Episode 163
susanne meier briggs:The Groundbreaking Approach to Pain Relief No Doctor Prescribed
susanne meier briggs:
The Groundbreaking Approach to Pain Relief No Doctor Prescribed
In this eye-opening episode, we dive deep into a revolutionary approach to healing chronic pain that goes beyond traditional medical treatments. Our guest, Susanne Meier-Briggs, shares her personal journey of overcoming decades of chronic pain and reveals the powerful mind-body techniques that transformed her life.
First Aired on: Oct 28, 2024
Episode 163
susanne meier briggs:The Groundbreaking Approach to Pain Relief No Doctor Prescribed
susanne meier briggs:
The Groundbreaking Approach to Pain Relief No Doctor Prescribed
In this eye-opening episode, we dive deep into a revolutionary approach to healing chronic pain that goes beyond traditional medical treatments. Our guest, Susanne Meier-Briggs, shares her personal journey of overcoming decades of chronic pain and reveals the powerful mind-body techniques that transformed her life.
First Aired on: Oct 28, 2024
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
In this episode:
Episode Highlights:
- Susanne's 30-year struggle with various chronic pain conditions
- The limitations of conventional medical approaches to chronic pain
- Understanding the crucial role of emotions and stress in perpetuating pain
- The concept of the "emotional reservoir" and its impact on physical symptoms
- How personality traits like perfectionism can contribute to chronic pain
- The power of expressive writing in releasing suppressed emotions
- Techniques for transforming your thinking about pain
- Why MRI results don't always explain the full story of chronic pain
- Applying mind-body approaches to conditions like autoimmune diseases and Lyme disease
- The importance of curiosity and self-awareness in the healing process
Key Insights:
- Chronic pain often has roots in suppressed emotions and stress
- Understanding the neuroscience of pain can be a crucial step in healing
- Expressive writing can be a powerful tool for emotional release and pain relief
- Personality traits and life events play a significant role in chronic pain
- Healing is possible even when there's physical evidence of injury
Quotable Moments:
"We are not thinking beings that feel every once in a while, we're feeling beings who think every once in a while." - Susanne Meier-Briggs
"Pain is essentially your best friend. It's just going, 'Hello, you know, listen to me. There's something going on.'" - Susanne Meier-Briggs
Practical Tips:
- Start with understanding the mind-body connection in pain
- Practice expressive writing for 20 minutes daily
- Explore your life events and personality traits that may contribute to pain
- Learn to accept and release emotions, including crying
- Approach your pain with curiosity rather than fear or frustration
Resources Mentioned:
- Book: "Unlearn Your Pain" by Dr. Howard Schubiner
- Book: "Healing Back Pain" by Dr. John Sarno
- Website: becomeyourownmedicine.co
Discover how you can become your own medicine and find relief from chronic pain by addressing the powerful connection between your mind and body. This episode offers hope and practical strategies for those who have struggled to find answers through traditional medical approaches alone.
Other Resources:
Other Resources:
Connect with susanne meier briggs
Connect with susanne meier briggs
Watch this interview:
Watch this interview:
Episode Transcript
Susanne Meier-Briggs:[00:00:00] The first step to healing is really understand how the brain creates pain and why the brain creates pain. What I do with my patients, I explore. The life events, the personality that creates stress you know, or trauma or whatever, and how that is related to their pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So we do like a trauma slash life event slash pain journey and we figure out. You know, how one thing led to another, even though that's not, you don't have to know what the cause for all of this is, you're going to work on everything.
And, really just kind of understand the neuroscience on pain and, and why we have pain.
Julie Michelson:[00:01:00] Welcome back to the Inspired Living with Autoimmunity Podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michelson. Today, I'm joined by Suzanne Meyer Briggs. Suzanne is the founder of becomeyourownmedicine. co, and she is on a mission to liberate chronic pain sufferers so they can enjoy life fully again. Suzanne herself suffered from nagging symptoms for many years, including IBS, migraines, herniated discs, and insomnia.
Julie Michelson: Addressing mind body syndrome was the solution she had been searching for. In today's episode, we're discussing the root cause of chronic pain and chronic symptoms and how using the mind body approach may be the missing piece to your healing [00:02:00] journey.
Julie Michelson: Susanne, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to be here. Hi, Julie. I am so excited for you to share a bit of your journey with listeners. Um, I, I think your story is going to resonate with so many people because, well, I won't even say why. So tell us a little, a little bit about yourself and why I feel like you would make such a contribution to the audience.
Julie Michelson: So,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: um, yeah, I'll focus on my pain story. I've had, I think I suffered for three decades of chronic symptoms and chronic pain. And this is, you know, what we're going to delve into in this conversation. And you know, it's not that I was, you know, I was in bed for three decades, but I always had something going on.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It started actually when I was a child, uh, had growing pains. Then my teenage years, I, I started to have horrible migraines, [00:03:00] ocular migraines. And uh, then, you know, the back pain, the knee pain came in my twenties. I had neurological pains. I mean, the whole right side of my body was, was just. Just didn't, I didn't have the proper sensation.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Nobody could figure out why, uh, had gastric, gastrointestinal issues, IBS, and then, um, yeah, I mean, you know, for some of the stuff I, I found a solution, like for example, IBS. Um, would get better with psyllium husk, um, um, but then the pain just showed up in another spot and I never made the connection that all these pain, the root cause for all these pains is, is essentially the same.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So you know, as I got into my thirties, I, I was, uh, I, I, I worked for, um, international development for a while and, uh, [00:04:00] I got into a situation in, in Sri Lanka where I was involved in an act of war and I, as a result of that, I had PTSD. And so then my whole body was occupied with PTSD, with anxiety. I, I couldn't, uh, drive anymore.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, I didn't have like nightmares or anything like that or, or phobias after that. But I just couldn't, I couldn't drive anymore because the incident happened when, when we were in the car. And, um, Yeah. I mean, it was like gunfire for an hour and a half and quite, quite a few people died. Right. So after that, um, my system, as I said, was busy with processing PTSD and I, funnily, I didn't have chronic pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I was busy with that. And I did some treatment for that. I was doing somatic experiencing. I was doing EMDR, which is [00:05:00] essentially processing trauma somatically because trauma is a somatic issue, as I found out. So you literally have to filter it out of your body. You can't talk to trauma. Um, so a lot of the.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: CBT is, is, it didn't do anything for me. I'm not just speaking for myself. I, it's a, it's really a somatic, it's an energy that gets trapped into your system that you essentially have to get rid of. And that's what, for me, somatic experiencing in EMDR was quite successful, but, uh, I still had some remnants of that, um, you know, for, for years to come.
Julie Michelson: Sure.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: But, but then, um, You know, couple years after that, the chronic pain came back, you know, I, I started to have, you know, as I had this kind of under control, um, I started to have back pain. I mean, horrible back pain. I had, uh, I went through [00:06:00] phases where I could hardly walk. Um, and then, um, also the migraines kick back in.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And then, um, before COVID, um, it was the year before COVID I had herniated disc number one. And I I'm fit. I mean, I do, I do yoga, I horseback ride. I, I, um, You know, I, I go hiking, I have an active lifestyle. So I was like, why, why do I have a herniated disc? I didn't make any sense to me, but it wasn't all too bad.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It was like, uh, L4, L5. So I was doing physical therapy and, uh, uh, osteopathy, I think I've done so many treatments to try to keep track of it. Just to add, like, you know, all those years, I probably tried. Every supplement on the planet, I tried the homeopath, I [00:07:00] tried, you know, the orthomolecular medicine, I actually did lots of educations, you know, in, in, in those fields as well.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I've tried pretty much everything and, you know, some stuff worked, but most, most just temporarily. Sure. And herniated disc, um, you know, eventually got better and I was in physiotherapy for quite some time and then, you know, Before COVID, um, I was still in physical therapy. I got herniated disc number two.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So within a year, the second one, and this one was so bad. It was L1, L2. It was, um, further up
Julie Michelson: and it
Susanne Meier-Briggs: was so painful. Uh, I had. I mean, the ambulance had to, had to come, I couldn't move anymore. And, uh, I, uh, you know, the, it was, I had sciatica, you know, and, and big doctor gave me a [00:08:00] shot. None of it worked. Um, I continued physical therapy and then I was really asking myself, I had physical therapy all the way up to the second time I needed this.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: What is this all doing? What is going on? Yeah. And so then it like. It started, something started to dawn on me. I started to have an intuition that the root cause for all of this stuff is, is really somewhere else. And then in one of these desperate doom scrolls on Google, I think I, I think I Googled other causes or other reasons for chronic pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So then I found Dr. John Sarno and uh, He wrote a book, Healing Back Pain, I think it was in the 70s and he had 5, 000 reviews, positive reviews on, on Amazon. And I was like, how, I never found this before. I mean, how can this be? So of course I ordered the book and I read it and I, I knew this was my solution.
