In this episode Nyle and I talk about his pain recovery journey from Burning Mouth Syndrome. We talk about evidence that pain is correlated with marginalization and how we can apply mindbody work for our body sense of wellness especially for times like these. He shares his work with transgender + queer clients and his expansion to pain recovery and leads me through an activity. Nyle Biondi, MS LMFT, is a therapist and coach, specializing in mind-body healing for chronic pain and trauma. With a deep commitment to the trans and queer communities, he helps clients break free from the physical and emotional toll of oppression, stress, and past wounds. His work integrates neuroplasticity, attachment healing, and nervous system regulation to support lasting transformation. Through therapy, workshops, and educational resources, he empowers people to reconnect with their bodies, reclaim their worth, and heal from chronic conditions at the root level. Attached to the notes is also my friend Adrian's resistance poetry which is a wonderful example of self expression and self connection inspired by this political moment. Links are found in the episode notes.
In this episode Nyle and I talk about his pain recovery journey from Burning Mouth Syndrome. We talk about evidence that pain is correlated with marginalization and how we can apply mindbody work for our body sense of wellness especially for times like these. He shares his work with transgender + queer clients and his expansion to pain recovery and leads me through an activity.
Nyle Biondi, MS LMFT, is a therapist and coach, specializing in mind-body healing for chronic pain and trauma. With a deep commitment to the trans and queer communities, he helps clients break free from the physical and emotional toll of oppression, stress, and past wounds. His work integrates neuroplasticity, attachment healing, and nervous system regulation to support lasting transformation. Through therapy, workshops, and educational resources, he empowers people to reconnect with their bodies, reclaim their worth, and heal from chronic conditions at the root level.
https://www.instagram.com/healingwithinpsych
https://www.healingwithinpsychotherapy.com/
https://www.healingwithinpsychotherapy.com/blog
https://healyourchronicpain.thinkific.com/products/live_events/live-event-pain-free-pathway
https://www.healingwithinpsychotherapy.com/blog/reclaiming-your-worth-through-meditation
the meditation we discussed in the episode
Attached to the notes is also my friend Adrian's resistance poetry which is a wonderful example of self expression and self connection inspired by this political moment.
https://powerlesstoturnthetrees.substack.com/p/trans-people-were-made-to-fight-fascism
[00:00:00] Welcome to the curiosity cure podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker, hypnotist trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder fat human on planet earth here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame free curiosity so you can feel more better Transcribed more of the time in the body you have today and build the rich, full life that you want to live.
[00:00:39] A quick disclaimer, this podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can complement your healthcare journey, but always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:55] Deb: Hello, my feelers and healers. Welcome to the Curiosity Cure podcast. I am Deb, your host, and I am super excited to be here with Nyle Biondi, who is going to tell you all about who he is and how he helps people. And then we're going to jump right into a conversation about chronic pain and recovery. So tell my audience who you are and how you help people.
[00:01:21] Nyle: Yeah, I'm Nyle Biondi. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist. I've been a therapist for about 18 years. And I also act as a coach, helping people to heal from chronic pain.
[00:01:32] Originally, as a therapist, I was not focused on chronic pain because I didn't know that it was something that we as therapists could help heal. I started out working primarily with trans and queer youth and young adults. And then, it was in 2019, as a result of my own chronic pain, that I actually, I first found Nicole Sachs' podcast, The Cure for Chronic Pain.
[00:01:53] And started doing journal speak as she You know, prescribes it and got a lot of results. And so then I just took a deep dive into studying these things and went and got trained in pain reprocessing therapy, and have shifted my focus to helping people to heal from chronic pain and conditions. So that's the, the real short version.
[00:02:13] Deb: I came through this through my own healing experience and I had been working as a massage therapist and you know, that's all about helping people with pain. And I was like, wait, what? The nervous system has something to do with this pain? And my pain was coming from the fact that I was being too obsessive about alignment and biomechanics.
[00:02:35] And that fed into my perfectionism and like trying to find my antidote to weight stigma. And I had a very crazy, overnight reduction in chronic pain, even though I was 50 years old and, you know, I didn't drastically lose weight overnight, but my pain changed and my life changed in that moment.
[00:02:59] Nyle: It's incredible how much your life really changes. It's not just the pain.
[00:03:02] Deb: It's like your whole perspective on what it is to have a body changes.
[00:03:09] Nyle: Yeah.
[00:03:10] Deb: So can I ask you a few questions about your personal experience? So you had pain and then in 2019, like how long did you have chronic pain? Can you tell me a little bit about it?
[00:03:23] Nyle: Um, I don't know how long I'd had pain because I fit into the stoic variety of people who just really repressed everything. I, I almost feel embarrassed at this point at, like, how unaware of my own emotional state I was as a therapist for so long, because I was someone who was, like, very together, you know, like, I seemed very laid back.
