Conclusion:

Maintain Your Gains
Now and in the Future

The skills that you have learned from the ABC method in this book will enable you to rebalance your life and learn to trust your body/mind’s inherent inner healing resources for reclaiming your life from chronic pain.

An important part of this skillset is the ability to maintain your balance in the coming months and years as you experience inevitable life cycles of change. My goal for you is to continually practice the skills you learn in the ABC program, so they become ingrained habits. I want to make sure that what you have been working so hard to achieve becomes a sustainable lifestyle change, rather than a temporary improvement.

We have all heard this story. Every New Year, about half of all Americans vow to either lose weight, stop smoking, exercise regularly, or make other behavioral changes. By February many are backsliding, and by the following December, most are back where they started. Why does this happen? It’s usually not a matter of willpower or laziness. Rather, life happens in the meantime! Unforeseen financial pressures happen. A pain flare gets you off track. Close friends and other supporters leave town, or are otherwise preoccupied. Most people tend to resist change, so inertia sets in. And many pain sufferers tend to postpone practicing their skills as they start to feel better.

To counteract the natural inertia that fights change, I will present some support skills for your continued progress. These additional skills will help you to solidify your follow-through with the ABC program as a permanent lifestyle change.

Pay Very Close Attention
to Even Small Improvements

There are various reasons why you might not notice small improvements in your pain. One reason is that so many people learn to disconnect from feeling discomfort, so they don’t feel when the discomfort starts to decrease a little. When you don’t want to accept anything less than “having the pain disappear,” noticing that the intensity has reduced from a 5 to a 3 may not seem very encouraging.

And yet—paying attention to these small improvements is part of what reduces the hopelessness that often accompanies chronic pain! This information is vital because so many chronic pain sufferers go through long periods of time when their symptoms feel unchanged for what feels like months. This is why so many of my patients with chronic pain feel frustrated and hopeless by the time they get to me.

When you notice the pain has reduced from a 5 to a 3, this is a golden opportunity for you pay very close attention to it. This is your chance to ask important questions—yet another dimension of Awareness from the ABC model. Take this opportunity to expand your awareness of what healing is like.

Fill in the following questions in your ABC journal when the pain has improved even a little:

•When I’m feeling better, how has my emotional state changed?

•How have my thoughts changed?

•How has my feeling of hopefulness for the future changed?

•Is my motivation for practicing self-care any different now?

•Do I view myself as a person any differently now?

Reward Yourself for Small
Improvements Along the Way

Jonah suffered with chronic neck and shoulder pain. He committed to regular daily practice of the skills in the ABC program, including relaxation exercises, Limbic Retraining, physical exercise, and stress management. He acknowledged feeling better, but wasn’t really sure exactly how much he had improved.

“It’s hard to tell how my progress is going,” Jonah complained. “It’s almost like I’m swimming in the ocean—I’m moving along and swimming a long way, but it’s hard to tell how far I’ve come because when I look for my bearings, all I can see is more and more water on the horizon.”

Jonah’s concerns are very common among pain sufferers. The healing process is a marathon, not a sprint, and sometimes day-to-day changes may be hard to recognize.

And when you don’t notice these changes, it’s easier for fatigue, cynicism, and hopelessness to kick in. This is why it’s very important to both recognize and reward each forward step.

For example, if you are starting breathing exercises, start with small goals first. Perhaps aim for doing the Somatic Focus Breathing exercise twice daily for one week. Mark your progress daily in a journal. And then when you have met that goal, acknowledge this as important! And give yourself a small reward. Something that is enjoyable for you. Perhaps put some dollars aside for a short getaway. Go to a music or dance performance you enjoy. Psychological research tells us that these positive reinforcements provide encouragement for keeping up your practice, serve as a tangible reminder that you are making progress, and make it more likely that you will maintain these practices regularly.

Keep Practicing

The more consistent your practice is, the easier it will be for new behaviors and skills to take hold. This is what best supports the development of positive neuroplasticity. For example, if you are practicing stretches for your neck and back, commit the same regular times every day for at least two weeks to do those stretches. Once you prioritize it by committing a time slot in your schedule, the learning cues like time of day and location are the same every time. It makes it far more likely that it will get done. Doing various practices at the same time and place also supports the development of new behavior, skills, and even neural connections. This will get easier with time, and the benefits for your healing and relief will grow as your practice becomes more of a part of your daily routine.