Susanne Meier-Briggs:[00:09:00] I, I found myself on every page. And, um, The root cause for all of this is, is not physical, and in fact the root cause for a lot of chronic pain and symptoms is not physical, but is emotional, namely, um, emotional suppression due to stress, trauma, and it doesn't have to be a trauma like I have. It can be a little e trauma added up, and just basically life, um, stress from a lot of life events.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And the thing is we, we just bottle the stuff up. Yes. And so then, then I, I read, I, I started to devour all the podcasts I could found on the, I can find on the topic. I, I read all the books. I'm kind of extreme, like when I, when I find something, you go in, go hard. Yeah, I go hard. , I go to the core and, uh. So yeah, I, I found out what, [00:10:00] what I have to do and, uh, there's, you know, a couple different opinions, but, um, you find out what you have to do.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And I, I did it without, you know, consulting a therapist, but, um, and, uh, within three months. I, I mean, it took three months and after three months, I, I woke up one morning and I mean, it really took me 10 minutes in the morning to be able to get out of bed until the blood started flowing in my spine. It was so painful.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, crawling out of bed was the worst. And so like, this was really the situation for, for three months. And after three months. One day, from one day to the next, I woke up one morning and I literally had 80 percent less pain. I still, you know, felt the muscles because I was walking like a croissant for like three months.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And, uh, So, but yeah, the pain was [00:11:00] literally 80 percent gone. And I was like, okay, fine, yeah, it's probably going to come back. So it took me about three weeks to believe it, but it never came back. Which is amazing. It's really, it was, to me, it was a miracle. I didn't believe it, but I, I deep down, I felt that this approach is, you know, it's is right for me and maybe for many other people as well.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And what I, what I did in those three months is really empty my reservoir of, uh, suppressed emotions. And, uh, you know, Unfortunately, we're not taught any of that, you know, physical pain is always treated. If you go to a Western medical practitioner, it's always a physical problem. Sure. And, and unfortunately, psychology and, you know, physiology is, is largely separated in our system.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: We're here.
Julie Michelson: We're integrated [00:12:00] humans. What? Yes. We don't have like separate boxes.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So we really, we really are the mind body. We are. And you can see this in everyday life. I mean, if you are afraid to have a presentation, you know, you instantly have a physical reaction. Sure. You know, you might get an upset stomach or you might blush if you're embarrassed.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Those are physical reactions to an emotional problem. And chronic pain or chronic symptoms is just a level up. A lot more, uh, suppressed emotions, a lot more, you know, stuff in the reservoir, um, Yes. Um, from life events, from personalities that, that cause, uh, stress. And then when that reservoir is full and overflowing, and mine probably was already in my childhood, then the brain decides to inflict pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And it's always the brain who decides, the brain decides to do the best for you. [00:13:00] And you might agree or disagree with it, but it's trying to protect you. And if the brain feels threatened by an emotional turmoil, by emotional overload, it will turn on the danger signal. There isn't really a pain signal.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: There is a danger signal. And interestingly, according to neuroscience, an emotional injury, which is the stuff in the reservoir, an emotional injury can, uh, triggers the same brain part as a physical injury and can create a dangerous signal. And what the brain then does, it, it, it decides, okay, I will give you physical pain because it's easier for you to deal with physical pain than what's in this reservoir.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It sounds, it sounds strange, but that's how the brain works. So the brain decides the reservoir is a bigger [00:14:00] threat than, than physical pain. So then you get pain in a, in a week. Body part, like for my, for me, you know, my, my back is probably one of the weakest body parts. And I can kind of explain that too.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Strangely, it selects an area that you can easily explain.
Julie Michelson: Sure. And so then I want to highlight a couple of things for listeners. Um, because there there's, I'm sure so much of your story resonates in one way or another with people, but I want, there's a few things that I hear all the time. Um, That you through frustration, curiosity, endurance, whatever, you know, got to this point where you were like, why?
Julie Michelson: Because often, you know, when you, you, I, I, especially with back pain, you hear this a lot. Um, oh, well, you know, they did an MRI and I have this, that, and this, so no wonder I'm in so much [00:15:00] pain. And it's like, well, but there, so one of the really important things to understand is. If you take, you know, if you study and they have done studies, you know, where they'll scan a hundred people, some with back pain, some without, and some of the people that are pain free have the most concerning looking studies ever.
Julie Michelson: And so, because we've been taught, right? Like here's your symptom. Let's find it. There it is. Oh, herniated disc. No wonder you're in pain. Like that, right? Isn't that what they probably told you at first? Um, and, and so not every, but a lot of people have herniated discs, don't even know it and don't have back pain.
Julie Michelson: And so that's what we're digging into here. And the other thing I want to highlight too, because if misunderstood, um, nobody's saying it's in your head in the sense of that your symptom, what you're experiencing, isn't real. [00:16:00] Right. You're not saying when we say, you know, it's caused by the brain. You're not saying like, Oh, you know, think yourself pain free.
Julie Michelson: You're saying, Hey, you got stuff you got to deal with. I like your analogy of the reservoir. We all have one. Um, and This really applies to things like fibromyalgia. I mean, all kinds of chronic pain and directly to autoimmunity in general. One of the really big across the board correlations with people with various kinds of autoimmune conditions is stuffing feelings.
Julie Michelson: And trauma, unresolved trauma. So just in case anybody's listening and this is the first time they've heard a conversation like this, nobody's saying anything's your fault. And I don't care what the films show. I will say, um, I was kind of cringing when you said, when you talked about the second herdiated disc, cause I [00:17:00] fractured L1, I'm a fellow equestrian.
Julie Michelson: Um, and fractured L1 about seven years ago. It's painful, but you know what? That was at the height. No, maybe it was longer. Wow. Okay. Time's flying. It was probably 10, 12 years ago. Um, at the kind of height of my autoimmune journey where I was on, you know, they were trying to give me pain pills. I'm like, I have them.
Julie Michelson: I was on every medication you could think of already. And I healed faster than anybody thought was possible for a woman in her forties who had rheumatoid arthritis. Because I didn't get, I didn't listen to them about that. Um, so I just wanted to like really highlight nobody saying your pain's not real.
Julie Michelson: Just because it, the brain was involved in creating it doesn't mean it's, you know, imaginary. It's real. Um, but also doesn't mean you have to carry it with you forever. That's the whole point of the [00:18:00] conversation.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: There's a lot, there's a lot there what you just said. It's a rich, it's a really rich topic and what you were describing about yourself.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Yes, you had an injury. Yes. Hello fellow equestrian. Yeah. Yes, lots of injuries there too from horseback riding. But. That's an injury, right? And, uh, tissue damage heals between 8 to 12 weeks. Yeah. The problem is, um, a lot of people don't heal because you put a lot of fear into it, you put frustration into it, you put resentment into your pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And what happens then is your pain highway, your neurocircuits in your brain, the pain neurocircuits is getting bigger and bigger. Yes. Yeah. You, wherever you're, wherever you're focusing on, the tension goes where energy flows, where tension goes, right? Energy flows where tension
Julie Michelson: goes. Yes, ma'am.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So if you focus on that and preoccupy with your pain, it's going to get [00:19:00] worse.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And that's why a lot of people after an injury, um, get into the chronic pain spiral. And then. Okay. You have, you know, the fear creates more pain and more pain creates more fear. So you have that fear loop that you, that you need to get out of. Another thing that you mentioned is, yes, you often, I mean, I had an MRI and my, my MRI explained, yes, I had, you could see the disc pressing on the nerve, but did it really explain the entire pain I had?
Susanne Meier-Briggs: No, it didn't. Because if it was, It should have been, um, the sciatica should have been in the back of my leg and not in the front of my leg. So, um, so there's a lot of stuff that you cannot explain. And as you said, they have done studies, the Japanese have done studies in the U. S. There's been quite a few studies, you know, taking MRIs of people without, uh, pain and people with pain, and they found, you know, basically every over 50 year old or over 40 year old, I think it was [00:20:00] 60 percent over 50 year olds have bulging discs.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Sure. And I think it was 40 percent over 40 year olds. And that doesn't explain pain. Right. What explains If you don't have a, a dysregulated nervous system, which is the reservoir, the full reservoir is really a dysregulated nervous system, then you don't have pain because otherwise every, you know, 80 year old would scream in pain all day long because they all have bulging discs and desiccated discs, but they're not, uh, and, and this is the thing.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Uh, no, this pain is not psychosomatic, right? Psychosomatic is kind of a stigma to it. We try not to use that word anymore. Exactly. Even though the word explains exactly what this pain is, but we can't use it. We've attached
Julie Michelson: this, you know, kind of made up connotation, which isn't really what the word means.
