Elly: 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to our Shame-Free Sundays series. This is a part of our podcast A Better Way to Heal when Faith Meets Therapy. I am Ellie and this is Harmony. Harmony is my Shame no More Bear and she is here to help us talk about all things shame. Now, if you don't know whether or not you deal with shame, I have a shame-free quiz on my website. It is wwwEleanorBrownCounselingcom and I will drop that link to. I will actually drop the link to the landing page for the shame-free quiz in the comments, because I guess I hide things I don't really mean to guys. I'm sorry. I'm still learning how to do all this techie stuff. Harmony can help me with the shame stuff, but she hasn't figured out how to help me with the techie stuff. So here we are.

Elly: 1:01

So Harmony and I wanted to talk about something that has been coming up for me lately. I have been in a lot of pain and I'm having all these shoulder issues and I have a history of and I was in a car accident many, many years ago, and sometimes some of this pain comes from that, and whenever I start dealing with chronic shame, it reminds me about a story that we're going to, harmony and I want to share with you a little bit about. So when we talk about this, we're going to talk about the window of tolerance and I'm going to just share this quick story. Harmony is going to help me illustrate the point, and then I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the window of tolerance and really how the things that we've been through in our past, how they affect us and sometimes have very long-lasting, even physical, pain. So here we are, we are going to get started. So here's Harmony. And Harmony is asking why does it feel like some days even the tiniest thing sets me off, like really I can go from zero to 100 in 5.2 seconds. Well, you know, harmony, that's a really great question. Imagine your emotional window is super small that day and maybe you're already at an eight or nine on your window. You're just like I cannot. I cannot deal with just anything extra, because the normal day-to-day things are already have me overwhelmed. So the least little thing that might happen on a day like that, harmony, is going to put you completely outside of your window of tolerance and you're going to become angry, anxious, those kind of things, and we'll talk about that. But that's kind of what. What happens there on that upper end of the window tolerance. And then harmony says we'll bring harmony a little closer so I don't have to turn around and look so much, because it does hurt the shoulder a little bit. Funny, I did all of this only to hold Harmony. Sorry about that, harmony, I just put you on this platform and then we couldn't even stay there. Yeah, I'm just, you know, just being us, right, harmony? Okay, all right. So what about Harmony?

Elly: 3:45

Asked about what about those days when I feel completely numb and disconnected, like I'm floating through the day. Nothing bothers me, I don't feel. You know. Oh, did we have a day today? I completely forgot what I did all day long today.

Elly: 4:03

So, harmony, on those days you may be what we call a little bit dissociated. Your window of tolerance you might be like a two or a three. Maybe something has happened that has overwhelmed your system and your brain said I'm going to take a hike for a little while because this doesn't feel too comfortable. So you go, hang out in this zoned out, this zoned out space. So on these days, sometimes, if something comes along, it might take a lot more for me to even get to the upper end of the window of tolerance because I'm way down here in the two or three zones. So it takes a lot for me to get. It takes a lot for me to get on the scale of 10, right, or even eight or nine, because I'm only at a two or three.

Elly: 5:05

So why did we even talk about any of this? Well, I want to tell you about a time when oh and I've got to do this quickly I was very much not that the doctor meant to shame me, but I was told, because I have a history of childhood abuse, that I don't have pain tolerance, that, or I have a very minimal pain tolerance, and that made me really feel like what's wrong with me, that I can't handle pain, and that it's not that that doctor was incorrect, but there are more studies and there's a lot of research that says that people that have had a history of chronic, of some kind of trauma, they do have a lower pain threshold for some instances, because they're already so vigilant, they're already on the upper end of that window of tolerance, and so what happens there is, if you're on the lower end, though, um, the pain tolerance is much greater, and there's more studies out that are showing that. So we kind of go off of the studies. Even the medical doctors go off of the studies, and the studies have shown traditionally that people with the history of childhood abuse do tend to have a lower pain threshold. But newer studies are now showing that that's not always the case. So we do have clients that come into our office that are dissociated and those kind of things, and they may tend to have, where they deal with, more chronic pain because they it takes a lot for them to even notice that they're in pain because they dissociated from it so much.

Elly: 7:07

And if that's you, I just want you to know that that may be what's going on. If you may have, you may have chronic pain and it may be that, um, that the pain is overwhelming your already overtaxed system. Not that you have a low pain tolerance, because I think that that can just seem um, trifle I don't know if that's the right word to say it, but I mean it does feel like it's uh can almost say well, what's wrong with me? I, I can't handle pain and that's a that leaves us in a state of shame. And it's not that you can't handle pain, is that your system is already overtaxed and so you throw a little bit extra on there and that's what makes it, that's what makes it above going high, and that's. It seems like there's a lower pain tolerance, but really your system's already in pain before we even get there.

Elly: 8:04

I know I'm past my seven minutes today, guys, and if you guys need to log off, I totally understand. Come back in, watch it later. Um, we're only going to go for another minute, I promise. But you know, it's just. This is such an important thing for us to know that if we, if we deal with pain a lot of times I mean to where I was dealing with migraines literally every day, I mean every single day, I had a migraine. Some days it was a two, some days it was an eight, and on the eight days I struggled to move.

Elly: 8:38

And so when you have somebody that says it's because you have a lower pain tolerance, I was like but I'm in pain every single day, and what happens when you're in pain every single day, like that, is you learn to dissociate from it and so that you can tolerate more pain. And so who was right? The doctor, I mean, she had a point, she was 100% from. You know a lot of the research. That's what it says. But the research is incomplete.

Elly: 9:07

And just know you know you and you know your body and whether or not it's because your system is already taxed or if it's because you've dissociated and you're actually have more pain than the average person, just get to know you and find a provider who will be trauma informed and that will listen to you. If your provider doesn't listen to you, maybe it's not the right provider. Maybe you try finding a provider that will listen to you. It's so important to have somebody in your team, your medical team, your mental health team, all of those things. It's so important to have people that will listen to you and if you say, hey, that doesn't feel right, they'll talk to you about it and really just help you. It's so important to be informed.

Elly: 9:53

Guys, I hope this all made sense. If you want more information, please feel free to message me. I will try to get you as much information as I can. I do work throughout the day with clients. I'm not super responsive to messaging, but I will try to get back to you as quickly as I can. So Harmony and I are going to check out and we're probably going to watch a football game tonight. Well, we like football, so we're going to watch football probably all day long, but this is a Sunday tradition for us. I'm not going to do any pottery today because I am in pain and we are going to go veg for the rest of the evening, so thank you all for staying with us for a few minutes running late. Again, if you haven't taken our shame quiz, we will link the landing page and the comments, and it's my website is wwweleanorbrowncounselingcom. Thank you for watching us. We really appreciate you being here. If you enjoyed the episode, like subscribe, share with a friend and join us next time. Thank you, bye.