I'm so thrilled to present this fun and informative conversation with Coach Callie on her journey of healing from Fibromyalgia as well as her incredible insights as an experienced Mind Body Coach. She's the queen of somatic tracking with positive sensations. I hope you enjoy her kindness and caring approach to doing the work of brain training and hope building.
You can find Coach Callie in these places online -
Tell Me About Your Pain Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/695823314550483
Email - CoachCallieK@gmail.com
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@coachcallie5968
If you liked this episode let me know! I want to continue to create podcasts that are informative and interesting.
If you're ready to explore hiring a coach - I've got spaces available for new individual clients working one on one.
Book a free half hour curiosity call with me - https://calendly.com/paincoachdeb
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/curiositycure.coach/
Website - https://www.thecuriositycure.coach/
[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 more of the time in the body you have today and build the rich, full life that you want to live. A quick disclaimer, this podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey, but always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:57] Deb: Hi, Callie! Hey, Deb! Welcome to season two of the Curiosity Cure. And this is my podcast about mind body work.
[00:01:10] Callie: Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here. Yay!
[00:01:13] Deb: Let's just start with you telling a little bit about who you are, what you do, and then we'll talk about how we know each other.
[00:01:22] Callie: Okay.
[00:01:23] Yeah, my name is Callie Kunst, and I'm a pain reprocessing coach. I'm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I currently have my own small practice, and I also do contract work for the Pain Psychology Center. Um, let's see, people want to work with me. I'll give you the details at the end, but, um, yeah, the nutshell, yeah.
[00:01:46] Cool.
[00:01:46] Deb: And I was trying to remember how we actually met. Was it just, well, obviously it's online because we've never met in person, which I find is, uh, we need to remedy that in 2024. I agree. But it was before I was at Lin,
[00:02:04] Callie: right? Yes. It was before we both were at Lin. Yeah. I think, I, I think, um, it was in the, tell me about your pain, Facebook group.
[00:02:13] And I just noticed that there was this person that had the best answers ever. And I thought you were so clever and smart and compassionate. And I was just like, I want to get to know this person. And I think we invited you to join this little group that we had, and you were busy setting up your business at the time, but we still maintained, a cordial connection and then we started working together at Lin.
[00:02:36] Deb: Yeah, yeah. I was always, you know, in the, in those groups and we'll go into more about kind of like what those Facebook groups are and how they offer people support. Um, yeah, I was just always so impressed by your calmness, calm demeanor. And the way that you're so compassionate and loving and all of that, I know is true about you, but it also came across in a Facebook group and also your, your wealth of knowledge, uh, I really see you as an expert in this field
[00:03:13] Callie: and what a compliment,
[00:03:15] Deb: um, you know, and I think it's one of these things where embodying the role of a coach, sometimes it feels Like, maybe we are, less than or second best to a therapist or a doctor or whatever.
[00:03:30] And I think that in kind of being the ones that who often transmit directly to people, I think we're great metabolizers of this information. And then we have the luxury of time and getting to know people in a way that I think. Well, definitely physicians don't often do, but I, I, I think of us as like an important piece in a larger whole, obviously it's not like one or the other.
[00:04:01] Callie: Oh, agreed. What I love about coaching is, is like most of the time we don't go digging up the why or the past and we, we really are very focused on this is where you are now and this is where you want to go. You there. And I love that about coaching. I think it's fantastic. And I think it's what most people who have chronic symptoms need more than excavating what happened, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, just moving forward.
[00:04:30] Although I I'm not saying that I don't think people need trauma work sometimes because they do, but For the most part, most people that I see and work with, they really need someone to help them kind of know how to navigate someone to help them identify, um, what would be best for them? What kind of protocol would work best for them?
[00:04:54] And, yeah, so I, I don't know. I just love the coaching format. I love the inquiry part. I love the, the supportive rah rah part. I just love it. And yeah, so, um, as a matter of fact, I was just thinking of you the other day. I was in a coaching course and we were talking about metaphors and I was thinking about you and your Star Trek metaphor.
[00:05:18] Deb: I love, oh my God,
[00:05:19] Callie: Deb. I love it. Yeah. Thank you. So yeah, so anyway, I love coaching.
[00:05:24] Deb: Yeah. Okay. That's great. I wanna jump in 'cause I think I wanna tease out a lot of those ideas that you were just talking about. Okay. Okay. But let's start with your story. Okay.
[00:05:35] Callie: Sounds good. Yeah. Well, it's a long story, so I'll make it short.
[00:05:40] I started having symptoms when I was around 37 years old. So 1997 and, um, it started out with just a pain in my ears. It just felt like somebody was drilling holes into my head through my ears and I went to the doctor. Of course. And they did some x rays, of course, and what they saw on the x ray was that I had a fusion and I don't we don't know when it happened.
[00:06:07] It could have been an accident when I was a child, or it could have been. I could have been born that way, but I have a fusion at C5 6 in my neck. And the wiring is just a little funky and it just went berserk. They were just like, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And I started getting all this danger messaging.
[00:06:24] Like, you can't do yoga anymore and you can't do this and you can't do that. You shouldn't ski and you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that. And I had all this list of things I shouldn't do, because I was told. That if I did anything else to injure my neck, I would probably be paralyzed, which, of course, is really a traumatic message to get from medical professionals.
[00:06:42] Yeah. And so, um, that kind of was the kickstart of all symptoms starting to spread down my, uh, from my neck down to my shoulder and then down my arm. And then I had numbness and then I had pain and, you know, it just, it just snowballed them before. I say, probably within 5 years, I had pain on the left side of my body.
[00:07:03] So I didn't have pain on the right side, just on the left side. So that was a really strong indicator that it was a brain generated thing going on here. So hip knees, back, um, I started spraining my left ankle at least 2 or 3 times a year. Eventually I got the lovely diagnosis of fibromyalgia, which is the diagnosis that a lot of people get when doctors are like, we just don't know. And, of course, I went through the medical system and got epidurals. I got trigger point injections. I've tried all kinds of things. Biofeedback, which was awesome, except I have children and, you know, spending hours a day doing this kind of biofeedback just wasn't practical for me at that time.
