what really gets us stuck.

[00:58:49] Dan: That's rumination. Yeah. And if you ruminate long enough, you're gonna be angry all the time, or sad all the time, or grief stricken all the time. Relationships break up. And if all you do is ruminate about the lost love of yours, you're gonna stay sad for a really long time, and so it's okay to feel the emotions without judgment. It, Hey, that makes us human. We're supposed to feel 'em. That's how we were designed. But at the end of the day, the story is what keeps the emotion going over and over. 

[00:59:21] Chazmith: Yeah. Makes so much sense. So you said it could this, like this stuff, we don't have to spend years practicing not at all safety, that it can take, days, weeks, months.

But I'm curious in general, are we ever done reinforcing safety or is this oh, I practice it, I feel safe and then I go resume life as I once used to? Or is this like No, in some regards I actually have to shift how I was living my life before and how I respond to life. 

[00:59:54] Dan: I don't think this is a thing we have to do every day forever.

For me, I don't practice safety daily. I don't have a daily routine. I just know that if I'm upset, my natural default is to go, oh yeah, I'm really pissed off about that or sad about that to allow it without judging myself. And if I have a symptom, I immediately call it out for what it is. Give it no fear, no attention.

Then I move on with my day. But no, you don't have to walk around all day, every day. And even once your symptoms go, you don't have to do that. The key is just to have enough presence of mind that if you do get a twinge or a symptom or a sensation that you go, ah, interesting. I know what that is, and remain calm as opposed to running, screaming from the building with your hair on fire.

Right? There's no need to have a daily practice. Some people will say, oh, you got a journal every day for the rest of your life. That sounds torturous. Right? Who wants to write about all the negative things in their life every single day? I don't, so I think that what I've walked you through could be, should be taught to four year olds, is just a way to navigate life.

Oh, you're sad. It's okay. You can cry. Oh, you're, why is your body so tense? How about you relax it? Here, let me show you. Oh, you don't have to believe your thoughts. Just cuz you had a thought doesn't mean you have to believe it. You don't have to take it serious. You don't have to act on it. And if something bad's going on, no.

Responding calmly is always going to win over fear and freak out. If we could just navigate the world that way, so much of this t m s stuff wouldn't be present. Yeah. And I know that's somewhat of a non-answer. Or is it? Maybe it is. I think it's an answer. Yeah. Yeah there's no need to convince yourself you're safe all the time, but at a certain point in time, you'll get to the place where you have the wisdom, where you literally take it from the intellectual concept that you read in a book or watched on a video to actually taking it from the intellectual to your heart.

And you go, holy crap wisdom. I actually believe and know that I'm fine. And once you get to that place, it doesn't require a daily practice because if something comes out, you're gonna go wisdom, what's up? Ah, that's just more of the same different body part, not to be concerned with. Trust my body, dial down the fear, everything's gonna be fine.

And in a case of a true injury, it heals. Like you said, trust the body to heal. It knows what to do. 

[01:02:43] Chazmith: So true. So good. What other question? I love it. You talked about you don't really have any daily routines or anything, but Nope. Not pertaining maybe to safety, but in j just in general, do you like, have any kind of rituals or things that you value just for your overall wellbeing, mind, body, soul that you do partake in daily?

Like any kind of movement practice that you're committed to? Or do you engage in any type of me meditative practice regularly? Not actively, but just because you choose it. 

[01:03:15] Dan: I do not. I tried meditation primarily to fix myself when I was going through this TMS battle. Never found it to be the solution for me, which is why I don't teach it.

I'll only teach things that were effective for me and that I see is effective. Now, I'm not saying don't do meditation, but if you're doing it to fix your TMS, you're doing it for the wrong reason. There are plenty of people that say meditation is life-changing for them. Brings them to a place of peace and calm and comfort in the universe and all that stuff.

And I believe that stuff is wonderful. It's just not a practice I've gotten into. And if you like meditation, do it. The funny story I had was, one guy is Dan, do I need to meditate to get better? And I'm like if you'd never had your pain, would you be meditating? He goes, oh heck no. And I said, then don't meditate now, because when we do these things to fix ourselves, the only impression the brain can get is there must be something wrong.

