I’ve had plantar’s fasciitis, a common foot problem, for 9 months. I’ve tried accupuncture, stretching, a night splint, a day splint, orthotics, physical therapy, and not walking. My right heel often hurts a fair bit. My left heel hurts a little. If I walk to work and back, a mile each way, for two days in a row, I have to be off my feet for several days. It’s not fatal. It’s not the worst pain in the world. And it’s irritating and a bit disheartening to be restricted in walking, dancing, and even standing around.
I’ve studied chronic pain, and have worked effectively with many clients to lessen or even eradicate it. I’ve used hypnosis, from my early training, and the Wilson & Tinker’s phantom limb pain protocol, published in EMDR Solutions to good avail. I understand that when something has hurt for a while, your brain sends pain signals even when the body part is in no real distress. I wondered if it was happening to me.
In November, I attended David Grand’s Brainspotting class in Boulder. This offshoot of EMDR, appears to access deeply into the not-so-verbal back of the brain and to both move trauma and create body-based immediate resourcing. I decided to try this out at home. I’ve gotten pretty good at Brainspotting and I’ve always had a talent for multi-tasking, so I asked my husband (not a therapist, Doug is professional photographer) to assist me while I set up the Brainspotting protocol, put one of David Grand’s "biolateral" CD’s to play through a headset (thus getting bilateral stimulation through the ears) and handed Doug the collapsible pointer, extended. The target, a la the phantom pain protocol, was the beginning of the pain. The subjective units of distress was 5/10, the current pain was about a 4 1/2. I felt sad and defeated in my core. The Validity of Cognition on "I have choices" was 1 out of 7.
By covering one eye and checking the distress level, and then the other, I figured that I felt more distressed when looking out my left eye. By directing Doug to move the pointer around, I found that the most distressed spot was on the midline, focused slightly towards the middle of my face. I started blinking rapidly, as soon as I focused from that spot. We were off and running. I twitched. I shook. My feet hurt alot. They felt nothing. They heated up, feeling like they were on an almost too hot skillet. The emotional distress dropped to 0. My brain reviewed many disappointing visits with the podiatrist, painful moments, frustrating choices. (No dancing, no hiking, no Mexican vacation.) My feet twitched, my stomach gurgled. That spot ran out and we found another, in the same eye, and I twitched some more. The foot pain returned. It left. It stabbed. It lessened to a 1 out of 10. 55 minutes had passed.
I switched eyes. Doug found the "happiest" spot in the right eye, and stayed with that for 5 minutes until I felt filled with energy, groundedness, and contentedness. The pain wavered from 0 to 1. It has wavered between 0 and 1 all day today.
I think that I have a real foot problem. My skinny feet, high arches, habit of coming down hard on my heels predispose me to this issue. I think that my brain learned to send out pain messages and to over-react to slight messages from my feet. I think I’m training it to stop doing that. I’d rather be completely recovered and I’m happy to feel I have choices (7) and to have less pain. I’ll keep you posted.
Robin: I was in attendance at Dr. Grand’s eyespotting training. Am glad to read of your success with this. I have found EMDR to be so not great when treating chronic pain, and so this is good news that brainspotting may be more effective. Would like to hear more about using it for this. Appears to me that brainspotting has a deeper emotional and somatic depth than EMDR. My patients like it, I think they perceive it as very powerful. thanks
Hi John,
EMDR, rightly directed, can be great for chronic pain. Mark Grant writes about it. You probably know Tinker & Wilson’s phantom pain protocol. By starting with when the pain started (the accident or surgery) then clearing all the memories of the pain and all the losses associated with the amputation, the pain often goes away within 4 sessions, especially if it’s lower limb pain. Hands are harder, because they are more wired in more places. Read the chapter for more. I’ve used the PLP protocol to good avail on all kinds of chronic pain, not just PLP.
That said, I think Brainspotting has the option of being faster and deeper. My experiment had an “n” of 1, and I’m a very contaminated subject. My brain automatically went to when the pain started, all the losses, (dancing at Folklife, walking to work, walking with my husband to count the kinds of birds around Greenlake, sigh . . ), all the things I’ve tried to get better. But having taught the PLP protocol, I was programmed to go there.
Nevertheless, The pain is not going over a “2”, even though I’ve been walking to the store from work every day (4 blocks, roundtrip.) And it hurts in a different place, closer to where it “ought” to. The pain is not being referred anymore.
I think that I processed faster than I would have with straight EMDR, but again, I had that expectation. I’d love to see what other Brainspotters are doing, and it they’re targetting pain and it goes away, or way down. Please post and let us know!
From what I have read about this condition chronic pain affects the brain also causes imminent depression
Nevertheless, The pain is not going over a “2”, even though I’ve been walking to the store from work every day (4 blocks, roundtrip.) And it hurts in a different place, closer to where it “ought” to. The pain is not being referred anymore.
Hello well the cronic pain is quite bad cause feel pain all the time is not a nice think so if you suffer of this problem you better look for assistance .
Chronic pain’s impact on cognition is an under-researched area, but several tentative conclusions have been published. Most chronic pain patients complain of cognitive impairment, such as forgetfulness, difficulty with attention, and difficulty completing tasks. Objective testing has found that people in chronic pain tend to experience impairment in attention, memory, mental flexibility, verbal ability, speed of response in a cognitive task, and speed in executing structured tasks.