[00:07:45] And, so all kinds of doctors did all kinds of treatments, including some I'm rather embarrassed about. If you want to go into that, I would,
[00:07:54] Deb: I'm always like, yeah, share the things that you're embarrassed about I will leave that up to you.
[00:08:01] Callie: Well, I'll share a couple. Okay. I did what was called the Guaifenesin protocol, which is, if you ever get your hands on the book, uh, what your doctor may not tell you about the fibromyalgia, that's that protocol.
[00:08:13] And I did. Yeah. I've heard of that.
[00:08:14] Deb: Yeah. Uh, some people with lipidema also use the same
[00:08:19] Callie: kind of guaifenesin protocol. I think that it's for me, it was very much a, um, kind of a placebo thing. I got some relief at 1st and then it stopped helping and it's very, very regimented, very rigid. So it was kind of a harder thing to fall in 1st place.
[00:08:36] And then I actually went through this whole period where, I was worried about. EMF electric electromagnetic frequencies and so I had somebody come out and install this rod out somebody else. So, so earth magnet field would go over my house and they, you know, took care of all the dirty electricity in my house and I went off WiFi for a while and I didn't do any good, but it was, but it was the learning experience.
[00:09:02] And, you know, when you're in that place. You're really desperate. So it really helps me understand when my clients do things that I'm like, well, okay. You know, it's, it's one of those things where I'm like, I get that because I did those things too. So anyway, I discovered Dr. Schubiner through my husband and that's kind of a long story in itself, but I discovered Dr. Schubiner and started doing Unlearn Your Pain in the fall of 2019. And, um,
[00:09:29] Deb: so that was many years.
[00:09:31] Callie: Many, many years, like, 23 years, it was a long
[00:09:35] Deb: 23 years of pain, numbness, dysfunction yeah.
[00:09:41] Callie: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And I also a long time to live like, yeah, I was one of those people growing, you know, growing up as a teenager that I would go through periods of high anxiety.
[00:09:51] And I went through a period in college where I got migraines and I would faint, so it's not like I didn't have mind body symptoms before. I just didn't know what they were. So I found Dr. Schubiner started working with him. And then, uh, through him, I got this gig doing some patient support for an implementation trial at Southwest Medical in Las Vegas. And I did that for a year. Uhhuh . And then from there, um, I met Alan Gordon and started doing some work for him kind of on the side. Um, then eventually started coaching for Lin. And then eventually left Lin and moved over to the Pain Psychology Center.
[00:10:32] So that's kind of like my journey.
[00:10:34] Deb: I want to know, um, for you when you started doing the work for yourself and doing unlearn your pain. How quickly did your symptoms change? What did you notice about your experience and process? And were you all in, were you like, Oh, this makes so much sense or were you skeptical or is it a mix of both?
[00:10:57] Callie: Well, that's an interesting question because before, so I started, I learned your pain in October of 2019 and about April of 2019, I, Listen to the education piece of the curable app, where they talk about, I don't remember what curable calls it. I think they, I don't think they don't use TMS.
[00:11:16] I can't remember what they use. I remember listening to it and thinking, no, there's no way that this is being caused by my brain. There's no way my brain is doing this. It took me from April until November to even buy into the notion that this actually could be a neurogenic process for me. And, when I did finally buy into it, I just dove in and I noticed that I felt better within probably a month, but I was really being religious about doing his, his workbook, doing the, the writing exercises.
[00:11:54] It took me longer than a month to do it. Um, but I was very dedicated. And so I set aside time every day for it. So the things that helped me the most about the unlearn your pain process was he has you make a timeline. I made a timeline of all my symptoms and then a timeline of my life. And I matched them up and I was like, oh no, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense.
[00:12:23] Um, you know, how that my symptoms really followed the trajectory of stressful times in my life. Um, you know, uh, health crises in my family, moving, um, all kinds of things. Um, so it wasn't just things going on with me, but things going on with my children, my spouse. So, uh, yeah, so that was, that was number one and the most, one of the most eyeopening things was like. Oh, this makes so much sense now. And the other part was actually, um, the writing I, I really needed to do a lot of, I don't, I don't want to say I've done anything wrong that I need to be forgiven for, but there were a lot of things that I was holding inside and blaming myself for.
[00:13:05] And that process really helped me to kind of give, you know, process some of these things, some of the guilt feelings that I had about things that had happened in my past. And I, I didn't really realize were kind of part of my subconscious decision making predictive coding pattern. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool Dr. Schubiner. I love that man.
[00:13:29] Deb: Oh my God. Yeah. He's an angel. Um, oh, there's so many directions I want to go.
[00:13:35] Callie: I know, sorry.
[00:13:37] Deb: Please don't , apologize for sharing your story. So everybody's got kind of a different take, you know, would you say that you are cured from fibromyalgia? Would you think, do you think of yourself as a person who still suffers from fibromyalgia?
[00:13:52] Is that not a label that you use for yourself?
[00:13:55] Callie: Yeah, I don't use the label anymore and I would consider myself on the other side. You know, that's really interesting because on my medical chart, it's still there and I've asked to have it removed and we'll see if I eventually get it removed.
[00:14:10] Um, but it's so I, do I still have symptoms? Yes, I do. I still wake at night sometimes with pain, but I'm pain free like, 95 percent of the time during the day, it's very rare I have any uncomfortable sensations in my body that I associate with fibromyalgia.
[00:14:26] Deb: Okay. That's wait, let's slow that down. Because I think sometimes when we tell our stories, it's like, because we understand it.
[00:14:37] Yeah. It's like, it's significant, but I, I always want to, like, I do this with my clients, like reflect back when they have moments of no pain, I'm just like, let's just notice that. Let's just really sit with that for this moment. So you had 20 something years of consistent or persistent pain and symptoms.
