The Chronic Illness Therapist Podcast Episodes
A place where people with chronic illnesses can come to feel heard, seen, and safe while listening to mental health therapists and other medical professionals talk about the realities of treating complex medical conditions.
Your Pain Is FaceTiming, It Wants To Tell You Something
I recently had an amazing conversation with Dr. Kelly Clark, a physical therapist who owns Patient PT in Bloomington, Indiana, and I want to share something that came up that I think will change how you think about your pain.
We're constantly hearing in the pain science world that chronic pain is a "false alarm" or that our nervous systems are "overreacting." Kelly and I both have some strong feelings about this messaging, and here's why: your pain is not a false alarm. It's valuable data. We just have to learn how to understand that data.
When Past Injuries Cause Current Problems w/ Rick Olderman
Picture this: A man breaks his ankle at 20. Gets it fixed, moves on with life. No pain. Thirty years later, he's dealing with chronic back pain, sciatica, and now a hamstring tear. Three separate problems, right?
Not likely.
This was one of the patient stories that physical therapist Rick Olderman shared in our interview on The Chronic Illness Therapists Podcast, and it perfectly illustrates why we've been thinking about chronic pain all wrong. That ankle injury from decades ago just might have been the first domino in a chain reaction that led to every single one of his current pain issues.
This isn't some mystical mind-body woo. This is biomechanics. This is systems thinking. And it might just change how you understand your own pain.