Julie Michelson: Exactly. So we call
Susanne Meier-Briggs: it psychosomatic. Psychophysiological pain, we call it, um, the mind body [00:21:00] syndrome, um, tension myoneural syndrome. Dr. Sarno called it the tension myoneural syndrome
Julie Michelson: or TMS, yep,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: TMS, exactly. And uh, You know, he, back in the seventies, explained what happens physiologically. The brain, the nervous system, um, the dysregulated nervous system causes nerve fibers to get deranged.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And locally, he could see, uh, a deprivation of oxygen, which, which can cause some of the worst pains you can have. And often with TMS, you, you don't have a diagnostic, uh, an MRI that can prove it. Often it is like that, but, but in my case, and in a lot of people's cases, you do have a diagnosis and you have, uh, an MRI or an x ray to explain it.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And then [00:22:00] it's harder to believe that. The pain is essentially caused by emotions and not physical. I struggled with this for for weeks or months.
Julie Michelson: Sure. And I'm sure there are a good amount of listeners right now going, wait, what? Not me, not me. But, but that's, this is literally why. We're here having the conversation, right?
Julie Michelson: I was told when I was diagnosed with my first auto immune diagnosis, you know, can't heal. You're going to have this for the rest of your life. You're going to decline period. Like you will decline. And so it's the same thing. And that's, that is why I wanted to highlight that even if you have something that MRI or any kind of study, even if you have, you know, uh, for sure autoimmune diagnosis, No, it's you're not stuck.
Julie Michelson: Even if there's an explanation. It doesn't mean that's the [00:23:00] end of the story. Absolutely. That's why I wanted you to come talk to us today.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: The thing is, you know, People always think, I'm the exception, my pain is physical. It cannot be that this is emotional. And the thing is, the way our system underestimates the power of emotion is appalling, but we are not thinking beings that feel every once in a while, we're feeling beings who think every once in a while.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: You will never forget how somebody made you feel. Right.
Julie Michelson: And you can't hear like the feeling is where you need to be for healing. Like you, you can't heal from your head. I don't care what you're trying to heal from. You can't intellectualize yourself out of something chronic into wellness and every auto immune healing journey I have witnessed and been a part of, [00:24:00] which is, I feel so blessed.
Julie Michelson: That's the first and most essential step is reconnecting with those emotions because I know, and I just want to say, like you mentioned earlier about the protective mechanism. Like this is all your body's not doing anything to you. Your brain's not doing something to you. It's doing, trying to do something for you that might've served you in a moment.
Julie Michelson: And like you said, then you get stuck in the loop. Um, pain is protective. Think of not chronic pain. Right. There's a reason if you put your hand on a hot stove, it hurts. It's protective. So you take your hand off the darn stove. Right. So I think if we can reframe that as a step one for people that are like still, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, wait a minute, Suzanne,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: you
Julie Michelson: should be a mind
Susanne Meier-Briggs: body practitioner.
Julie Michelson: You can't help people heal if you're not. you know, we're not, I am in the functional medicine world. We're not [00:25:00] compartmentalized, you know, you can't just focus on a body system. Um, and so I just wanted to kind of reiterate, cause you said so much. That's so important. Yeah. And I just want to make sure, you know, especially for the listeners that are leaning back instead of leaning in, because they may not be ready.
Julie Michelson: To really digest what you're saying, take a little, whatever that little piece is, um, to explore the possibilities. And honestly, if you're listening to this podcast somewhere inside you, you already know you can heal. That's why you're here. So Suzanne has. It's amazing insight into this journey. It doesn't really matter what the pain is.
Julie Michelson: I think, and it doesn't even have to be pain. Most chronic conditions come with some kind of pain anyway. And, and that psycho emotional part is, is not [00:26:00] downstream. It was under there to begin with for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Yeah. And, you know, I vouch to say, you know, even if, and. 80, well, let's say 80 percent of chronic pain and symptoms is the mind body syndrome.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It is proven. There have been studies and 90 percent of doctor visits are because of stress and trauma and whatever. Right. So that's a fact. And as you said, pain is a message phone. from your body. Actually, we say body is a representation of your unconscious, and pain is the messenger. And so actually, you know, instead of, uh, being frustrated or being angry or, uh, fearful about the pain, accept the pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I know this sounds really hard, but The pain [00:27:00] is essentially your best friend. It's just going, hello, you know, listen to me. There's something going on.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. And if you ignore it, it'll get louder. Or like you, that's what, one of the things I loved so much about reading your journey is, you know, you can do the thing and fix the part.
Julie Michelson: Right. But then pain would show back up in another way. And so either if it's, you know, something chronic, it just gets worse, worse, worse if we ignore. And the message is, you know, until your body is screaming or like, like in your journey, it'll just keep reappearing. It'll go away for a little bit and pop up somewhere else until you really, and I, just to be clear, I'm not saying when I fractured my back, it didn't hurt.
Julie Michelson: It hurt. But it also healed really quickly. So I'm not, you know, it's not that we, again, we should feel some pain, you know,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: eight to 12 weeks,
Julie Michelson: right? Yeah. I don't even actually, I think it was even faster than that. [00:28:00] Um, I don't, you know, it's funny. I don't recall. I don't, it wasn't, I was blessed. I do the part of the vertebrae I fractured was the most painful, but also the easiest to heal.
Julie Michelson: So I was really blessed in that sense. So I got my lesson. I want to back up though, because I believe that the change in your journey. So it may be, if somebody is not ready to really lean in, um, notice how Suzanne got curious, I think curiosity, you know, it comes even before buy in right. So. Why? I love, you know, I, my kids are all adults now, but when they were little, I remember, you know, the why that was the, the question all the time, but why, but why, but why?
Julie Michelson: And, and I tried my hardest not to shush that out of them. [00:29:00] Um, but you hit a point where you got curious, right? You were like, Hey, wait a minute. I'm active. I'm fit. I do yoga. I, you know, I take good care of my body. Why? It is a really good question that can serve us. Um, so if you're not, if you're not ready to dig in, I please at least start to get curious about why might I,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: you know, I just to to, yeah, just to, I mean, I was taking good care of my mind as well 'cause I was meditating a lot.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Yes. You know, I was doing mindfulness and, and the thing is. You know, Freud called this, uh, shadow work. I mean, you can think of what you want, Freud, but, uh, you know, essentially what, what we need to do is, is, is purge the reservoir, let the, the water in the reservoir drain out. So the brain doesn't feel the threat [00:30:00] as much anymore.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Thanks so much. And the brain will eventually, uh, let go of the pain. And that's what I did. Um, over the course of, you know, three months to a year. I mean, I have to add to that. I mean, I did it for three, of course I continued, I still do it today.
Julie Michelson: Thank you. I was just gonna ask like, wait, are you done? No,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I'm not done.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, I don't So what, what you, I mean, and the thing is, this is where people say is. It's not hard to do, but it, it takes some dedication. And initially I, I definitely did it daily and I invested like 30 minutes. So I don't know if you want me to go into the solution,
Julie Michelson: please. I know we're almost up at time, but Exactly.
Julie Michelson: That's why . I know, I know. But I mean, I, and yeah, at least if you
Susanne Meier-Briggs: can . So, so what I learned is, like I said, I gotta drain the reservoir. So, uh, first, the first step to healing is really [00:31:00] understand, uh, how the brain creates pain and why the brain creates pain. What I do with my patients, I explore. The life events, the personality that creates stress and, and, and, you know, or trauma or whatever, and how that is related to their pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So we do like a trauma slash life event slash pain journey and we figure out, You know, how one thing led to another, even though that's not, you don't have to know what the cause for all of this is, you're going to work on everything. But what's really important is initially to read, to, to, to read a couple of books on it by Dr.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: John Sarno, and I really recommend Howard Schubiner as well. He, he wrote a book, it's called Unlearn Your Pain. And, uh, really just kind of understand the neuroscience on pain and, and why we have pain. And, um, the second part is then, I mean, this is transformed. [00:32:00] It's really, I call this transform your thinking about pain because we're trained by the Western medical, medical model that all pain is physical.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Um, and it's, you know, you have to, you have to really transform it. That's a process and you can't. Just understand this in your head. You have to understand it in every cell and in your heart, because if you truly get this, how this works, you are your own medicine. And that's why, you know, I, I call my business, Become Your Own Medicine.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Because you really, you really are. Because now, you know, I have a, Let's say a pain personality. And um, uh, there are certain personality traits that, um, a lot of us women have that are more prone to chronic pain. And if you have such a personality, which can be the, you know, the, the perfectionist, um, the unworthy, the not good enough for us, the hypervigilant, the highly sensitive to do gooders, the overprotective, the self [00:33:00] critics, the high achievers, you name it.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, And a lot of women have these, um, personality traits. And so, you know, if you have them, then it's kind of, uh, also a life sentence in a way to have chronic pain. So you have to continuously work on it. It can be, you know, but it's like, you know, you just have to accept it. And, you know, now when I have, um, pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Um, I know pain is a human condition. Sometimes, yes, I have stress and then I wake up with pain because I do somaticize pain. But then I ask myself, okay, what happened the past week? And then sometimes you don't know. There's that curiosity again. Exactly. And then you, you, sometimes you don't know because the emotional oppression is not conscious.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It's Transcribed Automatic and it's unconscious. So you, sometimes you have to dig, but then you get there. And when you get there, uh, again, you drain the emotions from the, from the reservoir. [00:34:00] And, and then it takes me maybe a couple of days and the pain is gone where previously I would have suffered for 12 weeks, three months, you know, running from specialist to specialist.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And I no longer have this because you won't. You know, I am basically my own medicine as far as chronic symptoms are concerned,
Julie Michelson: which is, and that's, I mean, that's by definition empowerment right there.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Totally.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It's incredible. It's also, you know, I want to take this maybe a step you mentioned autoimmune disease.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: You can extend this as, as you want to extend it. When we focus on chronic symptoms and chronic pain. But I mean, you know, we, I've had cases, uh, with long COVID that healed with this approach. Sure. Uh, we've seen Lyme disease, like really, you know, late stage Lyme disease cases. It's funny.