[00:15:00] And now you're like maybe 5%.
[00:15:04] Callie: Well, every once in a while. So spring of 2020, I started working with a pain therapist because I kind of got stuck at about 60 percent better. I was much, much better, but I wasn't making any progress. I hadn't made progress for a few months. So I started working with a therapist, which was extremely helpful in that she taught me how to do somatic tracking in a way that was actually effective before The Way Out came out. So it wasn't like there were a lot of resources aside from the TMS wiki for things like somatic tracking and stuff like that. So that was really helpful. People ask me this all the time. How long did it take for you to get better?
[00:15:45] And I say, it was about a year before I got to about that 95%. And I've kind of been holding there. At 95 percent better. I don't know why I just don't say I'm 100 percent better because it's like, my life is totally different than it was.
[00:15:58] Deb: Yeah. So what's different about your, let's, let's go into that. Right? Sometimes with, with clients, most are like, the goal really isn't just to be pain free. The goal is to live your life and to do the things that you want to do. And you know, and then we just like have a human body and sometimes we feel things and sometimes we don't. So what's different for you?
[00:16:21] Callie: Oh man. It, so my life towards the point where I finally decided to do something about it, I took a leave of absence from work to, to really focus on getting better because my life was Get up, go to work, come home, take medication, get in the bathtub, soak in the tub for an hour, get up, make dinner, put on my pajamas, go to bed.
[00:16:46] That was my life. That was all I had. I, you know, bandwidth for, if you want to use that word, I just, and my, my, uh, I, all of my energy went to my job, my work. I had nothing left for my family, um, when I got home and that was becoming problematic in my family relationships and, um, I just, I was just alive, but I wasn't living.
[00:17:12] Yeah. And so, I decided that once I started feeling better, I started really, I created a vision board because I was like, I don't even know who I am. I don't even know what I like, because I haven't done anything I like in so long. And I just decided that, I really believe that having novel experiences is really good for your brain.
[00:17:34] I really do. I think that it's a way to you know, retraining that whole subconscious, so I could be more of the architect of my emotions and my life, and so I just decided that I was going to start doing new things. So I took kayaking lessons and I started hiking.
[00:17:51] I bought a state parks pass and started hiking all the parks. I decided I wanted to learn how to grow orchids. So I've been learning how to grow orchids. And I've been, you know, whenever I see something, it's like, Oh, that looks fun. That looks interesting. I just do it. And, um, whereas before I would be like.
[00:18:09] I can't do this because I just can't I don't have the energy. I can't hold concentration. And so I got to a place where I was just like, it's okay if it's not perfect. It's okay if what I'm doing, I like to kayak, but I don't love it. Like I thought I would, my daughter's really good at it, but kayaking Callie never really came to be.
[00:18:32] Deb: I saw that you were doing some traveling.
[00:18:34] Callie: A lot. A lot of traveling.
[00:18:36] Deb: Yeah. Say more about that because I think traveling is a place where people feel really stuck. The plane rides, the walking, the touring, all the things.
[00:18:48] Callie: And yeah, the worst, at my worst I couldn't sit in a chair anymore, so I was a teacher and I would lay on the table or on the floor on my stomach to grade papers because I could sit. So that was 1 of the things that really kind of pushed me into, I've got to do something because I can't go through the rest of my life not being able to sit in a chair.
[00:19:06] But yeah, and also I couldn't fly. Uh, car travel was also really, really difficult. So, yeah, so now I've been traveling let's see, I've been to the Middle East. I've been to Europe and I was in Norway just last month.
[00:19:23] Deb: Is there anything you do like with mind body stuff that like helps you prepare for travel?
[00:19:30] Like, or even just the first time you went, were you afraid?
[00:19:34] Callie: Oh yeah, of course. And it's not like I don't occasionally have moments where I'll be traveling where I'll get, like, this little spasm in my back and I kind of go into this oh no place. No, don't do this. So, um, yes, I do do some things when I prepare to prepare for traveling.
[00:19:52] I, um, I always make sure that I book a seat where I have plenty of leg room and where I can get up and move around. Usually I pick an aisle seat and I probably get up and go to the bathroom more than most people do just as an excuse to get up and walk. In June, I was in Japan and Korea with my daughter and that was a particularly long flight.
[00:20:14] We didn't have any, um, stops or layovers anywhere. So it's not like I got to get off a plane to move around and stuff. And so, um, that particular flight, um, I chose to pay a little extra and upgraded my seat to a seat where I had a lot of leg room and I can move around and recline well and sleep.
[00:20:36] You know, Alan Gordon talks about one of the hardest things for people with plane travel and sometimes car travel is your brain feels trapped. You feel trapped in a space where you can't move, and that creates this danger danger thing going on in your brain. So, um, I try really hard to put myself physically in a spot where I don't get that feeling like, I'm quite so trapped. I also download things onto my iPad that I'm really interested in that will keep me busy. So my mind is busy. I think the key really to getting back to travel, um, for me was visualization.
[00:21:17] I did graded motor imagery, uh, traveling. So before my first big flight, after I got well, I did a lot of visualization, used my imagination to picture myself having a comfortable flight. It's kind of interesting that I stopped being able to sit in a chair after I had a really difficult flight home. I was flying home to my in laws funeral. I was flying home to I say home home where my parents were. It's really not my home. I never really lived there, but, you know, where your parents are, that's kind of home. So I was flying to my parents, but my in laws had recently passed away and I was in in a plane and I was squished between two men who were doing the man spread thing and they were in my space and I was in the middle kind Of like this and I was grieving and I was upset and it was just such a sudden traumatic thing you know and my back started to hurt and up until then, I'd really never had pain sitting. My back started to hurt and then it just got excruciatingly painful during this flight no matter how I move my body. It just wasn't comfortable. And then from then on sitting was a problem.
[00:22:32] Deb: I want to bring in, I'm going to interrupt you. Sorry. You know, I do that with love. I actually want in this moment, if we were, if there were 2 Callies. Right. There's like that Callie, right.