[00:03:47] I was, like, you know, willing to go with the flow, but I later realized that's just because I was too afraid to express an opinion, not really because I was that laid back. Um, but anyway, in terms of my pain, When I was a baby, I was diagnosed with something called geographic tongue, which is basically just supposed to mean you have spots on your tongue and they don't really know why.
[00:04:06] And they do think there's a stress correlation. The spots show up more during times of stress, but it typically doesn't cause pain for people. Somewhere along the line, it did start to cause pain for me. And honestly, I don't know when, and I don't know for how long I was having daily pain. What I do know is that I moved to Colorado in August of 2015.
[00:04:30] And that's when I started tracking, you know, it was like a week in and I was like, okay, we've been here a week and I haven't had a day without pain. And then it was like two months, three months, six months, a year, two years. And it was at the two year point that I finally was like, maybe I should mention this to a doctor cause I just was like, this is just some weird thing that nobody's going to be able to help me with, which was true.
[00:04:51] The doctors didn't know. They diagnosed me with burning mouth syndrome. I'm not sure that I experienced that in the way that the typical burning mouth. patient does, but that was the closest diagnosis they came up with. I went down like a food sensitivities rabbit hole, because I got the stomach bug from my kid at one point and didn't eat for two days, and it all cleared up. And so I was like, Oh, it must be a food thing. Now I know that my brain was just focused on me being sick and, you know, just in time to give me that other pain. I went down that rabbit hole. I, I was eating what I called a fun free diet. It was like chicken and lettuce basically.
[00:05:30] And I was like, okay, if I just don't ever eat anything that tastes good, maybe I'll be fine. And then a friend of mine. Um, had found the cure for chronic pain podcast and she was, and I had just started talking about it with friends. Like I hadn't told anybody that I had this other than my partner at the time just because I had grown up with that message of like, suck it up. If you're in pain, like just deal with it. Don't cause problems for other people. They have stuff going on too. And so I was just like, yeah, I don't, I don't need to burden people with this. Um, yeah. But my life was getting really limited.
[00:06:02] I was like trying not to eat spicy foods or acidic foods or, you know, and again, then it turned into like, I wasn't eating really anything. And so I was like, I don't want to go to your potluck and be the person who can't eat anything. So anyway, my friend. introduced me to the podcast. I started listening and, and honestly, my first thought was, this sounds like bullshit, but I'm going to try it anyway, because really, what do I have to lose?
[00:06:26] The doctors don't have anything for me. This is miserable. So I'm just gonna start journaling and see what happens. And for me, I started getting results right away too. It came out in the way of symptom imperative first. And that that helped me figure out where to dive in with the journaling, you know, in my early 30s had had plantar fasciitis and that pain flared again.
[00:06:46] And I was like, Oh, that that was a mind body issue to what was going on in my life at that time. And I started getting like, Twinges in my back in my early 20s when I was still in college. I used to throw my back out a lot, which I think is strange for someone in their 20s. Like I haven't done it in like probably 20 or 25 years at this point.
[00:07:05] But yeah, I started getting those back twinges like, okay, got to dig in there too. I think like most of us who come into this work, we realized that we had all sorts of mind body conditions most of our lives and just weren't aware of it until we started thinking about things differently and learning about things. So that's sort of the long and the short of it for me.
[00:07:24] Deb: So you said you had pretty clear results from doing the journaling and then that was like what lit the little light bulb over your head and you're like, Hey, this is something I can start to offer to other people to start to offer for your clients.
[00:07:39] Nyle: Yes, because it was so exciting. I mean, I like the pain didn't let up right away. Like, for me, I would have said I was like, probably at a seven on the pain scale every day. And it went like from a seven to a 6. 5 and then do a six and then, you know, it was like, very gradual for me and I think a lot of people get frustrated from that and they're just like, forget it.
[00:07:58] I'm not going to do it. But I was getting enough results and also the symptom imperative just just understanding what was happening. Just made it clear to me like, okay, I'm on the right track here. And it felt good. The journaling felt good. You know, the first couple times I did it. I was like, this feels silly and weird.
[00:08:15] But then I would just feel like lighter at the end of it. I was like, Oh, wow. It is like releasing the pressure valve. And it helps you just gain more insight into things that have happened in your life. And it really does help regulate you, you know, as, as you likely know, um, to get out of a freeze mode, which I think I was in effectively for a long time.
[00:08:34] Like we, we actually have to engage our systems fight or flight response. And so. You know, doing the journal speak and releasing that anger is a way to do that. We kind of. activate that, that fight response, and then we can become regulated. It's almost impossible to just like come out of freeze to a regulated state.
[00:08:52] Deb: Oh, I love hearing you say that. People are afraid of activation. And, you know, there's so much juice and energy and vitality and like just what we need to feel alive within activation. And now we obviously don't want to stay in a highly activated state all the time, right? So it's about having the ability to move through states.
[00:09:20] And sometimes we just need to get that little spark plug in the butt to go like light ourselves up. Feel something, but then feeling things can be terrifying when our main mode of protection is suppression.