Julie Michelson: That's what's been in my mind kind of the whole time, similar to, okay, yeah, you have a, a bulging disc [00:35:00] that doesn't answer.
Julie Michelson: Why do I have pain? And, and it's, I was, I've been, it's funny that you said Lyme, cause that's what's been in my head the whole time is. You can, people dealing with chronic Lyme, it's not the Lyme, so many of us have Lyme, at least here in the US, you know, um, and it's like, well, why is it me? But why is the Lyme stuck?
Julie Michelson: What are you stuck in? Why can't, why isn't your body kicking it out? Like it should, because it is designed to heal. So it really is the same, whether, you know, you see a film, you see a blood test, you see it. You know, nobody's saying again, the thing that your experience isn't real. It's just that it doesn't.
Julie Michelson: You don't have to be stuck in whether it's the pain, the fatigue, the, so it doesn't matter to me if it's autoimmune, if it's, you know, if it's Lyme, if it's, [00:36:00] it's still we're designed to heal.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Exactly. And you said, you know, fatigue, chronic fatigue, insomnia. I had insomnia as well. I forgot to mention that.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Sometimes I forget all the symptoms. But I had insomnia for many years.
Julie Michelson: Which is good. We don't want your attention stuck on those symptoms, right? We don't want energy going
Susanne Meier-Briggs: there. But I had really horrible insomnia and tinnitus as well. And all that, all that, it's, it's just another symptom of the same disease.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: The root cause is unfortunately, well, fortunately, in your, in your nervous system, in your dysregulated nervous system. But I want to, I want to get to, so this is really the first thing, right? Understand chronic pain in the neuroscience behind it. It's, this is, I would say this is 80 percent of the solution.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: John Tarno always [00:37:00] said like 10 to 20 percent of his patients healed by reading his book. If you truly get it, you, you're, you're there. I still vouch to say that doing the work and I'll get to what the work is, Um, long term has been, has more healing effects, um, protects you better than if, if you just get it.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, I don't want to say just get it. It's like I said, the most important part, but combining this with, I call this the release step. So first you transform your thinking, second, then you, you release. So you release the suppressed emotions in, in the reservoir. This you do by, first of all, by, um, expressive writing.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Expressive writing is not journaling at all. It's really letting the crap out of you. Um, James, uh, Pennebaker in the 80s did a lot of studies with expressive writing. He wrote quite a few books on it. He did, uh, he's a lot of you know, tests in his class [00:38:00] where he separated the class into, I don't know, the meditating, the meditating group, the, the expressive writers and the journalists.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And then they followed the different groups for a year and they found out that the one group who, uh, who wrote, He had them write about the worst trauma in their lives for four consecutive days, four consecutive days for 20 minutes, right? And he, he followed all the different groups and he found out that the group that did expressive writing had 75 percent less doctor visits than the other two.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And is that,
Julie Michelson: is that your technique also? Four 20 minutes? Or how do you? No,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: it's every day. Okay, okay. Ongoing,
Julie Michelson: right? Okay. Okay. It's until,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: well, you know, nobody can tell you how long it takes to, to drain your reservoir and Right. In my case, it was Well, and
Julie Michelson: we're always getting more inputs. Right. I, I always, I used to say like, we're like onions too.
Julie Michelson: Like just it's layer by layer by layer. [00:39:00] Yeah. Um, which is not a very, you know, I, I have a, there's a, a doctor who's done the podcast a couple times who specializes in, in trauma work and, um. She, and I was like, Oh, that's so much more elegant than an onion. She uses a spiral staircase analogy, but rarely in life.
Julie Michelson: Are you done? So yeah, I like, I like the, you know, yeah. Sometimes I could see where you'll get a jump, right. From doing the work in the beginning and from understanding or from, you know, doing the expressive writing. You may notice a big shift, but we have to always continue on when we find the stuff that's working for us.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. So I always say if I go back to living how I was living 20 years ago, I would have, I'm sure, fully expressed diagnosable rheumatoid arthritis again, right? Like, I would probably
Susanne Meier-Briggs: be in a wheelchair. Right. [00:40:00] I don't know the next step for me. What would it have been? It wasn't good. It wasn't good. Really not.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Sleepless in a wheelchair.
Julie Michelson: Oh gosh. Not good at all. That's not good. That's not good. So transform your thinking and then release. Release. Release. So,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: yes, so, so expressive writing, the way I go about this is you make a list, take a piece of paper, separate it in three columns. The first column you make, you know, keywords.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: The first column is zero to 20, age zero to 20. All the, the negative experience, the trauma, like I said, little t trauma, big T trauma, um, life events that could be, you know, attachment, authenticity disorders, ACEs, adverse childhood experience. But even if whatever stuck with you and wherever, wherever you have a little bit of [00:41:00] emotion there that you feel like it's, it's, it's not.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Drained,
Julie Michelson: you,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: you, you, you make a, you, you make a list with, with keywords. And then the second column is 20, I mean, it's daily life. It's 20 till today. So you list all the divorce, all the moves, uh, financial strains, boss problems, uh, uh, stressful mother, stressful husband, whatever. And don't leave out, don't have any holy cow.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Don't be polite. Don't be polite. A lot of people, they don't put the elephant in the room on the list. It's the protected mother, the protected son or whatever. So put the elephant, it's only for you. Nobody else will, will see that. And then the third column is the personality traits that I mentioned, you know, the unworthy, they're not good enough as the hypervigilant.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Here you have to really be very honest with yourself and, and describe how your personality traits [00:42:00] causes. Uh, stress in your life. If you are, Dr. Sarno always said, the perfectionist is the number one chronic pain sufferer. Because if you're a perfectionist, it causes so much more work for you, so much more stress for you, um, and so much more resentment and frustration and anger.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And if you happen to be an introvert on top of it, all that stuff is bottled up. So, you know, so you have to be really honest with yourself, go within, make that list, put it out there. And then you have once, and that's a dynamic list, right? Oh, once you have it, then you, every day you take a topic, whatever, whatever pops up out at you, and it could be from, from any of the columns, uh, you take that and you expressive, right?
Susanne Meier-Briggs: For. Like 20 minutes and you really expressive writing is you really let the crap out of you. I feel, and [00:43:00] I am pissed and you use the profanity and whatever, right? You, you're raw, raw. You put it on paper and, uh, then you throw it away. You burn it and you do this in a room. You lock, you make sure nobody else comes in.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Nobody can see you because you're going to cry. You're going to cry. You're going to be pissed. But you're going to cry mostly. I cried more than ever before in my life in that one year when I, when I did this. And the thing is what happened, I got a completely different relationship to crying. Now I cry, I cry all the time and it's no big deal.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Before I thought if I cry, Oh my God, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. If I cry, what else is coming out? you know, what, how bad is it going to be? So now it's just, it's you, it's your emotions. It's, it's nothing threatening. It's just, and of course there's people that were sexually abused or whatever happened to them.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And [00:44:00] maybe there, it makes sense to go to a professional if you feel like it's too much.
Julie Michelson: Absolutely.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: You see somebody for help, but I think most people and most of the people, my patients I've worked with, they were, 100 percent able to do this themselves. You go little by little, right? Sure. Topic by topic.
Julie Michelson: Safely. And yeah, you know, you want to heal and you, but you want to also relearn what safety feels like, like crying. Yeah, exactly. Crying is safe. It is. It's interesting. I love that you said that because that is often the, you know, it's like, well, what do you think is going to happen if you just let go?
Julie Michelson: Right. Like we all, we always have a story, you know, before we do the work. So you gave us this beautiful process. Um, but listeners neck and there's a lot I would say, you know, read, read the books that are [00:45:00] recommended. Um, and we'll in a minute, I'll tell, we'll tell people where to find you. Um, but listeners know they're used to get, they're trained used to getting one action step.
Julie Michelson: So, and it may not be like something from the process, um, but what is one thing listeners can do today? Start doing to improve. Uh,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: well, one thing is go on Amazon and either by unlearn your pain by Dr. Howard Schupiner or, uh, healing back pain and ignore the back pain. It's all chronic pain and symptoms by Dr.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: John Sarno. That's really the first step. That's where you have to stop it. I
Julie Michelson: love it. So amazing. And for people who are listening on the go and not going to check out the show notes, where's the best place to find more about you?