Build Resilience

Resilience is the capacity to respond well in the face of adversity such as tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress (including workplace or financial worries, serious health problems, family and relationship problems). Being resilient doesn’t mean you never go through periods of feeling drained, depressed, or discouraged. The road to resilience often involves going through emotional distress initially. However, resilience is a common attribute—one that can be improved by anyone by learning new thoughts, behaviors, and ways of responding emotionally.

What do we know about resilient people? They tend to exhibit the following characteristics:

•They can make realistic plans and then carry these plans through

•They have skills for clear communication and problem-solving

•They have skills for identifying and managing strong feelings

•They have realistic confidence in their strengths and abilities

Practicing the skills and strategies in the ABC program will help you build resilience. In particular, the following skills and attitudes will help you increase your resilience:

•Increase self-awareness. Awareness is one of the cornerstones of the ABC approach. Resilient people are aware of their situation, their physical and emotional responses, and of people around them. Developing your “awareness muscles” (cognitive, somatic, emotional) will improve your resilience.

•Accept occasional setbacks. Setbacks occur regularly in everyone’s healing journey. Accepting this leads you toward developing better coping skills over time. This will reduce the hypersensitivity of your nervous system that aggravates your chronic pain.

•Develop optimal control in situations when it is possible for you to do something constructive. This is important because we know that pain sufferers can experience benefit when they feel that there is something to be done that can help, no matter how small.

•Establish strong social support, which may include family, friends, coworkers, and even online support groups. This doesn’t mean that you must continually hang out with large groups of people, if that doesn’t fit your style. Rather, it means identifying what level of support feels optimal for you, and then taking action to seek that out.

•Be open to professional help. It builds resilience to know that, in addition to the help of friends and family, you can avail the help of psychologists who are specifically trained to deal with demanding, stressful situations.

•Finally, one last pointer to help you maintain your gains into the future: Take a day off. As I like to remind my patients in the ABC program, “Everything in moderation—including moderation!” You will feel less resistance to a change plan that is flexible. Every seven or eight days, take a day off from working on any of the ABC exercises if you’d like.

Closing Thoughts—
and New Beginnings

We have reached the end of this book, but it is only the beginning of your journey for lifelong healing from chronic pain. By learning and applying the skills and tools gained in this book, you are now embarking on a path of dynamic self-care to ensure vibrant good health now and in the future.

In your personalized ABC program, you have taken several steps to empower yourself. You have gained awareness of your body, your emotions, your stresses, and your diet. You have learned to balance your posture, your nervous system, your diet, your work schedule, and your posture. You have started to cultivate your innate self-healing capacities through self-hypnosis, physical exercise, and dealing effectively with troubling emotions.

You have brought together your own healing team of trusted health professionals to rely on for guidance and “course correction” on the healing journey.

You’ve also learned to ensure ongoing progress by setting specific goals and intentions for enduring lifestyle change. As we discussed earlier in the “Cultivate” section, the greatest performers in sports and the arts know that their progress never stands still. Baseball superstars continue to work at batting practice. World-class pianists keep practicing their scales. The greatest professional ballet dancers stretch and practice their craft daily. No one is ever done in their quest for mastery—it’s a continual practice. Whether it’s setting consistent time for calming exercises, practicing self-hypnosis regularly, taking time for stretching, or making beneficial dietary changes, you now know the importance of setting small, tangible goals, and acknowledging and rewarding yourself for small steps of improvement. You now know that the trajectory of healing progress is usually “two steps forward, one step back,” and have a plan for dealing with the inevitable occasional setback or flare episode.

Know that this book is not only a roadmap to healing—it is also a trusted guide that you can refer back to over and over, whenever you need a little refresher, a little reminder, or a little encouragement and reassurance. Know that countless patients have successfully navigated the path to healing from chronic pain using the ABC method, and you are on your way as well!

Remember: the reward in committing to ongoing practice of the ABC method is the profound hopefulness and satisfaction that comes from unleashing the most powerful medicine of all—your own innate self-healing resources.