Ep #325 It doesn’t have to be that way – dealing with chronic pain and aging

Jill: Welcome to The Run Your Best Life edition of the Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a GenX woman whose brain still feels like a member of the breakfast club but the person you see in the mirror is starting to look a lot like your parents, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Jill Angie and we’re gonna dive into all the weird shit Gen X women are facing right now, so you feel less alone and a lot more empowered. Are you ready? Let’s fucking go!

Hello, my friends and welcome back to the Run Your Best Life series where I talk to experts in the field on issues affecting Gen X women. Now today we’re going to chat with the absolutely fabulous Deb Malkin about the aches and pains that sometimes come with aging and how to make it easier on yourself.

Now if you don’t know Deb, she is a feminist and a master certified mind body coach who specializes in using the tools of neuro and bioplasticity and consciously curious hypno-coaching to help people unlearn pain and the emotional stress symptoms that come along with it in order to feel better and pursue their amazing lives.

Deb has actually helped clients recover from back pain and migraines and Fibromyalgia and GI pain, and much, much more. And you’re definitely going to want to tune in to this episode.

Now real quick, before we start, if you are a member of Run Your Best Life, don’t forget to download the podcast companion from the members area to help you go deeper into this episode.

Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

All right, my friends. So, we are gonna jump right in with the one and only Deb Malkin. Hello, Deb. It’s so awesome to have you here again.

Deb: Hello. Hi, I’m happy to be back.

Jill: Yes. I’m happy to have you back too. And I feel like we should have started the recording about 10 minutes ago because we were like chatting about some really fun stuff, but we’re going to start it now.

And so today we’re talking kind of about aging and chronic pain and kind of like how we can manage this appearance of pain in our lives that may have not always been there. That has sort of like come, come up when. We hit our forties or our fifties and I think a lot of Gen X women are kind of experiencing this now and it’s a new thing.

So, I guess what I, where I’d like to start is it’s just like a simple question. Do you think it’s true that most people experience more aches and pains as they get older and is that inevitable?

Deb: It’s such an interesting question, like the way that you phrased it, like, is it true that it’s inevitable?

And I don’t, I don’t know that, but what I do know is that there is almost nothing I think that is inevitable about aging in a way that we can quantify it. Like at this age, you’re going to feel this. And at this age, you’re going to feel this. And what we know about how pain works and how the brain works is there’s a, there’s a perception problem with pain and, and what we feel and how we kind of like the, the subconscious, we can go into kind of like amplifying or rightening an experience of physiological experience, or we can kind of train our brain away from it. So, in a lot of ways, what we believe about aging, even subconsciously, like without you know, normally we don’t just sit around and be like, Hmm, what am I thinking about aging today? Right? It often just pops up when something happens. Those thoughts, those beliefs are like the water that’s flowing underground and so getting to understand that will help individual people. So, I can’t say like, I think there are some people who probably age and don’t ever experience pain.

Now they’re going to experience difference. I do think like, as we age, things get different, but see how the word different doesn’t really presuppose anything at all. Like it doesn’t presuppose that like pain is a necessary and associated part with it. With aging.

Jill: Okay, so I really love this this clarification because Right, obviously as we age there are physiological changes in our cells and some people may experience those changes with one type of sensation other people might not notice it. Other people might have a different type of sensation And, and I’m also hearing from you, is that what we say to ourselves about what those sensations are can also impact our experience, but like One thing is for sure is that your body will not feel the same from year to year to year, and that’s, that’s sort of the constant.

Deb: And it also doesn’t mean that it’s a one way decline. Yeah. So that one year it can feel one way, and the next year it can feel differently in a, kind of in a better way, in a more desired way. And some of that are things that, you know, what, like, You know, muscle mass and all kinds of things that we’re doing physiologically.

Sometimes it’s about sleep. So there’s, you know, we are kind of complex microcosms of kind of what it is that we do and believe and how we manage stress. Something, you know, it’s also like, maybe not everything is under our control. It’s, I’m never going to give you a straight answer. So I apologize. But it’s complex.

Jill: I think that’s great though, because right, like, cause I kind of came at you as, is it inevitable that we’re going to have more aches and pains and what I’m hearing from you is no, it’s not. And what even is aches and pains? What even is like, the only thing that’s inevitable is that we were going to, we’re going to have, our bodies are going to change as we get older.

And that is, that is the thing. And that the trajectory of that isn’t necessarily. You know, I think a lot of us think like, Oh, we decline as we get older, but, but also like, I feel like some systems may incline and other things, you know, it’s, it’s like thinking of it as a decline to me seems that you’re, you’re coloring it ahead of time as my life is going to get worse.