Susanne Meier-Briggs: becomeyourownmedicine. co. That's, that's where to find me. And from there you can link to my Facebook support group, [00:46:00] um, and my Instagram.
Julie Michelson: Amazing. Suzanne, thank you so very much. You really, this, this episode is so jam packed with goodness. Um, I really, really appreciate your contribution to the audience.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Thank you. I really want to make a difference with chronic pain and I want to help chronic pain sufferers because it's a pandemic. This is the real pandemic, right?
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Yeah. In fact, it's costing it just to it's 50 million people in the U. S. that suffer from chronic pain. It's costing 500 billion each year in direct healthcare disability costs. It is incredible.
Julie Michelson: Well, and it's, it's costing happiness and connection and joy and so much more. I mean, the impact is so much more than financial, you know, for everyone listening, remember you can get those transcripts and show notes by visiting inspired living dot show.
Julie Michelson: I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as [00:47:00] I did. I'll see you next week.
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Susanne Meier-Briggs: So we do like a trauma slash life event slash pain journey and we figure out. You know, how one thing led to another, even though that's not, you don't have to know what the cause for all of this is, you're going to work on everything.
And, really just kind of understand the neuroscience on pain and, and why we have pain.
Julie Michelson:[00:01:00] Welcome back to the Inspired Living with Autoimmunity Podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michelson. Today, I'm joined by Suzanne Meyer Briggs. Suzanne is the founder of becomeyourownmedicine. co, and she is on a mission to liberate chronic pain sufferers so they can enjoy life fully again. Suzanne herself suffered from nagging symptoms for many years, including IBS, migraines, herniated discs, and insomnia.
Julie Michelson: Addressing mind body syndrome was the solution she had been searching for. In today's episode, we're discussing the root cause of chronic pain and chronic symptoms and how using the mind body approach may be the missing piece to your healing [00:02:00] journey.
Julie Michelson: Susanne, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to be here. Hi, Julie. I am so excited for you to share a bit of your journey with listeners. Um, I, I think your story is going to resonate with so many people because, well, I won't even say why. So tell us a little, a little bit about yourself and why I feel like you would make such a contribution to the audience.
Julie Michelson: So,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: um, yeah, I'll focus on my pain story. I've had, I think I suffered for three decades of chronic symptoms and chronic pain. And this is, you know, what we're going to delve into in this conversation. And you know, it's not that I was, you know, I was in bed for three decades, but I always had something going on.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It started actually when I was a child, uh, had growing pains. Then my teenage years, I, I started to have horrible migraines, [00:03:00] ocular migraines. And uh, then, you know, the back pain, the knee pain came in my twenties. I had neurological pains. I mean, the whole right side of my body was, was just. Just didn't, I didn't have the proper sensation.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Nobody could figure out why, uh, had gastric, gastrointestinal issues, IBS, and then, um, yeah, I mean, you know, for some of the stuff I, I found a solution, like for example, IBS. Um, would get better with psyllium husk, um, um, but then the pain just showed up in another spot and I never made the connection that all these pain, the root cause for all these pains is, is essentially the same.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So you know, as I got into my thirties, I, I was, uh, I, I, I worked for, um, international development for a while and, uh, [00:04:00] I got into a situation in, in Sri Lanka where I was involved in an act of war and I, as a result of that, I had PTSD. And so then my whole body was occupied with PTSD, with anxiety. I, I couldn't, uh, drive anymore.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, I didn't have like nightmares or anything like that or, or phobias after that. But I just couldn't, I couldn't drive anymore because the incident happened when, when we were in the car. And, um, Yeah. I mean, it was like gunfire for an hour and a half and quite, quite a few people died. Right. So after that, um, my system, as I said, was busy with processing PTSD and I, funnily, I didn't have chronic pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I was busy with that. And I did some treatment for that. I was doing somatic experiencing. I was doing EMDR, which is [00:05:00] essentially processing trauma somatically because trauma is a somatic issue, as I found out. So you literally have to filter it out of your body. You can't talk to trauma. Um, so a lot of the.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: CBT is, is, it didn't do anything for me. I'm not just speaking for myself. I, it's a, it's really a somatic, it's an energy that gets trapped into your system that you essentially have to get rid of. And that's what, for me, somatic experiencing in EMDR was quite successful, but, uh, I still had some remnants of that, um, you know, for, for years to come.
Julie Michelson: Sure.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: But, but then, um, You know, couple years after that, the chronic pain came back, you know, I, I started to have, you know, as I had this kind of under control, um, I started to have back pain. I mean, horrible back pain. I had, uh, I went through [00:06:00] phases where I could hardly walk. Um, and then, um, also the migraines kick back in.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And then, um, before COVID, um, it was the year before COVID I had herniated disc number one. And I I'm fit. I mean, I do, I do yoga, I horseback ride. I, I, um, You know, I, I go hiking, I have an active lifestyle. So I was like, why, why do I have a herniated disc? I didn't make any sense to me, but it wasn't all too bad.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It was like, uh, L4, L5. So I was doing physical therapy and, uh, uh, osteopathy, I think I've done so many treatments to try to keep track of it. Just to add, like, you know, all those years, I probably tried. Every supplement on the planet, I tried the homeopath, I [00:07:00] tried, you know, the orthomolecular medicine, I actually did lots of educations, you know, in, in, in those fields as well.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I've tried pretty much everything and, you know, some stuff worked, but most, most just temporarily. Sure. And herniated disc, um, you know, eventually got better and I was in physiotherapy for quite some time and then, you know, Before COVID, um, I was still in physical therapy. I got herniated disc number two.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So within a year, the second one, and this one was so bad. It was L1, L2. It was, um, further up
Julie Michelson: and it
Susanne Meier-Briggs: was so painful. Uh, I had. I mean, the ambulance had to, had to come, I couldn't move anymore. And, uh, I, uh, you know, the, it was, I had sciatica, you know, and, and big doctor gave me a [00:08:00] shot. None of it worked. Um, I continued physical therapy and then I was really asking myself, I had physical therapy all the way up to the second time I needed this.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: What is this all doing? What is going on? Yeah. And so then it like. It started, something started to dawn on me. I started to have an intuition that the root cause for all of this stuff is, is really somewhere else. And then in one of these desperate doom scrolls on Google, I think I, I think I Googled other causes or other reasons for chronic pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So then I found Dr. John Sarno and uh, He wrote a book, Healing Back Pain, I think it was in the 70s and he had 5, 000 reviews, positive reviews on, on Amazon. And I was like, how, I never found this before. I mean, how can this be? So of course I ordered the book and I read it and I, I knew this was my solution.
Susanne Meier-Briggs:[00:09:00] I, I found myself on every page. And, um, The root cause for all of this is, is not physical, and in fact the root cause for a lot of chronic pain and symptoms is not physical, but is emotional, namely, um, emotional suppression due to stress, trauma, and it doesn't have to be a trauma like I have. It can be a little e trauma added up, and just basically life, um, stress from a lot of life events.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And the thing is we, we just bottle the stuff up. Yes. And so then, then I, I read, I, I started to devour all the podcasts I could found on the, I can find on the topic. I, I read all the books. I'm kind of extreme, like when I, when I find something, you go in, go hard. Yeah, I go hard. , I go to the core and, uh. So yeah, I, I found out what, [00:10:00] what I have to do and, uh, there's, you know, a couple different opinions, but, um, you find out what you have to do.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And I, I did it without, you know, consulting a therapist, but, um, and, uh, within three months. I, I mean, it took three months and after three months, I, I woke up one morning and I mean, it really took me 10 minutes in the morning to be able to get out of bed until the blood started flowing in my spine. It was so painful.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, crawling out of bed was the worst. And so like, this was really the situation for, for three months. And after three months. One day, from one day to the next, I woke up one morning and I literally had 80 percent less pain. I still, you know, felt the muscles because I was walking like a croissant for like three months.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And, uh, So, but yeah, the pain was [00:11:00] literally 80 percent gone. And I was like, okay, fine, yeah, it's probably going to come back. So it took me about three weeks to believe it, but it never came back. Which is amazing. It's really, it was, to me, it was a miracle. I didn't believe it, but I, I deep down, I felt that this approach is, you know, it's is right for me and maybe for many other people as well.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And what I, what I did in those three months is really empty my reservoir of, uh, suppressed emotions. And, uh, you know, Unfortunately, we're not taught any of that, you know, physical pain is always treated. If you go to a Western medical practitioner, it's always a physical problem. Sure. And, and unfortunately, psychology and, you know, physiology is, is largely separated in our system.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: We're here.