[00:09:35] Nyle: Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you brought that up. Cause I actually, like before I discovered Nicole's work, I have a very concrete memory of like really becoming aware of the sensations in my body that are associated with feelings really for the first time. I was in a an equine therapy training. I used to do some equine therapy, and we were all standing in the arena with a bunch of horses and I grew up with horses. I'm very comfortable with them, but something spooked the horses and they all took off running across the arena.
[00:10:03] Um, and so, you know, I did what I needed to do to keep myself safe and I was fine. And if the, if the facilitators had asked in that moment, did you feel scared when that happened? I would have said no, absolutely not. But they didn't, they said, what is everybody noticing in their body now that we just had this big energy move through the arena?
[00:10:21] And I was like, Oh, my heart's beating really fast. And there's this like fast swirling sensation in my body, which is what I needed. Right. I needed to be prepared to either get really big, to scare off the horses or to run out of their way. So I needed that activation, but I had no awareness of it until that moment.
[00:10:39] And it, it just like tuned me into this, like, Oh shit stuff like this is happening in there all of the time and I've just blocked it out my whole life. So it was very overwhelming for me at first. It was just like, whoa, what do I do with all these sensations that I now have this awareness of? And it took a while for that to just sort of like plateau and even out and for me to get to a place where I was like, yes, those things are happening all the time and that's okay. You're fine. They've always been happening all of the time. You just are aware of it now.
[00:11:09] Deb: Yeah, it's like these were the invisible friends that were with you all the time, but now you can see them. So, then you trained in pain reprocessing at the Pain Psychology Center, I'm assuming.
[00:11:22] Nyle: Yeah, yeah, the following June, I was in the first cohort.
[00:11:26] Deb: Yeah, I did that training too. I mean, I've done most all the trainings. I'm a bit of a training junkie, but there's always something that you hear differently from one person to another. Like I took my original training with Howard, Dr. Schubiner and Charlie Merrill. And I'm like, You know, they say something different and I was wanting to bring this to my hands on practice and then life changed.
[00:11:51] And so, hearing Alan Gordon's work and how they describe things, it's the same but it's different. So I think now is a good time to start talking about kind of your hot take on neuroplastic pain. Like, how do you describe it to somebody?
[00:12:07] Nyle: Yeah. So I would say neuroplastic pain is pain that is being generated by your brain that is not indicative of a sign of something being wrong in your body. It has to do with. Nervous system dysregulation. It's usually a result of chronic stress and or trauma. And the process has a lot to do with sort of rerouting your, your neural pathways, teaching your brain how to reframe something from painful to just a sensation, in my mind that's really the first step is like, let's help our brain see this more clearly this this thing that it's perceiving like shine the light on the monster so to speak. And then I think the deeper layer is, is getting into the, why did your brain start doing this in the 1st place?
[00:12:51] And really healing that aspect of things.
[00:12:54] Deb: One of the things that I find complicated, so I love Alan Gordon's kind of simplistic message, right? We're teaching the brain that these sensations are safe. And so safe is one of those words where it can actually open up an entire, actually important conversation about safety, because not everybody is located within safety in their lives for various reasons.
[00:13:18] So, and some people don't understand, like, what does that mean to tell my brain that I'm safe or tell my nervous system that these sensations are not dangerous when I actually feel danger, when I perceive danger, right? Because sometimes it can sound like gaslighting when we're trying to tell ourselves we're safe and we don't feel safe at all.
[00:13:41] Nyle: Yeah. And I think you're right. We have to really get clear on what we're talking about here because I have had clients say exactly that. I feel like I'm gaslighting myself. And then when we dig in, it's they say, well, I'm not safe because I'm in this much pain. And so we have to reframe it to, okay, you feel unsafe because you're really uncomfortable and you really don't like what's happening.
[00:14:01] But what we're saying is that sitting in your chair right now is not causing damage to your body. It's safe for you to sit right now, even though you're in pain, what you're doing is not dangerous. And so it's, it's really reframing it from the thing that you're doing or trying to do is, is, is not dangerous, rather than you're just safe in the world, especially, you know, right now, politically that that doesn't feel true for a lot of people.
[00:14:24] Deb: Yeah.
[00:14:24] Nyle: Um, but I mean, I think also that the deeper issue, like, maybe we can get to safety around pain, but if we are feeling unsafe in the rest of our lives, it can still be hard to get those signals to turn off because your brain is trying to tell you that, that you're in danger and it has, you know, several strategies to use to get that message across. And one of them is pain. So sometimes it can be a little trickier depending on what else is happening in a person's life.
[00:14:50] Deb: Absolutely. I think there's something that you just said, like, there are only so many ways that our nervous system can communicate with us, right? There's a sense of communication all the time and our imperative is to survive and we have a lot of different strategies for that and so pain is a part of our protection system. So when I hear about it like that, there's always a positive intention behind it. In some ways that helps me feel kind of softer or more curious or lean towards pain versus feeling like it's something happening to me, that it's something only negative.