[00:22:46] There's coach Callie. Like what would you say to that you now say you're in the same, I know that you're talking about, you know, try as best we can to like choose certain things and have that kind of self efficacy and power. But if you're sitting in your back starts to feel a certain kind of way, what would you do now?
[00:23:11] Callie: Well, so that's really interesting because at that time, I was taking Tramadol, hoping that it would go away. And one of the interesting things was in because it was, uh, brain generated, the Tramadol didn't help at all. It didn't go away at all. So I would tell myself now, you know, looking back on that experience is number one, there, you can get better. This doesn't have to last forever. Bodies heal, brains heal. You, you, you can do this. You can, you can recover your life. And I think for me, that message would have meant a lot in that moment. Because at that time it just felt like everything was going wrong.
[00:23:55] And that there was no hope and I just kind of, uh, would tell myself, well, not kind of, I certainly would tell myself, there's hope, there is hope. You can get better.
[00:24:10] Deb: What kind of skills would you practice with her like in that moment? And, and there are different times when we do different things.
[00:24:18] So now we're going to just launch into like, well, I can launch into coaching and talking about like how you help people.
[00:24:25] Callie: Okay. Well, I would tell, I'll tell you what I did recently pretty recently. I was in a bus, a ride. Um, I was writing, um, I happened to be in Israel at the time and I was in this bus crammed full of people. And we were riding from the coast in to Jerusalem and we were on this road and it was at night.
[00:24:45] We were just crammed in there and this bus and it was a little bit on the hot side and I was starting to feel uncomfortable. There was no bathroom and I, I didn't have enough to eat. And so I wasn't attending to my physical needs very well. So my brain was kind of going, I'm not feeling real safe right now Callie.
[00:25:04] I started having some sensations and it was not comfortable and it's one of those times, like if you've been pain free for a long time when you start to have a relapse or flare up, it's kind of scary because you're like, oh, no, here we go again. And so I was in that mind space. Oh, no, here I go again. And I'm trapped in this bus. I can't get out. And, um, I don't know when we're going to stop next.
[00:25:30] Deb: So I can, I can already feel like that fear building and the ruminating...
[00:25:35] Callie: Yeah. And it was like, yeah, and I just felt the pain start to start in my back and start to spread. And I was like, okay, so, all right, girl, you're a coach.
[00:25:46] What would you tell your client in this moment? Put your money where your mouth is. So I, uh, I, I decided that first of all, I was just going to calm down. So I used actually the physiological sigh. I started there to just kind of bring down that fight or flight impulse like I couldn't get out of this bus.
[00:26:07] Let me out, you know, so I just kind of used a tool that I know is really effective with me to kind of just bring things down. So I use the physiological sigh first. And then I decided what's something fun that I could do to keep my brain entertained, in other words, give my brain another problem to solve something else to do because I'm on this bus.
[00:26:35] So I actually got out my phone and I opened it up to a, uh, a game that I hadn't played in a long time, but that I quite enjoy. And I thought, well, this will be fun. And so I started doing something that I really like. Yeah. That, and then I would realize my pain was gone. It was, it just totally went away.
[00:26:53] Deb: It's like, oh, I can't get your attention here.
[00:26:56] Callie: Yeah, and why what's Callie laughing about now? So I did something that made me, you know, joyful and that you would make me laugh or and. And that required some focus. So, you know, in a way, I would say it was distraction, but it was distraction, not just to be distracted, but distraction with a purpose and just and very deliberate choice of what I chose to distract myself with.
[00:27:22] I knew if I picked up a book, that wouldn't be enough. If I picked up social media, that scrolling wasn't going to do it either cause that tends to elevate my anxiety sometimes.
[00:27:33] Deb: You don't know, really know what you're going to get as you're scrolling. Like anything.
[00:27:39] Callie: Oh, exactly. Exactly. So I, it was a very deliberate choice to distract using a certain something that I know I like.
[00:27:48] And that's important. People don't realize the importance of doing things that make you happy.
[00:27:54] Deb: I love that you're like, I know what my, what kind of distraction my brain needs, like something pleasurable that you enjoy.
[00:28:03] That's going to like, take up all of your attention awareness that you can like fall into. Right. Like Right. You know, in, in hypnosis, we, we often talk about kind of the trance state of watching a really compelling TV show or a really compelling movie. Like, you know, you lose sense of time, you lose sense of your own body.
[00:28:24] And like that can be really pleasurable and really, really useful when we use it on purpose with intention around this healing experience.
[00:28:34] Callie: Yeah, I think sometimes avoidance behaviors like distraction get a bad rap. Sometimes they can actually be the anchor that you need to kind of get you out of where you are and get you out of your headspace.
[00:28:49] But yeah, so that that worked really well for me. I believe that. Intentional joy is one of the most effective tools you can use to heal from a mind body condition.
[00:29:05] Deb: Oh my God, intentional joy. When you're in pain, joy is like the furthest thing away from your mind. And also you, sometimes I think people think they kind of can't have it or can't cultivate it until they're out of pain.
[00:29:25] Callie: Right. Exactly. And, I schedule something every day and I started doing it during my recovery, even if it was just going to a greenhouse in the winter and walking around for a minute and feeling warm smelling the earth. But I had an experience where 1 day, and this was when I was about 60, 70 percent recovered, I was just doing my thing and I came across my cat and he was looking super mellow. And he usually isn't mellow. He usually tolerates me at most and he just looked like he would be open to this idea of a snuggle. And so I went and I snuggled him and I just opened my senses. And to his smell, to how he sounded, to how he looked, to the feel of his fur underneath my cheek.
[00:30:16] And it was like, wow, there are things around me that can be so enjoyable. If I only look for them, if I only open my eyes. I love going outside now. I love like, what does it smell like today? What does it look like today? And I was never that way before. I was never in tune with my senses. But yeah, so yesterday I went to a greenhouse because it was cold. Today I'm going to go to 1 of my favorite stores and just window shop and look around, I probably won't buy anything, but it's just a place where I have fun and it brings me joy to be there in the space and see all the people shopping for their loved ones for the holidays. And yeah, so every day, every day.