My body is getting worse, which isn’t super, a super helpful way to think about it.

Deb: Yeah. And I, I was a massage therapist before I was a chronic pain coach. And, you know, I would hear people in their twenties and thirties talk about aging in a way that I was like, I mean, I didn’t start to become a massage therapist until I was in my forties.

And I was like, Oh, okay. And I was just thinking, going, there’s a, there’s a lot of time and things can really change. You know, so I really got to see like. We feel things and then we decide what they mean. And that part of like deciding what they mean when we have some understanding of like what our belief systems are or what we’ve heard other people say about their bodies, kind of what like socialization says can be really helpful when we start to examine all of that with a little bit of curiosity at the very least, rather than just kind of like jumping in and assuming like, Oh yeah, here we are. We’re on this slippery slip ride to, to older, you know, to old age. And that only means, you know, decline and decay, eventual death. I mean, it does mean actually eventual. Death. That is the one thing I think I actually can be definitive about so far.

Jill: Nobody has lived forever yet.

Deb: Not yet. Yes. And some people I know really try and I don’t. That part, I don’t understand either, but that’s another podcast.

Jill: Yeah, agreed. I think we should do a whole podcast on that too.

Like, why, why would somebody want to live forever? I mean, just like when I think about that, there are things that people are working on right now and inventing right now that I think are going to become amazing commonplace. usage items in a hundred years. And I’m like, Oh, I kind of wish I was around to see flying cars and like all that kind of stuff.

But you know, I could also just watch Back to the Future. And that’s if I need, if I need that.

But like, let’s kind of talk about this, this, the belief that many people have that aging is a decline because. I feel like that’s a socialization. And so where, where does that come from in people that, that aging is a decline?

Deb: I mean, I, I would say the first thing that it comes from is like our families of origin, like what people are saying about their bodies, you know, that we’re hearing in the background as as we’re developing. And, and so sometimes people have you know, parents or caregivers who have chronic illnesses or chronic pain, or, you know, they’re taking care of their family all kinds of things.

So it’s like, what is the narrative that you grow up with and what are people saying about their bodies?

Jill: Yeah, I, 1 thing that I’ve heard a lot is from, and it’s so funny, like, now that I’m in my 50s, I can appreciate it a little bit more. But I remember, like, maybe when I was in my 30s, somebody 20 years older than me would be like, oh, you know, everything feels so creaky.

And, and the saying in my family has always been. Don’t get old and I’m like, okay, if somebody could help me figure out how to do that, you know, maybe, like it, because it’s the inevitability of the decline is like built into that statement.

Deb: And it’s so interesting because I have these kind of dual. lIke dual constructs around age, because so same thing growing up, you know, older people complaining about things not working and and you know, it’s, it’s the complaint part I think that is the, it’s the catch, right? It’s the, this should be different. My body should be different. It, you know, like. The fact that we believe when we’re 80, that our body should feel like it did when we were 30, you know, there’s a lot of stuff in there and, and we’ll talk about kind of like how to shift your perspective and being in your kind of today body.

But then the other side for me personally is growing up queer and living through the AIDS crisis. I really believe like aging is a privilege. Yeah. Like there are. You know, hundreds of thousands of people of my generation who didn’t get to live to be my age, 54, and so, you know, that part of it also feels really kind of incredible and precious, and it’s, so I hold that also inside of me, and then I kind of like, I don’t feel 54, so I don’t know what 54 is supposed to feel like, I remember my mother got a facelift, I think around this time and I was just like, I don’t know if she was like 50 or 60, but like, yeah, she had a facelift and I was just like I can’t imagine getting a facelift.

Jill: Yeah. And that was, what, probably, how many years ago was that? Like, not, not current day plastic surgery expectation.

Deb: No, no, no.

It was the, it was the kind of gruesome, you know, plastic surgery time. Yeah. She was born in 1940, so it was 1990. Yeah. Let’s just say that.

Jill: Wow. Okay. So, so let’s kind of talk about that because I love that you have two ways of looking at it. Right? There’s like the socialization of like, getting older is the worst thing.

And, and, you know, we just fall apart and then we die versus getting older is a privilege. I like, personally, I like, I think I like that one.

Deb: Yeah, absolutely adopt it.

Jill: Like, how, I don’t know, how are, how do we shift into that? How do we, especially for those of us who, I mean, first of all, I think for, for, and maybe this has happens to every generation, but I, the only perspective I have is being a Gen X person, but you know, I’ve, I’ve been seeing like, it’s like in your brain, you feel like you’re still a member of the breakfast club and then you look in the mirror and you’re seeing your parents.