[00:15:29] It's meant to sound an alarm. It can be also a habituated process and learned by the brain. And even that is part of our survival because our brain learns things because it is metabolically appropriate, right? Like if we had to. Learn how to talk every day. We would use up all the energy that we have from the food that we eat to be able to do that.
[00:15:51] We learn things. We create heuristics. Our brain makes shortcuts. That's just what a brain does. And so sometimes we learn pain. So it's the gamut between protection from dangerous predators, like Nicole Sachs would say, of our unfelt and unseen emotions, or just the big scary things that are happening in the world that we can't control.
[00:16:17] Or we're just training our brain to notice pain from the moment that we wake up, to keep it in front of us because, you know, we're taught, like, keep a pain journal, really pay attention to this thing. We're just feeding the thing that we're trying to not be experiencing. We keep putting those experiences front and center, inadvertently, not knowing that that's actually training the brain to be finding this unpleasant experience over and over and over again. So I think they're all part of the same larger mechanism of being a human being in a human body. And some people have to go deeper into the emotions and some people can kind of learn the reframing and then all of a sudden things start to change. So, well one that was a bit of a monologue, but I, I just kind of wanted ask you what do you think about that? Do you have different strategies when you work with clients? I'm really curious about what works for people.
[00:17:20] Nyle: Yeah, I mean, I do like what you were saying about learned pain. I think that's that's a useful concept for people to understand that like, basically, your brain just learned how to do this and and can perpetuate it very easily. And so that that's where I think the neuroplastic piece is relevant.
[00:17:34] It's like we really are like rerouting those neural pathways teaching your brain, hey, you don't need to go this way every time we can actually go over here and it feels a lot better. In terms of strategies, um, honestly, my favorite Yeah, I agree. Because it's been so effective for me is, is the emotions release.
[00:17:51] I do the PRT as well, but for me, it depends on the symptoms, you know, like for the mouth symptom that I had was not impacted at all by somatic tracking. It just like, when this would happen, my tongue would flare. It was visible. You could see what was happening and it wasn't a somatic tracking issue for me.
[00:18:10] It really was about identifying the repressed emotions and getting them out of my body. I do a lot of work around that with people. I mean, because I, I'm not just a pain therapist, I'm also working with folks to try to heal their attachment wounds and, you know, just learn how to identify their needs and learn how to ask for their needs to be met those sorts of things. Which I think is all related to healing from chronic pain, because as you well know, most of us tend to be people pleasers, perfectionism perfectionists, or we are very stoic with our emotions and we have to learn how to feel them, how to release them, and then how to like identify our needs and learn how to communicate and ask for our needs to be met. And I think it's all part of it.
[00:18:54] Hmmmm
[00:18:54] Deb: Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about around perfectionism. That's not anything I've ever had to deal with, ever. Or, uh, people pleasing? What?
[00:19:06] Nyle: I didn't identify with the perfectionism until I identified that it, like, it really came out in people pleasing for me just like, Learning how to scan the room and give people what they want to need. But not so much in terms of like getting tasks done in a perfect way or, you know, those sorts of things.
[00:19:23] Deb: Again That kind of goes back to survival, right? We have this need for attachment, for care, for not being abandoned and you know, for a certain kind of validation of our humanity. And that's something I'm really noticing coming up for me in this administration. They're government officials are telling me people like me or people I love don't really exist. And of course, Cognitively, I understand it, but emotionally and somatically, it hits in a kind of way.
[00:19:58] Nyle: Right. It's like silly on one hand, right?
[00:20:01] It's like, yes, they do exist. You can say that they don't, but that doesn't actually erase them. But it's also scary and infuriating, you know, because it's not just that they're saying, Oh, you don't exist. They're saying, and we're going to take away your rights and your ability to leave the country and your ability to hold government jobs and, you know, things that are really scary for a lot of people.
[00:20:22] Deb: Absolutely. And the way that it filters down through that sense of secure attachment to self, even if there's something like if you live in a body in which you have to fight for your basic needs to be validated, to even be seen as human, you know, I see this a lot around weight stigma and size.
[00:20:42] I mean, now obesity is a disease, there's a way in which you're seen as being broken and wrong and a problem just by having a body. The problem with needing a government to acknowledge that you exist and that you have a right to be here, does something on a really deep level and it creates a kind of breeding ground isn't the right word, but it creates foundations for these kinds of self fracture or opportunities for neuroplastic pain, this heightened sense of nervous system fighting. And certainly a kind of people pleasing, like, I actually need to please or be a certain kind of pleasing to exist, and, you know, this is what happens in a power structure that's very violent, my safety is predicated upon you liking me, and that's a little bit terrifying. It's more than a little bit terrifying.
[00:21:42] Nyle: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right and I mean it. There's a lot of problems with what they're doing, but in my mind, one of the ironies of it is, like, society sends the message to trans people that they like us best when we can blend in and fit in, and yet they're taking away the ability of, like, a generation of trans folks to be able to do that by, you know, eliminating Their ability to get puberty blockers and, you know, to be able to eventually blend in or fit in and that kind of way, if they want to, I do think it's important to say that not all of us want to blend in and fit in. Some of us don't have a choice. You know, our bodies either do or they don't. And we don't have a lot of control over that.