[00:31:06] Deb: Every day. I love that. This is your not negotiable
[00:31:10] Callie: Every day my not negotiable is sunshine or going outside every day. I think that's really important and often underrated in the recovery process, fresh air and sunshine, super, super important and intentionally looking for something that feels good. Yeah. And even if you have a painful body, you can suck on a piece of chocolate and feel it melt in your mouth.
[00:31:35] And wow, that's one of the best sensations ever in my book. Yeah. You can intentionally look for opportunities to feel something that feels good in your body.
[00:31:46] Deb: So we're on these Facebook groups, this kind of body healing Facebook groups. Right. And I will often see you post about leaning into positive sensations, um, which I love.
[00:31:59] I'm always just like, every time I see you do that, I'm like YES!, and you've recorded some videos of doing somatic tracking with positive sensations. Right. And what I love about that is we think to get rid of pain, we have to focus on pain. Exactly. We have to focus on what hurts. And of course, like so many things in mind, body healing there are paradoxes and I like to share with people that we have a choice, we need to drive our brain, right? We don't just like get in a car and just let the car drive itself and maybe eventually we'll have self driving cars. I'm not getting in one. So we got to drive our brains and this kind of pivot and leaning into positive sensations is great.
[00:32:45] Now, I can understand if you don't kind of understand the arc of recovery that we are taking these actions and doing this on purpose, not just because it feels nice and it's a nice thing to do, but because 1, we're breaking, you know, we're like shifting pain behaviors, right?
[00:33:04] So we're breaking the predictive code, but also like on that bus ride in that moment when you're in your game and you're focusing on your game and then you notice, oh, that pain went away. That's also a really important message. So, those are the things that I want to say about that. But what would you like to say about, what you teach in terms of somatic tracking with positive sensations or just somantic tracking in general?
[00:33:34] Callie: Since, my training is in pain reprocessing therapy. Um, somatic tracking is a huge part of my practice. Um, it took me a long time before I could do somatic tracking without being guided by my therapist. Every time I would try pain would just flood in the minute I would turn my attention to the sensation in my body, it would just amplify to the point where it wasn't helpful. It was frightening.
[00:34:01] So I started out doing positive sensations practice as an alternative to that, because I couldn't do somatic tracking. So when people tell me I can't do somatic tracking, like, yeah, I get that. But what my therapist taught me was there's variations on somatic tracking that can make it so that you can adapt it to meet your needs. So one of the things that I like to do with people is say, okay, so you can't sit here for 10 minutes looking at a sensation in your body or an emotion in your body, that's okay, let's try this way.
[00:34:33] And I'm so, so, so grateful that number one, I worked with somebody who had enough knowledge about somatic tracking that they could teach me other ways to do it.
[00:34:42] And I am grateful that I can share that knowledge with other people. And I, I feel really strongly that this doesn't need to be a secret club with secret knowledge that only the people who can afford a PRT therapist should have access to. I really think that it's something that everybody should be able to do, or at least learn about.
[00:35:07] The Way Out does a good job of introducing the basics of somatic tracking, but it's not a book where it really goes into the subtleties of somatic tracking or ways to adapt it to meet your needs. So, it's 1 of the things that I love doing with clients is saying, okay so you have a situation where perhaps you have a short attention span, let's adapt it so that we're going to do it this way.
[00:35:29] Or say your pain is high let's use a cold pack. So you can have a sensory home base. So you can go look at your sensation and then you can go to the sensory home base and back to the sensation and then the sensory home base because sometimes people can't use their breath as a sensory home base, it's just not a powerful enough sensation and then they get stuck into their pain. So if you have another sensation, that's strong enough and tactile enough, their brains will latch onto that sensation.
[00:35:57] Deb: They know isn't dangerous and they know it's not, you know, a cold pack is not dangerous, right?
[00:36:02] Callie: Yeah, it's not going to hurt you.
[00:36:03] Deb: But it is a very like bright loud kind of feeling, right?
[00:36:09] Callie: But, you know, you're not going to get frostbite from the cold pack you put in your lunchbox. It's not going to happen. And so, you know, so there's a lot of different ways that somatic tracking can be adapted to meet people's needs. And I love doing that's my favorite. Favorite things is to find a way that people can practice somatic tracking. What's powerful about somatic tracking, Deb, is it's top down and bottom up at the same time. It's show and tell. You're telling your brain that it's safe with cognitive messages of safety.
[00:36:41] You're showing your brain that it's safe by looking at the sensation in your body with curiosity and interest. So you're giving this double whammy. It's it's so, so powerful and when people understand it. Um, subconscious brains learn best from experience, less from cognitive messaging. Then they're like, Oh, now I get why somatic tracking is important.
[00:37:04] So back to positive sensations, positive sensations is powerful because it's a show message. You're showing your brain that you're okay in this moment, you are okay. And then that affects predictive coding in the future. So it's super powerful. I love it.
[00:37:23] Deb: Amazing. Thank you for sharing all of that. I've definitely had clients in the past who were like, trying to do somatic tracking all day.
[00:37:32] And I was like, oh, no, we don't do that. This is a, you know, an experiential, actually, here's my question. How often do you suggest people do somatic tracking? Like, when and how often? What's the decision point?
[00:37:47] Callie: I like my clients if they, but this is always their choice. They're driving their own train. I, I'm just along for the ride. I like people to practice once a day if they're going to do like a 10 minute practice. It's a 10 minute practice. Do it once a day. Or if you're choosing to do short check in somatic trackings and do it 4 or 5 times a day and pair it with another activity.
[00:38:11] So either when you eat. Take a bathroom break, get a drink of water pair it so you don't forget to do it. The downside of doing small somatic tracking check ins that last 1 or 2 minutes is that people forget to do them or they don't do them frequently enough. But there's lots of ways to do it. Yeah, so 10 minutes.