Julie Michelson: We're integrated [00:12:00] humans. What? Yes. We don't have like separate boxes.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So we really, we really are the mind body. We are. And you can see this in everyday life. I mean, if you are afraid to have a presentation, you know, you instantly have a physical reaction. Sure. You know, you might get an upset stomach or you might blush if you're embarrassed.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Those are physical reactions to an emotional problem. And chronic pain or chronic symptoms is just a level up. A lot more, uh, suppressed emotions, a lot more, you know, stuff in the reservoir, um, Yes. Um, from life events, from personalities that, that cause, uh, stress. And then when that reservoir is full and overflowing, and mine probably was already in my childhood, then the brain decides to inflict pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And it's always the brain who decides, the brain decides to do the best for you. [00:13:00] And you might agree or disagree with it, but it's trying to protect you. And if the brain feels threatened by an emotional turmoil, by emotional overload, it will turn on the danger signal. There isn't really a pain signal.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: There is a danger signal. And interestingly, according to neuroscience, an emotional injury, which is the stuff in the reservoir, an emotional injury can, uh, triggers the same brain part as a physical injury and can create a dangerous signal. And what the brain then does, it, it, it decides, okay, I will give you physical pain because it's easier for you to deal with physical pain than what's in this reservoir.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It sounds, it sounds strange, but that's how the brain works. So the brain decides the reservoir is a bigger [00:14:00] threat than, than physical pain. So then you get pain in a, in a week. Body part, like for my, for me, you know, my, my back is probably one of the weakest body parts. And I can kind of explain that too.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Strangely, it selects an area that you can easily explain.
Julie Michelson: Sure. And so then I want to highlight a couple of things for listeners. Um, because there there's, I'm sure so much of your story resonates in one way or another with people, but I want, there's a few things that I hear all the time. Um, That you through frustration, curiosity, endurance, whatever, you know, got to this point where you were like, why?
Julie Michelson: Because often, you know, when you, you, I, I, especially with back pain, you hear this a lot. Um, oh, well, you know, they did an MRI and I have this, that, and this, so no wonder I'm in so much [00:15:00] pain. And it's like, well, but there, so one of the really important things to understand is. If you take, you know, if you study and they have done studies, you know, where they'll scan a hundred people, some with back pain, some without, and some of the people that are pain free have the most concerning looking studies ever.
Julie Michelson: And so, because we've been taught, right? Like here's your symptom. Let's find it. There it is. Oh, herniated disc. No wonder you're in pain. Like that, right? Isn't that what they probably told you at first? Um, and, and so not every, but a lot of people have herniated discs, don't even know it and don't have back pain.
Julie Michelson: And so that's what we're digging into here. And the other thing I want to highlight too, because if misunderstood, um, nobody's saying it's in your head in the sense of that your symptom, what you're experiencing, isn't real. [00:16:00] Right. You're not saying when we say, you know, it's caused by the brain. You're not saying like, Oh, you know, think yourself pain free.
Julie Michelson: You're saying, Hey, you got stuff you got to deal with. I like your analogy of the reservoir. We all have one. Um, and This really applies to things like fibromyalgia. I mean, all kinds of chronic pain and directly to autoimmunity in general. One of the really big across the board correlations with people with various kinds of autoimmune conditions is stuffing feelings.
Julie Michelson: And trauma, unresolved trauma. So just in case anybody's listening and this is the first time they've heard a conversation like this, nobody's saying anything's your fault. And I don't care what the films show. I will say, um, I was kind of cringing when you said, when you talked about the second herdiated disc, cause I [00:17:00] fractured L1, I'm a fellow equestrian.
Julie Michelson: Um, and fractured L1 about seven years ago. It's painful, but you know what? That was at the height. No, maybe it was longer. Wow. Okay. Time's flying. It was probably 10, 12 years ago. Um, at the kind of height of my autoimmune journey where I was on, you know, they were trying to give me pain pills. I'm like, I have them.
Julie Michelson: I was on every medication you could think of already. And I healed faster than anybody thought was possible for a woman in her forties who had rheumatoid arthritis. Because I didn't get, I didn't listen to them about that. Um, so I just wanted to like really highlight nobody saying your pain's not real.
Julie Michelson: Just because it, the brain was involved in creating it doesn't mean it's, you know, imaginary. It's real. Um, but also doesn't mean you have to carry it with you forever. That's the whole point of the [00:18:00] conversation.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: There's a lot, there's a lot there what you just said. It's a rich, it's a really rich topic and what you were describing about yourself.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Yes, you had an injury. Yes. Hello fellow equestrian. Yeah. Yes, lots of injuries there too from horseback riding. But. That's an injury, right? And, uh, tissue damage heals between 8 to 12 weeks. Yeah. The problem is, um, a lot of people don't heal because you put a lot of fear into it, you put frustration into it, you put resentment into your pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And what happens then is your pain highway, your neurocircuits in your brain, the pain neurocircuits is getting bigger and bigger. Yes. Yeah. You, wherever you're, wherever you're focusing on, the tension goes where energy flows, where tension goes, right? Energy flows where tension
Julie Michelson: goes. Yes, ma'am.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So if you focus on that and preoccupy with your pain, it's going to get [00:19:00] worse.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And that's why a lot of people after an injury, um, get into the chronic pain spiral. And then. Okay. You have, you know, the fear creates more pain and more pain creates more fear. So you have that fear loop that you, that you need to get out of. Another thing that you mentioned is, yes, you often, I mean, I had an MRI and my, my MRI explained, yes, I had, you could see the disc pressing on the nerve, but did it really explain the entire pain I had?
Susanne Meier-Briggs: No, it didn't. Because if it was, It should have been, um, the sciatica should have been in the back of my leg and not in the front of my leg. So, um, so there's a lot of stuff that you cannot explain. And as you said, they have done studies, the Japanese have done studies in the U. S. There's been quite a few studies, you know, taking MRIs of people without, uh, pain and people with pain, and they found, you know, basically every over 50 year old or over 40 year old, I think it was [00:20:00] 60 percent over 50 year olds have bulging discs.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Sure. And I think it was 40 percent over 40 year olds. And that doesn't explain pain. Right. What explains If you don't have a, a dysregulated nervous system, which is the reservoir, the full reservoir is really a dysregulated nervous system, then you don't have pain because otherwise every, you know, 80 year old would scream in pain all day long because they all have bulging discs and desiccated discs, but they're not, uh, and, and this is the thing.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Uh, no, this pain is not psychosomatic, right? Psychosomatic is kind of a stigma to it. We try not to use that word anymore. Exactly. Even though the word explains exactly what this pain is, but we can't use it. We've attached
Julie Michelson: this, you know, kind of made up connotation, which isn't really what the word means.
Julie Michelson: Exactly. So we call
Susanne Meier-Briggs: it psychosomatic. Psychophysiological pain, we call it, um, the mind body [00:21:00] syndrome, um, tension myoneural syndrome. Dr. Sarno called it the tension myoneural syndrome
Julie Michelson: or TMS, yep,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: TMS, exactly. And uh, You know, he, back in the seventies, explained what happens physiologically. The brain, the nervous system, um, the dysregulated nervous system causes nerve fibers to get deranged.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And locally, he could see, uh, a deprivation of oxygen, which, which can cause some of the worst pains you can have. And often with TMS, you, you don't have a diagnostic, uh, an MRI that can prove it. Often it is like that, but, but in my case, and in a lot of people's cases, you do have a diagnosis and you have, uh, an MRI or an x ray to explain it.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And then [00:22:00] it's harder to believe that. The pain is essentially caused by emotions and not physical. I struggled with this for for weeks or months.
Julie Michelson: Sure. And I'm sure there are a good amount of listeners right now going, wait, what? Not me, not me. But, but that's, this is literally why. We're here having the conversation, right?
Julie Michelson: I was told when I was diagnosed with my first auto immune diagnosis, you know, can't heal. You're going to have this for the rest of your life. You're going to decline period. Like you will decline. And so it's the same thing. And that's, that is why I wanted to highlight that even if you have something that MRI or any kind of study, even if you have, you know, uh, for sure autoimmune diagnosis, No, it's you're not stuck.
Julie Michelson: Even if there's an explanation. It doesn't mean that's the [00:23:00] end of the story. Absolutely. That's why I wanted you to come talk to us today.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: The thing is, you know, People always think, I'm the exception, my pain is physical. It cannot be that this is emotional. And the thing is, the way our system underestimates the power of emotion is appalling, but we are not thinking beings that feel every once in a while, we're feeling beings who think every once in a while.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: You will never forget how somebody made you feel. Right.
Julie Michelson: And you can't hear like the feeling is where you need to be for healing. Like you, you can't heal from your head. I don't care what you're trying to heal from. You can't intellectualize yourself out of something chronic into wellness and every auto immune healing journey I have witnessed and been a part of, [00:24:00] which is, I feel so blessed.
Julie Michelson: That's the first and most essential step is reconnecting with those emotions because I know, and I just want to say, like you mentioned earlier about the protective mechanism. Like this is all your body's not doing anything to you. Your brain's not doing something to you. It's doing, trying to do something for you that might've served you in a moment.