[00:22:21] I'm glad you brought up this piece because one thing that I've been trying to work on right now with my trans and queer clients, especially is just helping them stay connected to their worth.
[00:22:32] I started a blog a couple of weeks ago, to do that, to help people remember that. One of them, I offered a guided meditation that really was about sort of staying connected to our worth. And then another one, I sort of spelled out an exercise that people can do, but, but it's really like. finding concrete, tangible examples to counter these messages, you know, so in this world that is telling me that I have no value and worth for me to like, really get clear with myself and, and think about the ways that I do, you know, in my friendships and relationships and my work in different areas of life, just being able to go, okay, this, this is how I know that I have value and connecting the concrete examples. Examples that, like, elicit an emotion, because the one way that we can actually really need sort of counter those messages is by using imagery, emotion and repetition. And this is where, you know, we had chatted through email a little bit. It's a little bit similar to some of the hypnosis work and the woman I learned this from, Thais Gibson, she, she also has done some hypnosis in the past. She's taken those concepts, and made it into this process that doesn't require you to be hypnotized, but it is still effective. So anyway, it's, it's just using. Imagery and emotion and then doing it every day. And the best times of day to do that are either like first thing in the morning or right before bed because our brains are more suggestible at those times.
[00:23:54] And those are also times that I really would encourage people to stay off media because your brain is more suggestible. And so you're like, taking that in at the time of day that your brain is most likely to absorb it. And it's going to have a more negative impact on you than if you're like alert and just going about your day and then you happen to read an article.
[00:24:13] Highly encourage people to connect to their own worth with those concrete examples in the morning and before bed. And then if you need to read the news, do that during the day when you're less suggestible to those negative messages.
[00:24:26] Deb: I love how tangible that is. And it's hard to do because I think there feels like this compulsion to stay informed right now, to kind of know what's coming, but that even feeds the beast, right? The way that they're intentionally creating chaos to both keep us distracted, but then also destroy our health and wellbeing.
[00:24:51] It's really up to us to take care of ourselves and to treat us, exquisitely. I keep coming back to that in, in the way I'm thinking about it. I also love what you're saying, which is like, it's about how something feels, sometimes there's a lot of emphasis, you know, on reframing our thoughts about things and for me, especially as a hypnotist, our thoughts matter in terms of how they emotionally resonate with us and so they can be a really useful way into the feelings, which is why I think the journaling can be really helpful.
[00:25:25] Like, we're not just journaling about, like, this is what I did today, or this is what happened, or we're not just kind of re triggering and re triggering and re triggering through writing like I don't understand why they did this to me. Why did this person do X, Y, or Z? That's also not what this kind of emotional release journaling is about.
[00:25:48] So can you say more about what it might look like for somebody to access their emotions and maybe for the first time, you can just describe what happens in a session. I think sometimes people don't know. Like, here's an example. I've gone to therapy a number of times, and oftentimes my therapy has felt a little bit like, uh what happened during my day, kind of journaling You know, instead of writing it down, I would just tell the therapist, I did this, and I did this, and I would tell the therapist, and then they would listen and reflect back.
[00:26:22] Like, well, you're a really nice person. And I was like, great, thanks. Uh, I'm so glad to pay you to help me. I like that you think that I'm nice. I also think that I'm like really terrible and deeply flawed like, whatever. And, that therapy with those therapists, which are not these techniques, that really didn't help me get to this kind of process and this work.
[00:26:51] So I just think it's useful for people to hear what that experience would be like.
[00:26:56] Nyle: Yeah. Do an experiment, would that be okay?
[00:26:59] Deb: Oh, yeah, sure.
[00:27:01] Nyle: Okay. Yeah, because as you were talking Deb, like when you were talking about these therapists, they would just tell you like, oh you're very nice, like I saw your body language kind of move in, and like there's sort of hand gestures around the the center of your body, and I'm just curious, like what were you aware of when you were, when you were talking about that of your body?
[00:27:20] Deb: I think the things, one of the things, uh, it's already bringing up emotion for me is, like, how painful it is to be missed, right? Like, in those sessions, like, that person didn't see how much I was hurting and You know, and then it felt silly, like I'm here paying you and I'm coming here and I'm getting further and further and further away from feeling believed or being seen, uh, and that was painful.
[00:27:55] ,
[00:27:56] Nyle: yeah. It's like you felt dismissed, is what I'm hearing, I think.
[00:28:00] Deb: I mean, I think I understand, like, people's intentions. And then that's also the people pleasing part, which is like, well, then I'm just trying to please the therapist, right? There was a lot of confusion and rage underneath the experience and I felt like this doesn't feel helpful.