[00:38:31] So, when I see guided somatic trackings that are like, 20 minutes, 30 minutes an hour, I'm like, no, you don't need to do that. You really don't.
[00:38:39] Deb: Sometimes I think we need less guiding. I agree of like, I, I want the imagery to come from people's own minds from their own subconscious. I don't want to be painting a picture for them.
[00:38:55] Callie: Right. Exactly. And I love What people come up with, I bet you do too. Okay. People's like, my pain is like a badger, you know, or some people are like, my pain is a heavy ball, you know, or, you know, it's just everybody's different. Everybody's brain works different. Some people see colors. Some people see shapes. Actually, some people hear noises from their sensation. So it's super interesting. I always love to see what my clients are going to come up with when they do somatic tracking. And I think a good guide for somatic tracking doesn't plant seeds. Yeah. They just say tell me about it.
[00:39:34] Deb: Uh, that's so important because when we're trying to follow somebody else's guided meditation, all kinds of things can come up. Needing to be perfect, having difficulty, like visualizing, you know, what somebody else is saying, right? So having this kind of subconscious conflict, uh, which then just makes more internal conflict.
[00:39:59] And that part of ourself that can be the witness to what we're experiencing gets muted. And I think that's the part that really needs to be drawn out and trusted and I communicated like, this is about building the internal communication system, not just being good at following along a, like, relaxation thing.
[00:40:26] Callie: Yeah, yeah. So I was working with a client, I think this was just last week and he didn't want to do somatic tracking. He wanted to try a visualization exercise and I was like, okay, I'm up for that. I said, so what do you want to do? And he says, I want to try visualizing my pain changing in some way.
[00:40:44] So, in other words, instead of just watching and observing, he wanted to kind of control and see if he could use his brain to change his pain. Sure. Let's do that. So, we decided to do color and he assigned red, kind of a pinkish red to the color of his pain. And he wanted to see if he could bring the pain level down by changing it from a warm color to a cool color. Great. Let's do that. So I'm guiding him along and going through the process of, you know, let's visualize adding just a little bit. A little bit of cool tone to that red that's going on. And then afterwards, he says, you know, I was way ahead of you. I was blue way before you got to blue. So I was like, well, okay, but I thought that was interesting.
[00:41:29] It kind of illustrates this point that sometimes when we're guiding, we can't see inside the other person's head. So whenever we're doing something where we're suggesting, you have to be kind of careful. You know, and yeah, so I thought it was really cute. He goes, you know, Callie, I was way ahead of you.
[00:41:44] It's like, okay. All right.
[00:41:46] Deb: That's so cute. Yeah.
[00:41:48] Callie: Sweet about it. Um, one of the thing that I really wanted to say too is, um, you're familiar with DIMS and SIMS, Mosely and Butler, and I really subscribe to that when it comes to healing this notion of danger in me, safety in me and the way to really start, I love the global perspective of you work to decrease the danger in me input in your nervous system and work to increase the safety in me input that's coming into your nervous system. And sometimes when I explain it like that to a client, they're like, oh, so this is why you want me to do more of this and less of that. And so a lot of times I do give my clients the DIMS and SIMS project to do, especially if they're struggling, trying to find some life balance to help them really identify oh, here's some of the things where my brain may be receiving danger. And here's some things I can do, places I could go, people I could be around, things I could say, things I could think, that might help increase feelings of safety. I think that's also a super powerful tool.
[00:42:51] Deb: And I love, I love that because it's a framework, it's a way to think about it.
[00:42:59] We can just give homework forever, but if we don't really, help people understand, and I think this is why pain neuroscience education is a part of the treatment protocol. Right. Right. We don't just. Yeah, we have to bring that top down awareness of the process and then, you know, they have to be the 1 willing to try new things. And I think it can be, you have to kind of move through fear in a very particular, like, you have to move through fear to get to that place where you realize, Oh, I actually can do these things. And that my fear of doing it is actually what's driving the pain and not movement itself.
[00:43:47] Callie: Right. Either the fear of the movement, the fear of the thing, the fear of the pain itself. I remember when I first started coaching, Dr. Schubiner told me, he said, find the fear, and treat that.
[00:43:59] And that's been a guiding principle, like finding, you know, what is it, where is the fear or the other messaging that is creating a sense of danger in your brain, right? Because it's not always fear. It can be anger or grief or loneliness. It can be other things too, but, but basically, you know, uh, find what feels unsafe and treat that.
[00:44:25] Deb: Yeah. I love it. It's good. It's great advice. If somebody is coming new to this work, whether they think of it as neuroplastic pain, persistent pain, primary pain, there's so many words. I mean, you said it before in this like conversation that you would have with yourself, which is that you can recover.
[00:44:47] That you won't always feel this way. Is there anything else that you think people would benefit from knowing as they're going into this process?
[00:44:57] Callie: 1 of the most common questions I get is how long is it going to take? And the answer is. As long as it takes, right? I think it's helpful for people to know that recovery is not linear.
[00:45:08] You're still gonna have good days and bad days, better days, worse days. And what you're looking for is a trajectory in a positive direction and the fact that you may have a symptom imperative or an extinction burst happen, in other words, you get more symptoms or worse symptoms. That doesn't necessarily mean you're not getting better.
[00:45:32] It can actually mean that you are improving and to look at those things as opportunities for corrective experiences. They don't have to be as significant as people make them sometimes.
[00:45:48] I think those are probably the 2 most important things that I tell people when they're first starting out is no pressure, no deadline, no timeline and outcome independence when it comes to that kind of stuff and not to get discouraged if things get hard sometimes.
[00:46:09] Deb: I were to ask you for a kind of a, a client story that you think would be a good lesson to share.
[00:46:14] Is there one that pops out?
