Complex Regional Pain Syndrome : Your Path To Healing

Someone pointed me to the concept of target fixation, a psychological phenomenon well known to the fighter pilots and race car drivers, or anybody else who operates fast-moving vehicles in stressful situations. They get fixated on the oncoming obstacle so much that they end up running into it. Their anxious mind can only focus on…

I am a big fan of the podcast Hidden Brain. It discusses various subjects of psychology and even had couple excellent episodes about chronic pain and the power of placebo effect, which I found very relevant to the subject of my blog. One of the recent episodes was about mistakes and the learning process, which…

“You are not what happened to you, you are what you choose to become.”  Carl Jung If only cultivating and integrating our memory was as easy as eating a madeleine cake like Proust! According to Carl Jung, one way to access repressed personal memories, is through the collective consciousness found in works of art.  Since…

If anybody told me at the peak of my CRPS illness that I could rid myself of it by sitting on the couch and “doing nothing”, I would have been infuriated. I believed that I needed some serious medical intervention! My pain wasn’t just invisible pain, my hands were swollen, my hand muscles were contracted…

“Nostalgia… it’s delicate but potent.”  Don Draper, “Mad Men” “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” which I’m currently revisiting, is a semi autobiographical novel, in which essentially nothing happens, but author Betty Smith’s vivid, bittersweet,  recollections of life in the  the 1910’s tenements, transports us back to a specific time…the same milieu of my grandmother who…

I recently got involved in a debate among several chronic pain sufferers who are struggling with the mindbody approach. Having tried for a few months, with only a minor success, one of them posed the question: am I not working hard enough in my mindbody practice to be able to heal? Should I see more…

“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.”  Anthony de Mello So often I am taken aback by the question, “Are you fully recovered?” from TMS sufferers, and even my own coaching clients…

One may ask, what is the connection between purpose in life and chronic pain? Well, chronic pain can easily become an all-consuming existence, a black hole of a kind – unless you find something that gives you purpose and takes you away from chronic pain.   This point is supported by evidence from many of…

Do you avoid conflict at all costs? Conform to the expectations of others? Worry about the needs and preferences of others above your own? Are you over accommodating or adaptive for fear of ruffling feathers? Have trouble asserting yourself or setting boundaries? Do you have difficulty saying “No” or disagreeing with others? Do you chastise…