[00:28:22] Nyle: Yeah, absolutely. And I think honestly, that's because a lot of therapists don't know how to be with that and they don't know how to reroute those negative core beliefs.
[00:28:30] And so they just say, well, you're nice. Why do you feel bad about yourself? You're a good person. Just try to hang on to that. And you're like, I know up here that I'm a good person, but I don't feel it in here. You know, there's, there's something that got lodged in there that I can't shake. And I think a lot of therapists don't actually have the skills to, to help you shift that.
[00:28:50] But I'm just curious back to like, learning you know, what was it like for you when we just slow down right now? And I just directed you to kind of go inward.
[00:28:59] Deb: I mean, it felt a little scary, uh, because obviously you saw how much emotion was right there and kind of came up really quickly for me. And I think that's familiar and I'm comfortable and I'm used to it. And even my podcast listeners will hear me have some emotion arising. So that feels like there's something there that feels very true.
[00:29:25] And it came up and I felt it and there felt like a sense of relief to it. Like, Oh yeah, I can finally connect with this thing that, that other people are uncomfortable with me having feelings, like big feelings.
[00:29:41] Nyle: Yeah, and that's big. And I think, yeah, that's, that is really big. And I think that's what Most of us contend with when we're doing this work, like, we've gotten so many messages of stay small. Nobody wants to hear about your big feelings. Just suck it up. Um, and then when you're going to and paying somebody, and, and I, there's no doubt in my mind that that therapist did not want to send that message.
[00:30:04] But when, when they don't know how to help you access it, they are just like, well, let's just keep going. Let's just, I don't know. Sort of hope that this resolves for you over time and you're just like, okay. But yeah, I mean, what we just did there, like, it really just took us just pausing and going, Hey, what, what's going on in here?
[00:30:19] And, and most people can do that when the person holding space for them is able to hold that space and slow down and know, you know, to notice the cues and to know how to just slow down and say, Hey, why don't you just tune in for a second? You know, even the folks that tell me, I don't know how to feel my emotions at all.
[00:30:37] You know, I just. I just will wait for that body cue and I'll say, Hey, what's coming up for you right now? And sometimes they like, try to launch into like a speech about it. And then I have to just kind of say, no, let's, let's slow down. Like, what are you noticing? What are you aware of in your body right in this moment?
[00:30:52] Um, and it's hugely uncomfortable for a lot of people, especially, I think. Trans and queer folks who have learned how to exist from the neck up in a lot of ways, you know, or, you know, different ways that people are marginalized I imagine. People in bodies that are told that are unacceptable. You know, we, we tend to disconnect from our bodies.
[00:31:10] We try to, to mostly just exist in our intellect. So it can be very hard to get people to actually feel safe and doing that.
[00:31:19] Deb: Yeah, absolutely. So one, thank you for doing that activity with me. I really enjoyed it. And I think, um, hopefully people listening will be able to, like, even go back and listen to it again, listen to like how Nyle guided me back here, away from my story, like back into my body, into this present moment.
[00:31:42] And not being afraid of the feelings and the emotions that were arising. And one thing I always like to point out to my clients is just as quickly as those big feelings arose, they also, you know, it's like waves, they also ebbed and flowed. And my body settled, and I felt a shift. And I felt an energetic shift. And then I also felt a connection shift. I feel even more seen by you. And that was just a lovely experience.
[00:32:13] Nyle: Yeah.
[00:32:14] Deb: And there's more of me now available to be in connection with you.
[00:32:21] Nyle: Right, isn't that something?
[00:32:22] It's just like, you just sort of drop it. Because I could have gone on that tangent with you, like, Oh yeah, therapists suck. You know, like, we could have gone that path. Like, I'm so sorry. Happened to you. That's shit. You know, like we could have done that. And you probably would have had a rapport still.
[00:32:38] Um, but it wouldn't have resolved anything. Not that I think I just resolved anything big for you, but, you know, you know what I mean? We're not actually doing a therapy session here.
[00:32:46] Deb: We are not actually doing a therapy session and there is for me what it, it didn't resolve anything, because that wasn't the goal, but it also reaffirmed that almost like resolution isn't the goal.
[00:33:01] Nyle: Right, right, which is so key in this chronic pain recovery. Right. And that's such an infuriating thing for people to hear when they first hear it is like, you got to back off from this whole of getting out of pain and just try to, I talk a lot about like teaching people how to approach life more from a place of ease.
[00:33:19] Um, actually, I saw you had an episode with the word ease in it. I was like, I need to go back and listen to that one.
[00:33:24] Deb: I did. Yes, because I had a lot of clients who were, you know, they're trying, they're having issues around wanting things to be easy. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's a trap. It's like, because sometimes there are lots of things that are not easy. But to approach things with ease and get that sense of ease, right, holding it loosely, all the different ways that we talk about it.
[00:33:51] Everybody's heard this story a hundred times if you listen to this podcast, but I once had Alan Gordon tell me that I was very high stakes. And that really shifted, like talk about one trial learning experience, just hearing him reflect that back to me because he wasn't wrong.. Could see that in so many different areas of my life, how high stakes everything was.