Because this six foot three football player is doing weird meditations. What the heck's he doing that for? He's trying to fix himself. Whoa, there must be something broken if this guy's doing this stuff, and again, zero judgment on meditation is a wonderful practice. I know people who have been doing it their whole lives and love it.

But if you're doing it to fix a perceived problem, your brain is gonna continue to see that fixing activity as evidence of a problem. 

[01:04:43] Chazmith: That's such a good point. So good. Like it's literally, it's about why are we doing, why are we making the choices we're making and to do the things that we're doing potentially daily.

Because if I'm, yeah, like you said, if I'm doing this every day to fix myself, that does, it sends a totally different message to the brain. It's a different relationship you then have with that activity. Yep. And I know from personal experience once again, that when you start creating this like laundry list of things that you need to do every day to be your.

It's so time consuming and that once again puts pressure on yourself. And when you're so focused on this whole list of things you have to do to be well, when do you have time to go live your life? Because you just want to enjoy life and live

[01:05:30] Dan: The point is you're already ok. There's nothing to fix.

Not physically, mentally, or emotionally. Stop judging yourself as broken. Now, symptoms are really compelling to tell you that you're broken. But if you understand that the only reason you've got symptoms or pains is because your brain has lots of misinformation, bad data, and tons of fear fueling it, then there's really nothing to fix.

We just dial down the fear with the accurate information so that we can focus on living our lives. Yeah. That's why I don't have a daily practice. I'd like to get into more movement, not to fix anything, but just because, at 57 I should probably start lifting some weights and keeping the muscle tone up and but I would never do it to fix myself, and that's what I recommend to other people.

They're like Dan, if I want to exercise, I'm like why do you wanna exercise? I gotta strengthen my core because I have back pain. I'm like, eh, wrong answer. Your core is perfectly fine if you're not falling over while walking down the street. Your core is strong enough to hold you upright.

All of that belief that we need a strong core, perfect posture. It's just more pressure to be perfect. 

[01:06:44] Chazmith: Absolutely. 

[01:06:45] Dan: If you wanna work out because you feel good from exercising, and most of us do when we do it regularly, wonder. But don't try to fix it. I, and I'll tell people, if you wanna work out great, don't work on the body parts that hurt.

Because you're then conveying to the brain that I'm trying to fix the body part, which keeps the brain focused on this being a body problem. It's not. Hopefully that makes sense. 

[01:07:09] Chazmith: Oh, so much sense. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It's so true. And it's like you can just start choosing, it goes to living your life, like choosing to do things cuz you enjoy it and you want to do it and there's, and you just feel better when you do it rather than I need to do this because this is what I mean I've myself I got to a point for a while there at one one point where I was like, oh my God, my, it's like a full-time freaking job trying to quote unquote fix myself or be well and yeah, it's exhausting.

And the one thing I would say, the reason I do have compassion for myself and everybody in the community who's dealt with this is we're taught, unfortunately in our culture and society, we're taught that. Pain or symptoms and physical sensations or sickness we're taught that's a bad thing.

So naturally of course we're gonna have a fear response. We're taught all these bad, catastrophic thoughts about pain and dis-ease and sickness and illness. And then a lot of times we're like, I know a lot of my, I know a lot of people who feel the judgment because they feel like, again, they reinforce that I'm not good enough or there's, I'm doing something wrong or there's something wrong with me because I got myself like, cuz I got sick, or cuz I'm feeling this pain.

Sure. And and so it's just reinforced in that sense. So yeah. It's, but I think, I even think you did a video recently that was, you're not at fault but you're responsible. Like it's not your fault, you didn't do anything wrong cuz you're in pain or you have a sickness. Correct. But you are responsible for how you respond to it.

[01:08:45] Dan: Yeah, for sure. And none of this is anybody's fault. It's where we ended up. 

[01:08:50] Chazmith: Yeah. Yeah. And it's yeah. And again, there's nothing wrong with you. So if you're like why am I responding hyper vigilantly and this person's not? Again, it's just like you said, it's just where you ended up, but it's not a fault.

It's just okay, but now you're responsible to shift that. 