Julie Michelson: And like you said, then you get stuck in the loop. Um, pain is protective. Think of not chronic pain. Right. There's a reason if you put your hand on a hot stove, it hurts. It's protective. So you take your hand off the darn stove. Right. So I think if we can reframe that as a step one for people that are like still, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, wait a minute, Suzanne,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: you
Julie Michelson: should be a mind
Susanne Meier-Briggs: body practitioner.
Julie Michelson: You can't help people heal if you're not. you know, we're not, I am in the functional medicine world. We're not [00:25:00] compartmentalized, you know, you can't just focus on a body system. Um, and so I just wanted to kind of reiterate, cause you said so much. That's so important. Yeah. And I just want to make sure, you know, especially for the listeners that are leaning back instead of leaning in, because they may not be ready.
Julie Michelson: To really digest what you're saying, take a little, whatever that little piece is, um, to explore the possibilities. And honestly, if you're listening to this podcast somewhere inside you, you already know you can heal. That's why you're here. So Suzanne has. It's amazing insight into this journey. It doesn't really matter what the pain is.
Julie Michelson: I think, and it doesn't even have to be pain. Most chronic conditions come with some kind of pain anyway. And, and that psycho emotional part is, is not [00:26:00] downstream. It was under there to begin with for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Yeah. And, you know, I vouch to say, you know, even if, and. 80, well, let's say 80 percent of chronic pain and symptoms is the mind body syndrome.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It is proven. There have been studies and 90 percent of doctor visits are because of stress and trauma and whatever. Right. So that's a fact. And as you said, pain is a message phone. from your body. Actually, we say body is a representation of your unconscious, and pain is the messenger. And so actually, you know, instead of, uh, being frustrated or being angry or, uh, fearful about the pain, accept the pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I know this sounds really hard, but The pain [00:27:00] is essentially your best friend. It's just going, hello, you know, listen to me. There's something going on.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. And if you ignore it, it'll get louder. Or like you, that's what, one of the things I loved so much about reading your journey is, you know, you can do the thing and fix the part.
Julie Michelson: Right. But then pain would show back up in another way. And so either if it's, you know, something chronic, it just gets worse, worse, worse if we ignore. And the message is, you know, until your body is screaming or like, like in your journey, it'll just keep reappearing. It'll go away for a little bit and pop up somewhere else until you really, and I, just to be clear, I'm not saying when I fractured my back, it didn't hurt.
Julie Michelson: It hurt. But it also healed really quickly. So I'm not, you know, it's not that we, again, we should feel some pain, you know,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: eight to 12 weeks,
Julie Michelson: right? Yeah. I don't even actually, I think it was even faster than that. [00:28:00] Um, I don't, you know, it's funny. I don't recall. I don't, it wasn't, I was blessed. I do the part of the vertebrae I fractured was the most painful, but also the easiest to heal.
Julie Michelson: So I was really blessed in that sense. So I got my lesson. I want to back up though, because I believe that the change in your journey. So it may be, if somebody is not ready to really lean in, um, notice how Suzanne got curious, I think curiosity, you know, it comes even before buy in right. So. Why? I love, you know, I, my kids are all adults now, but when they were little, I remember, you know, the why that was the, the question all the time, but why, but why, but why?
Julie Michelson: And, and I tried my hardest not to shush that out of them. [00:29:00] Um, but you hit a point where you got curious, right? You were like, Hey, wait a minute. I'm active. I'm fit. I do yoga. I, you know, I take good care of my body. Why? It is a really good question that can serve us. Um, so if you're not, if you're not ready to dig in, I please at least start to get curious about why might I,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: you know, I just to to, yeah, just to, I mean, I was taking good care of my mind as well 'cause I was meditating a lot.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Yes. You know, I was doing mindfulness and, and the thing is. You know, Freud called this, uh, shadow work. I mean, you can think of what you want, Freud, but, uh, you know, essentially what, what we need to do is, is, is purge the reservoir, let the, the water in the reservoir drain out. So the brain doesn't feel the threat [00:30:00] as much anymore.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Thanks so much. And the brain will eventually, uh, let go of the pain. And that's what I did. Um, over the course of, you know, three months to a year. I mean, I have to add to that. I mean, I did it for three, of course I continued, I still do it today.
Julie Michelson: Thank you. I was just gonna ask like, wait, are you done? No,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I'm not done.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, I don't So what, what you, I mean, and the thing is, this is where people say is. It's not hard to do, but it, it takes some dedication. And initially I, I definitely did it daily and I invested like 30 minutes. So I don't know if you want me to go into the solution,
Julie Michelson: please. I know we're almost up at time, but Exactly.
Julie Michelson: That's why . I know, I know. But I mean, I, and yeah, at least if you
Susanne Meier-Briggs: can . So, so what I learned is, like I said, I gotta drain the reservoir. So, uh, first, the first step to healing is really [00:31:00] understand, uh, how the brain creates pain and why the brain creates pain. What I do with my patients, I explore. The life events, the personality that creates stress and, and, and, you know, or trauma or whatever, and how that is related to their pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: So we do like a trauma slash life event slash pain journey and we figure out, You know, how one thing led to another, even though that's not, you don't have to know what the cause for all of this is, you're going to work on everything. But what's really important is initially to read, to, to, to read a couple of books on it by Dr.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: John Sarno, and I really recommend Howard Schubiner as well. He, he wrote a book, it's called Unlearn Your Pain. And, uh, really just kind of understand the neuroscience on pain and, and why we have pain. And, um, the second part is then, I mean, this is transformed. [00:32:00] It's really, I call this transform your thinking about pain because we're trained by the Western medical, medical model that all pain is physical.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Um, and it's, you know, you have to, you have to really transform it. That's a process and you can't. Just understand this in your head. You have to understand it in every cell and in your heart, because if you truly get this, how this works, you are your own medicine. And that's why, you know, I, I call my business, Become Your Own Medicine.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Because you really, you really are. Because now, you know, I have a, Let's say a pain personality. And um, uh, there are certain personality traits that, um, a lot of us women have that are more prone to chronic pain. And if you have such a personality, which can be the, you know, the, the perfectionist, um, the unworthy, the not good enough for us, the hypervigilant, the highly sensitive to do gooders, the overprotective, the self [00:33:00] critics, the high achievers, you name it.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, And a lot of women have these, um, personality traits. And so, you know, if you have them, then it's kind of, uh, also a life sentence in a way to have chronic pain. So you have to continuously work on it. It can be, you know, but it's like, you know, you just have to accept it. And, you know, now when I have, um, pain.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Um, I know pain is a human condition. Sometimes, yes, I have stress and then I wake up with pain because I do somaticize pain. But then I ask myself, okay, what happened the past week? And then sometimes you don't know. There's that curiosity again. Exactly. And then you, you, sometimes you don't know because the emotional oppression is not conscious.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It's Transcribed Automatic and it's unconscious. So you, sometimes you have to dig, but then you get there. And when you get there, uh, again, you drain the emotions from the, from the reservoir. [00:34:00] And, and then it takes me maybe a couple of days and the pain is gone where previously I would have suffered for 12 weeks, three months, you know, running from specialist to specialist.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And I no longer have this because you won't. You know, I am basically my own medicine as far as chronic symptoms are concerned,
Julie Michelson: which is, and that's, I mean, that's by definition empowerment right there.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Totally.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: It's incredible. It's also, you know, I want to take this maybe a step you mentioned autoimmune disease.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: You can extend this as, as you want to extend it. When we focus on chronic symptoms and chronic pain. But I mean, you know, we, I've had cases, uh, with long COVID that healed with this approach. Sure. Uh, we've seen Lyme disease, like really, you know, late stage Lyme disease cases. It's funny.
Julie Michelson: That's what's been in my mind kind of the whole time, similar to, okay, yeah, you have a, a bulging disc [00:35:00] that doesn't answer.
Julie Michelson: Why do I have pain? And, and it's, I was, I've been, it's funny that you said Lyme, cause that's what's been in my head the whole time is. You can, people dealing with chronic Lyme, it's not the Lyme, so many of us have Lyme, at least here in the US, you know, um, and it's like, well, why is it me? But why is the Lyme stuck?
Julie Michelson: What are you stuck in? Why can't, why isn't your body kicking it out? Like it should, because it is designed to heal. So it really is the same, whether, you know, you see a film, you see a blood test, you see it. You know, nobody's saying again, the thing that your experience isn't real. It's just that it doesn't.
Julie Michelson: You don't have to be stuck in whether it's the pain, the fatigue, the, so it doesn't matter to me if it's autoimmune, if it's, you know, if it's Lyme, if it's, [00:36:00] it's still we're designed to heal.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Exactly. And you said, you know, fatigue, chronic fatigue, insomnia. I had insomnia as well. I forgot to mention that.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Sometimes I forget all the symptoms. But I had insomnia for many years.