[00:34:19] Nyle: Okay. Yeah, just this sort of all or nothing. I'm going to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and again, it's, it's not about like backing away from your goals. A lot of people think, well, you're just telling me to be lazy and not to go after what I want.
[00:34:31] I'm like, no, it's not that at all. It's actually that the approach you're taking is going to take you longer to get there than if you're able to go. Back off. So an example I used with a client recently was, you know, if you're training for a race and you want to win the race, the goal is not for you to like abandon that, that dream.
[00:34:49] And to just say, well, I, I can't win a race cause it'll activate my pain or whatever it's to say. Okay. I want to be the fastest person in the race. And this is what I know how to do to train and to get my body prepared and get my body in the condition that it needs to be in so that I can be a fast runner rather than this, like life or death. I have to train 30 hours a week or else, you know, just going, okay, like I would like to do this. because I know that that's going to get me in the condition that I need to be in.
[00:35:15] Same with like homework. I've got a lot of high school students right now, this high pressure. And I'm like, the goal is not for you to not go for that A, but it's just to remind yourself that you already have the skills and you already have the study habits that get you A's and it's just about like embracing that and telling yourself, okay, I'm going to do the things that I always do to study for this test and that has worked for me in the past rather than I have to have to have to spend my whole weekend and I can't have any friends and well, you know, so just just the way you shift your perception of it and the approach to it makes a big difference.
[00:35:47] And the data shows us that Self criticism lands in our bodies as stress, and what we know is that stress exacerbates pain and anxiety, and those things all make it harder for us to get done. And so self compassion actually gives us better results, but most of us are sort of conditioned away from it. We think it's like for weak people or, you know, things like that.
[00:36:10] Deb: Ah, the sexism and patriarchy within these messages. You know, it's so unbelievable that self compassion is off the charts in the studies and all of the research about how beneficial it is and yet we have to sell it to people.
[00:36:29] Nyle: Yeah. It's usually not my opening line because people are like, this sounds like some hippie woo treatment that I don't want any part of. Usually it comes in fairly quickly, like, you're going to have to change your approach to things.
[00:36:43] Deb: When I was with Lin Health, one of our clinical advisors was Dr. Brad Fanestil, who's in Colorado, right? So you might know him. Um, so he would always talk about, like, getting to see what's under the hood. You know, he has a bunch of colloquialisms and I love to think about that. Like what's under the hood of how we talk to ourselves, how we see ourselves or experience ourselves. And you know, that comes through like how we were raised, how even our parents were thinking in talking to themselves.
[00:37:19] Like how we were raised to be self referential. It's like, am I always failing from the moment that I wake up in the morning? You know, am I broken and needing fixing? Like whatever it is, I think those things can be really helpful to pull back and get a sense of how am I even experiencing myself in the world.
[00:37:41] And then certainly capitalism, you know, really loves to pigeonhole people into these categories. We need to be striving and certainly we need a certain kind of economic security. We need to work. There's all kinds of pressures on people and families with the systems that, well, people have made. You know, and certainly certain people have made to keep enhancing their own wealth and status. There's a lot within trying to unravel just the way that we see ourselves. I'm just leaving all these dangling thoughts out here. It's a dangling thought kind of day, but um, what do you think can help most people, let's say in these next few months? Earlier we were talking about having fun and having pleasure and prioritizing those things.
[00:38:34] Nyle: I think it's It's connecting to community. It's connecting to joy and pleasure. Um, it's reminding ourselves of our own worth. I think it's all of those things and journaling discharge the energy every day. Yeah, I mean, I think, like, We can't let them put us into freeze mode, you know, like that's what they want.
[00:38:55] They want us to get frustrated and disconnected from each other and to just shut down. And it would be very easy to do that. And then they win, you know, and so I think it really is like Doing what we need to do to stay empowered, to stay connected. I started swimming three times a week in November as I'm recovering from an injury that I had over the summer.
[00:39:15] And that's just felt really good for me to like have something where I am in my body doing something physical. It's honestly, it's been the first time I've had like an exercise routine in years and I'm like, Oh, there's a reason that we tell people that they should exercise regularly. We really do feel better.
[00:39:30] But for me, it's just been really important to connect to my physical body as the world is telling me, or this country is telling me, or it's not the whole country. I think we need to remind ourselves there are not more bigots than there were three months ago. You know, it's just that we have this, this administration that is, It's really being awful to us.
[00:39:48] Um, and so reminding ourselves, it's not, it's not everybody. But also, yeah, just like for me, connecting to my body when I'm getting all these messages about how wrong my body is, um, feels really important and, and just being strong and fit right now. Like, I don't know, I don't, I don't feel like I'm going to have to like go into battle per se, but honestly, it just, it feels like a good time to, to feel strong and fit.