[01:09:03] Dan: Yeah. It's interesting when I start talking to some people in one-on-one calls inevitably I'll say tell me about your your medical history. Oh I had cancer in my thirties and when I was in my twenties I was in an accident and I had a lung collapse.

And, all sorts of, horrific, scary stuff. No wonder in their forties or fifties, their brain is hypervigilant, always looking out for danger. Yeah. And not to say everybody who has TMS perceived danger, pain has had some traumatic thing. I got plenty of people who go, Dan, I'm looking back.

And my life was pretty, pretty darn calm. And pretty good. And I had a good childhood. My parents were good, never bullied. And some people are like, I don't get it. If this is all psychological, I don't get it. I was like maybe you just had an onset of pain, an accumulation of stress, changing jobs, buying a house, moving across the country, whatever, and you got an onset of pain, and then you got medicalized, you got dragged right into the medical system.

You got muscle relaxers, chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, possibly surgery, MRIs, treatments, injections, and now they're terrified of their body. They have nothing to do with an emotional state because inevitably when they come to find me a few years later, they've already made it through that move and job change and everything's cool.

The only reason it's persisting is because the fear and the attention to the symptom continues. And Again, doesn't have to be complicated. We don't have to dissect it and figure out exactly the original cause of it. Just knowing perceived danger creates a response. And then if we become overly fearful of it, focused upon it, and work on fixing it all the time, either physically or even with this TMS approach, we're staying in that fear loop.

Yeah. Again, I try to simplify as much as possible to get people to look at the fundamentals that you're not broken in the first place. So there's nothing to fix. Just teach yourself you're safe, emotionally, physically, mentally, respond to the pain in a very calm, reassuring way. Ideally, indifference focus on living your life and I'm seeing people go from bedrest to living their lives, not wanting to be on the planet in last August, to completely pain free and loving life again.

It's possible for sure. Oh, it's it, yeah. And I don't even like the word possible. I say, if you can implement this stuff and, teach your brain these messages, it's not just possible. It's probable that you'll get well, primarily because we're all human beings and our systems all work the same.

[01:11:47] Chazmith: Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, I'm gonna shift things for a little bit here to coming to the close here. I am so curious, Dan, 1,290 videos, 1,290 videos, where do you, where does it come from? Where do 1,290 messages come from Every day? Like, how do you always, where's the source of inspiration? Do you just get little hits or how does it come about?

[01:12:11] Dan: First of all, if you were to dissect the 1,290 videos, there might be 25 topics that I'm talking about over and over again. It's not that complicated, but I hit 'em from different angles. It's just a matter of, I might be reading comments on Facebook and somebody will make a statement and I'll reply back and outcomes a topic.

Oh, gaining trust or who I was does not dictate who I am and who I will be. Don't give up the day. It's hey, if you have pain in the morning, it doesn't mean the whole day shot. These are just ideas that come about through conversations, through coaching the group program, watching Facebook, watching YouTube comments.

And some of 'em are just like the statements that I use while coaching. So one video recently show little to no concern. And so I hit record on the camera and I start talking. None of these things are bullet. Pointed out or scripted. I can literally just have a topic that's for example, any sensations can be learned.

But I know enough about the topics that I can go out, sit in the backyard, hit record and start saying, today's topic is any sensations can be learned. And I talk for five to 10 to 15 minutes, hit stop and I upload it. So the topics come from everywhere and everyone sometimes not even within the TMS community, sometimes I'll listen to other people online, people talking about psychology.

Mel Robbins is a really cool person who has some great ideas. So I'll listen to what she's talking about listen to her books on audio. And I'll just take out bits and pieces and I go, this absolutely applies to my world, and I'll talk about it. 

[01:14:01] Chazmith: I love it. It's super awesome. You're doing a great thing for the community for sure.

[01:14:07] Dan: Now, one point about these daily videos I talk a lot about consistent messages of safety to our brain. Over time teach people that they're actually, okay, what better than a daily video, five, 10 minutes long to say, Hey, you're not broken. You're okay. You can do this. It's not that hard.

Go for it. Here's how you do it every single day. And people say, oh, I have coffee with Dan every day, breakfast with, I take a walk with Dan. And, so many people actually, I, if you look at my playlist of success stories, probably at least 25 out of the 30 or 31 that I've posted have never paid me a dime.