And, and it is very hard to resolve because we’re like, we’ve got all this like rebellion going on in our brains and then we’re like, Oh, but now like everything’s creaky and I can’t do, you know, I can’t do what I used to do. And so there’s that sort of social is there. There’s that confusion, I guess. Yeah.

And, and maybe that is something that happens to everybody in their fifties and maybe you resolve it by the time you move into your sixties. But I find myself feeling very confused a lot of the time, like. What is happening because this is, this is, and it’s not even so much of this isn’t supposed to be happening. It is like, honest to God, general, general, genuine confusion. What is happening?

Deb: Well, and I want to also address that. It’s that it’s scary. Yeah. You know, when we feel discomfort or pain, we’re not normally, unless you’re like a mind body practitioner. You’re not often like, Oh, this is so interesting. Let me get curious about this.

I mean, it gets weird when that becomes your, your approach, but that is, I want to, you know, acknowledge, like, that’s not the first thing that crosses. people’s minds. What crosses people’s minds is I don’t want this to be happening. Now I can’t do X, Y, and Z, you know, when people start to like, think about the future, whether it’s the near or far future, like, Oh, this is going to affect this. I’m going on or I’m not going to be able to do these things. Like I used to be able to you know, and then we don’t, we also live in a culture that doesn’t have a lot of social support around changing abilities. So, you know, I, I like to think of pain as separate from ability, because sometimes. There are things that we can affect more easily and so pain itself can be debilitating and disabling.

And then there also are people’s kind of impairments and sometimes this can be changed. And so they’re kind of interwoven, but the thing that we know about how the brain creates pain is that it’s a perception of perceived like danger or threat. So at the very least we can look at our self talk and our beliefs and start to kind of decrease that sense of threat and address the fear and start to kind of talk to ourselves with a little bit more like compassion and love and maybe even problem solve, but not from a fear based approach because the brain is never going to take away something that you’re like, Oh my God, this is so scary.

You know, it’s not going to be like, all of a sudden, like tomorrow, like, Oh yeah, I don’t really care about that. Like, there’s a process in like pain reprocessing work by which we get to this idea of outcome independence, where we’re really not responding to pain or physical sensation with a sense of, of fear.

So that’s kind of the, the therapeutic approach. And what that does is it decreases the sense of threat. And then our body is like, Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. We’re safe. Oh, this is what we’re doing now. And we can find all kinds of like motor patterns and, and movement become more available. A sense of. You know, pain can go down dramatically.

I see people recover from pain conditions at all different kinds of ages. Now their body isn’t aging in reverse, but you might feel like it’s aging in reverse because you’re all of a sudden, this pain that you’ve been living with starts to change and go away. And so all of these things kind of get dumped into our subconscious and we are trying our very best to understand what is happening to our body.

What is happening? And I love that you’re like, yeah, this is what’s going on in my fifties, which is like, what is going on?

Jill: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it is, I think, I don’t know if like you’re 50, especially for women, because we’re going through so much hormonal change at the same time that I think like the natural, and I don’t understand the biochemistry of it all, but I think I feel like women go through a bit more of a noticeable body change because, because we are already tuned in to our cycles and we’re tuned into like, we have, our bodies have a natural rhythm. And then all of a sudden, like that starts going all over the place and then you’re like hyper aware. And then you’re like, Oh, what’s that pain in my elbow? What’s that pain in my hip. And you know, when I wake up in the morning, I don’t just jump out of bed because everything hurts. And it takes me a hot minute before. So, so, yeah, it makes perfect sense that, like, all of this information is getting filtered and kind of directed into panic, fear, oh my, like everything is changing.

This is, this is the beginning of the end, right? And, and then I can see how for some folks it could really spiral and then, and then create more pain. And, and then it really is the beginning of the end because they, because they’ve made it that, you know?

Deb: And I, I think the, what you’re saying about kind of women and, and that hyper focus, we’re also really trained and socialized to be hyper focused on what we look like. Yeah. And I think with hormonal changes, there are changes in like distribution of body fat and all kinds of things. And there’s, there can be like, I think. Women going through hormonal changes need to pay attention to muscle loss and things like that.

But yeah, we get into this like, who am I? When my body changes and looks different and there’s a that starts to play right starts to play in this sense of like, I think when I when I’m trying to coach people about kind of like present day and future you and helping our bodies feel connected to vitality to me like the word vitality is kind of an ageless construct, right?

Because it can We know what vitality feels like, and we can have that same feeling even if our capacity is different, right? And I know you coach runners, right? So people don’t run the same race. Every day or every race, right? It’s it varies. It’s different. You eat one thing and then you have a different energy output or the weather is different or your mood is different.

