After receiving my certification in Pain Reprocessing Therapy, I went back and reviewed all the materials I had read in the past on the subject.
This concept stated by Alan Gordon is an insight and tool we can apply to our healing today.
Adapting an attitude of outcome independence can help us create safety when the brain is perceiving a threat.
"An outcome independent stance means that patients are not categorizing 'good days and bad days' depending on their pain."
This is like giving fuel to the fire and we raise the stress response inside our nervous system. We are all do this without thinking and as an automatic 'checking in' hoping to have the outcome we want. This continues the cycle of anxiety, threat, symptoms, etc
Outcome Dependence is having expectations that everything you are doing is to lower the sensations or change the symptoms. Yes, this is intuiative and automatic.. who doesn't want our pain to change?
Here lies the problem and the solution.
#1 It is important to expose ourselves to our sensations and teach our brain to feel safe though only through the lens of... witnessing, observing, non judgemental and in a non reacting manner.
So how do we do what seems counterintuative and opposite of what comes natural.. 'to check in with what is going on'
#2 To understand how your brain works.. you as the navigator can change your brain; it has been proven and you are literally learning a new habit, a new language of communication with your body and mind.
Why is so hard and why must one suffer in the process?
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