They got better at my daily stuff. That's so awesome. 

[01:14:58] Chazmith: That's really cool. That's really amazing actually. 

[01:15:01] Dan: Yeah, I get messages from all around the globe. It's cool. 

[01:15:05] Chazmith: Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of your program tell us a little bit about what it would be like joining your group program.

Like what would somebody get out of that experience? 

[01:15:16] Dan: So what they would get is a very similar message to what I talk about in all my daily videos and what I've just talked about here in the podcast. The concepts don't change. It's not like I give you the hints or the, the teases, but if you join the program, then you get the real stuff.

No. What you'll get if you join the group program is access to a membership site. Within there, there's a video based course where I take all of the concepts, boil it down into a two hour long video course, which instead of watching what a, 1,290 videos You can watch like 15 and get the core concepts and there's a weekly group coaching call twice, a twice on Wednesdays, 1:00 PM 7:00 PM Eastern Time, which is New York City.

And it's a zoom call. And so what we do in the first part of the call is we share victories or successes or lessons learned over the past week. And it's really pretty cool cuz people are pretty happy. Oh, I did this one lady went for bedridden, for three years to, she drove her car for the first time two weeks ago.

Another lady, would share how she was stuck on the couch for two years crawling to the bathroom. She's back at work, just moved her house, went through a divorce. And so people will share their little victories, which might be like, I went to the swimming pool for the first time in two years where I made it to the grocery store and people will share their stories.

Which is great, start out with some ins. Inspiration people also have the opportunity to submit questions through the membership site, to which I will answer on those Wednesday calls. And then once I get through the submitted questions, I open up the floor and you can raise your hand in Zoom and I'll call on people and we'll chat and people can get actual one-on-one coaching with me about their particular situation.

And it's a weekly thing. There's a few PDF type of resources in the members area, and there's also a community on Facebook, which is strictly limited to people who are members of this paid weekly group coaching. All on its own. Everybody in that community is calling each other My Pain-Free You family.

And then saying, I feel more understood here with my pain-Free you family than I do at home. And so people are making what I believe will be lifetime friendships. Yeah. There's like groups of people who are like connecting offline and texting each other and have a little group chat on WhatsApp and supporting each other.

And I've seen people come into the group calls terrified, in tears freaking out. And the support that comes from the community, there's so much empathy there that sometimes when some people are sharing, I look at the Zoom call and half a dozen people also have tears in their eyes.

It's just such a cool environment and people are getting better. Yeah, that's available @painfreeyou.com. Click on the get help item and you'll see the group coaching program. Is that an ongoing? It's ongoing. You can join any, anytime. There's no start, no stop. It's not like it's eight weeks start, finish.

You gotta wait eight weeks to begin. You can start any time you get access to the chorus membership and Facebook group immediately. And the very next group coaching call is no farther than next Wednesday. 

[01:18:40] Chazmith: Awesome. I love that. And you also still do one-on-one coaching for people who really want that individual support?

[01:18:47] Dan: I do, but two weeks ago mom had a stroke and so that is requiring me to spend a lot of time with her up in the rehab facility, visiting with her, supporting her So current. I've closed off my calendar to new coaching clients. I do have a bunch of people booked throughout the rest of the year, but right now I'm saying no one-on-one coaching.

So if you want some help, honestly, you get the same information and more support than a one-on-one call through the group program. You get the community, you get access to me, you get the same information, don't wait. It's not worth waiting. You get better support through the group, and you can begin immediately.

Don't wait. 

[01:19:32] Chazmith: Awesome. And it's probably more cost effective too. Double whammy. 

[01:19:36] Dan: Yeah, it's a hundred bucks a month, US dollars and you can get a whole year. No, I'm not gonna do the comparison.

[01:19:46] Chazmith: A hundred bucks a month for 25.

That's basically $25 for a individual, like a group call per week. Which is Per week. Per week. Yeah. That's really awesome.

[01:19:54] Dan: Yeah. It's cheaper than a Starbucks coffee every day.

[01:19:58] Chazmith: Yeah. And I know that from, even last time I talked to you is your goal was to make this accessible for people.