Julie Michelson: Which is good. We don't want your attention stuck on those symptoms, right? We don't want energy going
Susanne Meier-Briggs: there. But I had really horrible insomnia and tinnitus as well. And all that, all that, it's, it's just another symptom of the same disease.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: The root cause is unfortunately, well, fortunately, in your, in your nervous system, in your dysregulated nervous system. But I want to, I want to get to, so this is really the first thing, right? Understand chronic pain in the neuroscience behind it. It's, this is, I would say this is 80 percent of the solution.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: John Tarno always [00:37:00] said like 10 to 20 percent of his patients healed by reading his book. If you truly get it, you, you're, you're there. I still vouch to say that doing the work and I'll get to what the work is, Um, long term has been, has more healing effects, um, protects you better than if, if you just get it.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: I mean, I don't want to say just get it. It's like I said, the most important part, but combining this with, I call this the release step. So first you transform your thinking, second, then you, you release. So you release the suppressed emotions in, in the reservoir. This you do by, first of all, by, um, expressive writing.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Expressive writing is not journaling at all. It's really letting the crap out of you. Um, James, uh, Pennebaker in the 80s did a lot of studies with expressive writing. He wrote quite a few books on it. He did, uh, he's a lot of you know, tests in his class [00:38:00] where he separated the class into, I don't know, the meditating, the meditating group, the, the expressive writers and the journalists.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And then they followed the different groups for a year and they found out that the one group who, uh, who wrote, He had them write about the worst trauma in their lives for four consecutive days, four consecutive days for 20 minutes, right? And he, he followed all the different groups and he found out that the group that did expressive writing had 75 percent less doctor visits than the other two.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And is that,
Julie Michelson: is that your technique also? Four 20 minutes? Or how do you? No,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: it's every day. Okay, okay. Ongoing,
Julie Michelson: right? Okay. Okay. It's until,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: well, you know, nobody can tell you how long it takes to, to drain your reservoir and Right. In my case, it was Well, and
Julie Michelson: we're always getting more inputs. Right. I, I always, I used to say like, we're like onions too.
Julie Michelson: Like just it's layer by layer by layer. [00:39:00] Yeah. Um, which is not a very, you know, I, I have a, there's a, a doctor who's done the podcast a couple times who specializes in, in trauma work and, um. She, and I was like, Oh, that's so much more elegant than an onion. She uses a spiral staircase analogy, but rarely in life.
Julie Michelson: Are you done? So yeah, I like, I like the, you know, yeah. Sometimes I could see where you'll get a jump, right. From doing the work in the beginning and from understanding or from, you know, doing the expressive writing. You may notice a big shift, but we have to always continue on when we find the stuff that's working for us.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. So I always say if I go back to living how I was living 20 years ago, I would have, I'm sure, fully expressed diagnosable rheumatoid arthritis again, right? Like, I would probably
Susanne Meier-Briggs: be in a wheelchair. Right. [00:40:00] I don't know the next step for me. What would it have been? It wasn't good. It wasn't good. Really not.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Sleepless in a wheelchair.
Julie Michelson: Oh gosh. Not good at all. That's not good. That's not good. So transform your thinking and then release. Release. Release. So,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: yes, so, so expressive writing, the way I go about this is you make a list, take a piece of paper, separate it in three columns. The first column you make, you know, keywords.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: The first column is zero to 20, age zero to 20. All the, the negative experience, the trauma, like I said, little t trauma, big T trauma, um, life events that could be, you know, attachment, authenticity disorders, ACEs, adverse childhood experience. But even if whatever stuck with you and wherever, wherever you have a little bit of [00:41:00] emotion there that you feel like it's, it's, it's not.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Drained,
Julie Michelson: you,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: you, you, you make a, you, you make a list with, with keywords. And then the second column is 20, I mean, it's daily life. It's 20 till today. So you list all the divorce, all the moves, uh, financial strains, boss problems, uh, uh, stressful mother, stressful husband, whatever. And don't leave out, don't have any holy cow.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Don't be polite. Don't be polite. A lot of people, they don't put the elephant in the room on the list. It's the protected mother, the protected son or whatever. So put the elephant, it's only for you. Nobody else will, will see that. And then the third column is the personality traits that I mentioned, you know, the unworthy, they're not good enough as the hypervigilant.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Here you have to really be very honest with yourself and, and describe how your personality traits [00:42:00] causes. Uh, stress in your life. If you are, Dr. Sarno always said, the perfectionist is the number one chronic pain sufferer. Because if you're a perfectionist, it causes so much more work for you, so much more stress for you, um, and so much more resentment and frustration and anger.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And if you happen to be an introvert on top of it, all that stuff is bottled up. So, you know, so you have to be really honest with yourself, go within, make that list, put it out there. And then you have once, and that's a dynamic list, right? Oh, once you have it, then you, every day you take a topic, whatever, whatever pops up out at you, and it could be from, from any of the columns, uh, you take that and you expressive, right?
Susanne Meier-Briggs: For. Like 20 minutes and you really expressive writing is you really let the crap out of you. I feel, and [00:43:00] I am pissed and you use the profanity and whatever, right? You, you're raw, raw. You put it on paper and, uh, then you throw it away. You burn it and you do this in a room. You lock, you make sure nobody else comes in.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Nobody can see you because you're going to cry. You're going to cry. You're going to be pissed. But you're going to cry mostly. I cried more than ever before in my life in that one year when I, when I did this. And the thing is what happened, I got a completely different relationship to crying. Now I cry, I cry all the time and it's no big deal.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Before I thought if I cry, Oh my God, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. If I cry, what else is coming out? you know, what, how bad is it going to be? So now it's just, it's you, it's your emotions. It's, it's nothing threatening. It's just, and of course there's people that were sexually abused or whatever happened to them.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: And [00:44:00] maybe there, it makes sense to go to a professional if you feel like it's too much.
Julie Michelson: Absolutely.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: You see somebody for help, but I think most people and most of the people, my patients I've worked with, they were, 100 percent able to do this themselves. You go little by little, right? Sure. Topic by topic.
Julie Michelson: Safely. And yeah, you know, you want to heal and you, but you want to also relearn what safety feels like, like crying. Yeah, exactly. Crying is safe. It is. It's interesting. I love that you said that because that is often the, you know, it's like, well, what do you think is going to happen if you just let go?
Julie Michelson: Right. Like we all, we always have a story, you know, before we do the work. So you gave us this beautiful process. Um, but listeners neck and there's a lot I would say, you know, read, read the books that are [00:45:00] recommended. Um, and we'll in a minute, I'll tell, we'll tell people where to find you. Um, but listeners know they're used to get, they're trained used to getting one action step.
Julie Michelson: So, and it may not be like something from the process, um, but what is one thing listeners can do today? Start doing to improve. Uh,
Susanne Meier-Briggs: well, one thing is go on Amazon and either by unlearn your pain by Dr. Howard Schupiner or, uh, healing back pain and ignore the back pain. It's all chronic pain and symptoms by Dr.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: John Sarno. That's really the first step. That's where you have to stop it. I
Julie Michelson: love it. So amazing. And for people who are listening on the go and not going to check out the show notes, where's the best place to find more about you?
Susanne Meier-Briggs: becomeyourownmedicine. co. That's, that's where to find me. And from there you can link to my Facebook support group, [00:46:00] um, and my Instagram.
Julie Michelson: Amazing. Suzanne, thank you so very much. You really, this, this episode is so jam packed with goodness. Um, I really, really appreciate your contribution to the audience.
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Thank you. I really want to make a difference with chronic pain and I want to help chronic pain sufferers because it's a pandemic. This is the real pandemic, right?
Susanne Meier-Briggs: Yeah. In fact, it's costing it just to it's 50 million people in the U. S. that suffer from chronic pain. It's costing 500 billion each year in direct healthcare disability costs. It is incredible.
Julie Michelson: Well, and it's, it's costing happiness and connection and joy and so much more. I mean, the impact is so much more than financial, you know, for everyone listening, remember you can get those transcripts and show notes by visiting inspired living dot show.
Julie Michelson: I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as [00:47:00] I did. I'll see you next week.
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My Guest For This Episode
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Connect with susanne meier briggs
susanne meier briggs
Susanne is the founder of becomeyourownmedicine.co - it is her mission to liberate chronic pain sufferers, so they can enjoy life fully again. Susanne herself suffered from nagging symptoms for many years (IBS, migraines, herniated disks, insomnia etc.). It was her 2nd herniated disk within a year when she knew in her gut that the root cause for all this pain must be elsewhere. A desperate google search revealed Dr. John Sarno and the MindBody Syndrome. She knew this was the truth. Within three months, her disk pain and sciatica, almost as if by magic, disappeared overnight. She kept practicing the mindbody approach and relieved herself of migraines, insomnia, IBS. Susanne, originally had studied business, is a yoga teacher, clinical nutritionist, coach, ayurveda practitioner, then became a Stress Illness Recovery Practitioner (SIRPA UKI), to share the power of the mindbody approach with chronic pain sufferers. Susanne is a passionate western rider, yogi, meditator and traveller.
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