[00:46:17] Callie: Oh, yeah, I'll share one. I can share one from a while ago. A lot of my clients are headache sufferers, migraine sufferers, and I went through 1 of my symptoms, during my years of pain was migraines. I went through a period of like, 4 or 5 years where I had migraine.
[00:46:36] And, I was working with a client who, was really accepting of everything she was learning and she caught on to the nuance pretty quick. There is kind of a sweet spot between doing enough and not doing enough and doing it with the right amount of intensity, uh, you know, you have to stay curious and kind of light, it needs to be approached with some lightness and curiosity to be most effective.
[00:47:06] And she got that right away and she started seeing a decrease in her headaches pretty quick. And she went on vacation, and I gave her some homework for her vacation. I hate using the word homework, but I did. She was going to the beach and I said, every day, I want you to go stand outside and dig your toes into that sand and listen to the waves, smell the breeze, listen for the birds, do whatever you need to do, but I just wanted you to stand out there for at least 10 minutes every day and just soak it in. And when she got back, she said, Callie I didn't have any pain on my trip, and I was like, well, how about that go figure. You know, vacations tend to be times where people either get worse pain or better pain, depending on how they're wired.
[00:47:55] But then she did something really, really interesting. She kind of flipped the script on her migraines when she'd start to feel a sensation in her head she'd say, Oh, what if it's not a migraine and just go do whatever she was doing. I think she was the person that probably got over migraines the fastest that I've ever seen.
[00:48:17] Two months, they were gone and she did it by saying, well, what if it's not a migraine? And I was like, wow, I wish that would work for everyone. It's a really strong lesson in just having the right mindset.
[00:48:33] Deb: I had a client early on who got over her migraines in three weeks and I was just like, what are you kidding me? She had them for 20 years before. I love stories like this, not because everybody should get over everything really fast, but it shows me as a coach, like, I don't know, I don't know how quickly or how long it's going to take somebody. So I try to really meet everybody with this, like this frame of possibility.
[00:49:08] I really understand it's possible, but I don't have a magic ball in front of me that's going to have you and your exact symptoms and it's not really even about the symptoms themselves. The symptoms don't tell you how long or how short it's going to take to recover get better or see a change. But I love that she just was like, so blase.
[00:49:33] Callie: Yeah. It's not in my brain, I'm just going to do my thing. Go live her life and she started really living and it was, it was, it was quite amazing. And I would have liked to, I would like to think that it was my coaching, but really it, it was her. She did the mindset work, which is sometimes the hardest part.
[00:49:56] Deb: Sure. I think as coaches. We can, we can teach, we can listen, we can reflect. I do a lot of reflecting for people because sometimes they rush, Oh, I'm going to make a funny analogy. Here's a funny metaphor. I think of myself, like all of a sudden the word, uh, truffle pig popped up in my head.
[00:50:18] So I'm like a truffle pig and just like rooting around. Like I'm looking for something very specific. You don't have to be a truffle pig. I just, I don't know that popped in my head, but I was like, when people are telling me back the story of their week or anything, I am looking for certain words, cues, experiences that show me that change is happening.
[00:50:44] And oftentimes I will blow that up, make that scene, slow it down, really start to help people see it's working. This change is working. The brain is experiencing things differently.
[00:50:59] Callie: Do you find that sometimes you see improvement before your clients see it?
[00:51:04] Deb: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, when you're in pain, the pain organizes your day for you sometimes. And that just becomes a habituated practice, so it's hard to let that go.
[00:51:19] Callie: Yeah, there was a time when my husband, during my recovery. So this is when I was actively really trying to get better using mind body approach.
[00:51:31] And he would put me in my coat in the middle of winter. I mean, literally put me in my coat and boots and drag me outside on days where I was just like, I don't want to, I don't want to, and, I really have to say that it, it's important to have love, care, support, positivity in your space. And when people are struggling, and they don't have that, it breaks my heart and it would be the most beautiful thing if everyone could afford to have a coach. To have that positivity, that encouragement, that kindness, that compassion in their corner.
[00:52:13] Because I think for me, having that from my family was really instrumental in helping me get better. But not everybody has that.
[00:52:22] Deb: No, not everybody has that. Although that kind of loops me back into these Facebook groups. Okay. That I think do offer that kind of reflection.
[00:52:34] Callie: They can. So it depends on the group too. There are groups on Facebook that are filled with catastrophic thinkers, worst case scenario. I'm never going to get better. We're here to vent...
[00:52:51] Deb: I think this is an important distinction.
[00:52:53] Callie: Yes, there are
[00:52:54] Deb: Facebook groups that are not
[00:52:56] Callie: good to be in. Not helpful that are actually sad places to be in because they're places full of hopeless people who don't see a way to recover. And they're there to commiserate in their sad state of being.
[00:53:14] So a better choice is to choose a group that focused on healing, that supportive, that's well moderated. Yeah. And it's super important. So I took, about 6 months off from the Tell Me About Your Pain facebook group, I stepped down as the administrator and just said, I need a break.
[00:53:39] I just have started moderating again. I went back in the role of moderator as opposed to administrator and 1 of the things that people don't see are all of the questions that we don't let people post. That have a lot of language that some people might find discouraging or unhelpful. We try not to let people post things that are advertisements for their businesses in general, because we don't want that to be that kind of a space you want to be a support space. We don't want it to be a business space. Try to make it a place where, comments are watched and moderated so, when people suggest interventions that aren't in line with a mind body approach, take those out. If people are negative or unkind, we send them somewhere else.
[00:54:36] So,, I think moderation, having good moderators, and there are some really fantastic groups out there that have good moderation ,that are safe places for people to be because people in chronic pain don't need drama.
[00:54:52] Deb: Well, when we think about fear and amplification, and how symptoms emerge and kind of the social contagion of symptoms like we're highly suggestible, and what people are experiencing is real, but we know, and from your story and from so many people's stories, how we get out of pain really involves this kind of shifting of our attention and focus. It is nice that there are these places, that are free where you can come and get support. And also 1 of the things I like about it is I can be in there and offer support for other people. And that always makes me happy when I can say something, have a turn of a phrase, ask a question in a way that helps somebody uncover something.