[01:20:05] Dan: Yeah. I had a mentor that was telling me, charge $5,000 and work with them until they're done and nobody's got $5,000 to put on this. Yeah. Even if they did, it doesn't warrant that. It doesn't, this, so the group allows me to help more people for less per person, but they still get the same benefit.

And yeah, I've been really pleased. The group has turned out much better than I had expected as far as the way the communities come together. And I have one or two ladies who are completely pain free, but they don't wanna leave cuz they love the community. They love hanging out with these people and helping others.

[01:20:43] Chazmith: They love that. That's awesome. I love that so much. That's so cool. Yeah, so it's very cool. Dan to finish it off, I might have asked you this the first time around, but it’s been a year and a half, so I'll ask you again. If you had the ability to only share one message with the world for the rest of your life, what message would you wanna convey to the world?

[01:21:03] Dan: Oh boy. Wow.

Yeah. I'll suggest people listen to the past hour, 20 minutes cuz that's my message. No, I'm joking a little bit. But yeah, basically judge yourself less live, more, fix less. There's nothing wrong with you. You're a normal human being. Cut yourself some slack. And I know that's a bunch of messages, but bottom line is there's nothing wrong with you.

Not physically, mentally, you're emotionally teach yourself that, and you can dramatically improve your life. I don't know. It's really tough to summarize all that into one message. You're, how about this? Relax, you're not broken. 

[01:21:49] Chazmith: Absolutely. I love it. Anything else that you wanted to share while I got you on here?

I know that I'll drop some links in the show notes for how people can connect with you. Sure. We'll put the link to the Facebook group where you post your videos along with the YouTube link where you also post your videos. But anything else that you wanna share while I got you on? 

[01:22:03] Dan: No, just the message, which was, you're not broken.

This doesn't have to be a chore. Doesn't have to be painful. Doesn't have to be work. It doesn't take any extra time to utilize my approach than it does. Anything else? Just an awareness of your emotions, your physical state, your mental state, choosing your response. You can freak out and have the same number of minutes in the day, or you can calmly reassure yourself that you're okay in the same number of minutes in the day.

People are like, but it's so hard. I'm like, yeah, you know what else is hard? Catastrophizing all day and freaking out all day. That's hard too. Which one would you rather do? The one that leads you out of this or keeps you where? So I appreciate you inviting me on. Always a pleasure. 

[01:22:53] Chazmith: Yeah. I appreciate you being here.

from the first time, like I said, I love your message. I love how you simplify it. I love that. Even just listening to you explain things. And this goes for your daily videos too. For anyone out there listening who hasn't heard Dan's daily videos, I am not joking when I say they really do bring a sense of calm and ease.

And I feel I asked you that question a while ago, how do you, what would you suggest to people if they felt like they were freaking out? My suggestion is to turn on one of your videos because it's just this nice, subtle, calm reminder. 

[01:23:27] Dan: Yeah. I've had lots of people say, Dan, your voice is so calming.

If I'm freaking out, I'll put on a video and before I know it, I'm better and my pain starts subsiding. Yeah. 

[01:23:36] Chazmith: Yeah, it's just a reminder like, oh yeah, shit. I am okay. Okay. Yeah, like it's really good. So I just really wanna say thank you for the work you're doing in the world and. For this community and making it healing simple, like simplified and accessible.

I appreciate that so much. That's the goal. 

[01:23:54] Dan: Chaz, I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on. 

[01:23:58] Chazmith: All right, y'all, that is a wrap as always. I really hope that you love today's chat as much as I did. I hope you were inspired in some way and learned something new. And if you feel compelled to connect with Dan, he has so many free resources available, and I will have all those links in the show notes for you to be able to connect with him and follow along with his daily videos anytime it feels right for you.

And in the meantime, I invite you to just check in with yourself and just notice how you respond when a new symptom or unwarranted, unwanted, or uncomfortable symptom or sensation shows up in your body. Is it always with fear or is it with ease? Do you trust your body yet? And if not, that's okay, but what step.

Could you begin to take today to start trusting your body? As a reminder, I do have a link in the show notes to virtual tip Jar. If you wanna support future episodes for as little as 99 cents a month. Everything counts and makes a difference. And in the meantime, have fun connecting with someone that you care about and make this week great.