[00:40:10] Um, yeah. So that for me, um, but it doesn't have to be that. I think some way of like feeling connected to your body, whether that's through dance or movement or, you know, just slow walking, just something. It doesn't have to be a lot. And again, just staying connected to other people who can remind you of your goodness and your worth, when it gets hard to remember those things.
[00:40:30] Deb: Absolutely. And, I've said it a few times is just remembering our history, remembering that we've always been here and we will always be here.
[00:40:41] Nyle: That's the other part, it just seems so silly to me. Most of us had cis straight parents.
[00:40:46] Like, you're not, you're not going to get rid of us. We're always going to be back.
[00:40:50] Deb: I know, it's not logical, right? And I think, I think that's one of the things that actually has been the most difficult for me in the last, I would say, month or so, right? Since he came into power and my brain wants it to make sense. And it's like, oh, it doesn't make any sense, right? So what I keep having to remind myself, I think what's Helping me, of course, is it doesn't make sense to me because I would never run a country like this.
[00:41:19] I actually care about people. I want things to work. These are like giant toddlers and they want to break things and have temper tantrums and then do their shenanigans while we're all, you know, confused. And so, of course, it doesn't make sense to me because I do not operate in the world that way.
[00:41:39] I mean, I think that's actually a thing I see in a lot of chronic pain people is, people wanting to know why. And oftentimes when people go down the medicalized route, and certainly when I was a massage therapist, people were very much like, Oh, it's this muscle and then this thing is inhibited. And then, you know, we made up these very elaborate treatments and complicated reasons. And then people are trying to release this like one tiny muscle and I'm like, are you kidding me? Like bodies really don't work like that. They're dynamic. But the drive to know why can sometimes distract us, it can sometimes create kind of confusion and separation from self, like it has the illusion of logic. It has the illusion of coherence. So there's something about finding safety through understanding why, and yet it often leads us to the wrong result, especially in the beginning.
[00:42:39] Nyle: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think the why can be helpful in understanding it, but we don't have to know the why to get out of it. It's just your system was stressed and this is how it responded. And now we're going to unstress your system.
[00:42:51] Deb: Okay, we talked about pleasure, we talked about hope, we talked about understanding that we've always existed and that queer and trans people are not going anywhere, thank you very much, and being in community and finding small and big ways to just continue to validate our existence.
[00:43:13] So how do people work with you if somebody is interested in finding out more?
[00:43:18] Nyle: People who want to work with me, typically I do like a 15 minute consultation where we just chat and see if I would be a good fit. Um, cause the, the research shows us that it's, it's. The relationship to your therapist or coach is like the number one important, most important factor in determining whether or not the treatment will be a success.
[00:43:37] Um, and so just making sure people feel like I can help them or, you know, we have a good vibe, a good rapport. I feel like my approach is pretty individualized in terms of, like, I don't have a, like, session 1, we're going to do this. And then we kind of go through this.
[00:43:51] But the basic part is, you know, what I described before is, you know, like, starting to sort of reroute those neural pathways and turn down the volume on the pain and then getting into the, why did your brain do this in the 1st place? And that tends to be the deeper and longer lasting work.
[00:44:06] Deb: Oh, I know what I was missing. I've been like thinking there was something I forgot and I did. You had shared in your blog posts, there was an article about marginalization and increased chronic pain. So I would love for you to either share something here or just give me the article to link to so that I can share it with my listeners. Thanks.
[00:44:28] Nyle: A good article.
[00:44:29] I don't have the stats, but like, you know, that marginalized groups have chronic pain and chronic illness at much higher rates than the rest of the population. And it's not a coincidence. It's because they're under a lot more stress than other people. And so it makes sense. I tend to work mostly with queer and marginalized folks because I, I get it in a way that other folks don't.
[00:44:52] And so that those folks tend to be drawn to me. It just makes sense. And yeah, I can send you an article that you could link.
[00:44:58] Deb: I love that. The work that you're doing is so important and so validating.
[00:45:05] Nyle: Yeah, thank you. You too.
[00:45:07] Deb: I'm glad that we had this conversation. I feel like there's so much more I want to say and nobody's going to listen to a seven hour podcast, but what I want people to understand is that healing is possible for them and it doesn't matter what kind of pain you have and even also for people with structural pain.
[00:45:25] I always feel like there's a neuroplastic component to it, right? Like there's a volume dial. We do have impact over our physiological experiences. Do you have any parting words that you want to share?
[00:45:39] Nyle: Not really. I feel like we've covered it all. I mean, just I, I agree with you. I'd want to echo that. Yes, healing is very possible, more possible than you think. Even if you've been told it's not, it's really worth pursuing this type of approach to see how we could help you. Thank you so much for having me today.
[00:45:53] Deb: It's been super fun. I'm so glad that we're getting to build this community and to share these things. So I will link to all of your stuff and people can go read the blog and do the guided meditation and start to take these ideas and begin to incorporate them into their own mind and body to feel better. Because you know, we deserve to feel better and we deserve wellness. and beauty and love and all of these good things. We deserve life. That is my final statement.