[00:55:43] And I love recovery stories from people that I would never know about. So, you know, people of all ages dealing with all different kinds of things for me, that's also so motivating. I have a podcast about like how to use recovery stories for your own recovery, because sometimes people, you know, be very discouraging when you're like, I'm still in pain and this person got better.
[00:56:11] But I think for me it's proof that this process works.
[00:56:15] Callie: Yeah, I was going to say recovery stories were a huge part of my, my, especially the 1st, part of my journey, because, you know. And that's sometimes the hardest thing to grasp on to is this belief that I can get better.
[00:56:31] There are are people that I come across and I have a few clients this way who think that they're unique that they're different than everybody else and that everybody else gets better but I won't. And so having recovery stories, I think, can be really a source of hope for people who need hope.
[00:56:54] And 1 of the most common questions we get in the Facebook group is, my diagnosis is this has anybody else recovered from this diagnosis? And they're not my favorite kinds of posts, but at the same time, there is people looking for validation that what they're going through is real and what they're going through can have an outcome that isn't catastrophic, sad, debilitating, whatever word you want to use. They can have a good outcome to their lives and they can get their lives back. I think that recovery stories are instrumental with that. And it's very, very powerful.
[00:57:35] Deb: Amazing. I agree. In the post that do go through, I think that there are just a lot of nice people. Sometimes it's great to go someplace and be cheered on. Right? You're like, I sat in a chair today and, you know, like, yeah, there's a lot of places. Nobody's going to be like, oh, my God. That's amazing.
[00:57:54] Callie: Yeah, Tell Me About Your Pain has got almost 15, 000 members in 15, 000 nice people. That's cool. I know.
[00:58:02] Deb: Yes. And thank you for all of your hard work and labor, moderating and taking care of the people inside of that community. I know that that's hard work.
[00:58:13] Callie: It can be, and it can be emotionally taxing work. It can also be. Occasionally, there's people who don't appreciate what you're doing, and they certainly let, you know, and that's always like hurts that hurts, you know, but, um, for the most part, people are absolutely lovely and very, very thankful for the moderators and administrators in that group.
[00:58:41] We've really gone out of our way to choose moderators and administrators in that group who have mind body practices, who have been trained, who have experience. So there's nobody in there in the role of moderator or administrator who doesn't know their stuff. You're not getting poor advice. And that to me is really, really important that people can get solid help that they're not getting somebody's opinion.
[00:59:12] They're getting, this is, this is how it's done.
[00:59:15] Deb: Yeah, that's incredible. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to say?
[00:59:24] Callie: I don't think so. This has been really fun.
[00:59:27] Deb: It's been so much fun. I miss you, meetings with you. I mean not that meetings, I know, are fun, but we would get to see each other.
[00:59:37] Callie: I know that was such a great learning time for me.
[00:59:43] Yeah. It was amazing, and I am grateful for Lin Health for giving me that opportunity and that training and the cohort of individuals that we were with that we were just as lovely synergy of energy and thought. And, yeah, it was amazing. So it was a great, great experience.
[01:00:02] Deb: So how can people find you? Where in the world or internet are you?
[01:00:09] Callie: Where in the world am I? I don't do a lot of promotion or social media promotion at this point. If people want to work with me, they can join the Tell Me About Your Pain Facebook group and then if they like what they see, if they see me posting things that resonate with them, or if they find any of my recordings to be helpful, they can certainly send me a direct message using Facebook Messenger. Um, my email is coach Callie K. So. All in word, C O A C H C A L L I E K at gmail. com. They can also email me. They can also work with me through the pain psychology center.
[01:00:53] So they can go through that intake process at the pain psychology center and just say, I saw Callie on a podcast and I'd really like to work with her and they'll send you my way.
[01:01:05] Deb: Great. Is there any particular pain niche that you love to work with
[01:01:13] Callie: I'll tell you what my pain niche has become, because a lot of the practitioners at the Pain Psychology Center are young.
[01:01:20] Many of them in their late twenties, early thirties. A lot of clients who are of a certain age tend to get funneled towards me, especially women in peri and post menopause. So my clientele is primarily women and primarily women, 40 and over. That doesn't mean I wouldn't love to treat younger clients.
[01:01:48] And I love to work with men as well. As a former high school teacher I think it would be wonderful to work with teens and youth, but that opportunity just hasn't really come my way, but it is interesting to see how my practice has kind of become this practice, full of women of a certain age. And it doesn't matter, what your symptoms are, the treatment is still the same. I have a lot of clients with pelvic pain, IBS, I work with a lot of headache clients
[01:02:24] I don't know if you've ever noticed this Deb, but a lot of times women who get more stress related, persistent symptoms, it's often headache. And men, it's more often backache.
[01:02:35] I mean, that doesn't mean that men don't get headaches and women don't have back aches, but women of a certain age come and see me. I'd love to work with you.
[01:02:44] Deb: Fantastic. So important. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:02:49] Postmenopause here. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your personal story what I really think is hope because just your story of having such a dramatic change in your pain and physiological experience and being able to get back to things in your life after 20 something years.
[01:03:15] What I think is really interesting is like, you're doing things now at your age that were impossible to do when you were younger. And I'm always like, ha ha see aging doesn't necessarily mean that there's this downward decline.
[01:03:35] Callie: That's right. And also no regrets about what I missed or may have missed. Mm. Oh my God.
[01:03:42] No regrets. That's amazing. No. The past is in the past and that's a part of this whole process too. It's just like letting go of the anger, the frustration, the rage at losing years of your life. You know, you just kind of have to say it was what it was and now it is what it is. And life is good.
[01:04:01] Deb: I think that's the perfect place to stop. I'm going to share all of your details in the show notes and I'm going to stop recording.
[01:04:10] Callie: Well, thank you for having me. I enjoyed it so much.