Like, you know, your physical response to things is dynamic. It varies. You know, and so for me, it’s like helping people look forward and develop this sense of connection to their vitality and aliveness. Is really essential for kind of helping people’s bodies feel more better, more of the time and helping, helping you kind of counteract a lot of these messages that like aging only is a decline and you’re only going to feel worse over time.

And, and so now if you do wake up with some aches and pains. You know, it’s like, what do you do in that moment? You know, and one of the things that here’s a great story that I love. So there’s a mind body therapist named Hassana Fletcher, and she used to work with Dr. Sarno back in the day. And Dr. Sarno is kind of the, you know, he was a MD he wrote healing back pain and the mind body prescription. He was kind of the kind of founder of a lot of these kinds of mind body techniques that were, That we’re helping people heal pain through thinking about our emotions and the way that we’re thinking about things, not having a biomedical approach.

So she’s aging. She is, I think, probably now in her nineties, she’s in her eighties or nineties, right? So she’s not a young woman any longer. And so she was starting to wake up with aches and pains. And so she spoke to a mind body physician and, you know, he just told her, you know, what if the first hour of the day doesn’t count?

That was her approach. That was his approach. And because she really understands how to embody this work, she was like, yeah, okay, I’m going to wake up in the morning and I’m just going to tell myself. The 1st hour of the day doesn’t count so whatever it is that I’m feeling as I’m getting up and moving around and getting blood flowing and like, starting my day, I am not going to make it mean anything. I’m not going to project it in the future about how it’s going to decline. Like, I’m going to from a brain perspective, I’m going to decrease its significance. I’m going to just tell myself whatever is happening right now really isn’t that important and our brain filters things all the time.

Right? We’re constantly filtering in things and out things and the brain kind of relies on the mind, like the self to tell us what’s important because the brain really is just this like little three pound blob in an enclosed Facing it doesn’t really know the world except for the way that we explain the world to it Yes, okay I just thought that was I was just because when I heard this interview I was just like what and she’s like and then what she noticed was She didn’t wake up feeling the same way and that like over time that kind of achin painy feeling when she woke up went away Now, I don’t know if it went away permanently, if it comes and goes, she’s just, she’s got this quality of outcome independence. It doesn’t really have an effect on her day. And so it doesn’t stick around as her body wakes up and she moves more and gets her blood flowing and maybe she has a little stretching routine or whatever it is. She doesn’t make those sensations or that pain mean that she can’t do anything. And then she just goes on and does her day and I would just, I was just like, you’re kidding me.

You’re just, I was just like shocked by that because I think, you know, in, in wellness culture I noticed that like we get really sold a lot of things that are complicated and complex and like almost like it has to be hard to be effective or worth it. I think there’s a, there’s a lot of like capitalism ideas thrown in that, because yeah, how much money are you going to make by just telling people like, Hey, that first hour of the day doesn’t count.

Exactly. But rather than like, do this really complicated stretching routine and watch these videos and like, you know, eat these special foods and all kinds of stuff like that.

Jill: So I’m just processing that story because what I’m wondering is. Is it possible that like the pain signals are actually still there, but because we are not giving them attention with our brain, we can just get on with our day?

Deb: Well,

Jill: or do you think she is literally the, there’s less signals firing or what have you?

Deb: Yeah, cause we don’t, pain signals are, are always created. Like all pain is created in the brain. So there’s no like pain signal from the part of the body. Hmm. That’s. Like, we don’t, we’re not built that way. So pain is always a decision by the brain and, you know, and pain is really useful so we don’t want to turn off pain. People, there are people who actually are, are born without the ability to feel pain and they often don’t live very long because pain is a very useful signal. Yeah. But it’s like understanding that we can control the dial. Ah, okay. Our attention unknowingly is what controls the dial.

Yeah. So the more we pay attention with a lot of like, what we call nocebo, which are like negative thoughts and beliefs, right? So it’s the opposite of placebo, right? So placebo is a positive effect of an innocuous. You know substance, right? So we get a sugar pill and we have a positive effect. This is why they have to test medication against placebo and it has medications that pass have to perform better than a placebo because a placebo is not there’s no thing The placebo is the is the belief of a benefit But right, so this is like how the mind affects the body. Equally there is a nocebo effect, which is we can have beliefs that affect our bodies negatively. And so we can get those from the world around us from our doctors. Like, I have osteoarthritis in my knee and, you know, my doctor, I was having pain in a particular time period. And I went to the doctor and he’s like, well, it’s just going to get worse every year.

And it that’s, I mean, I was like, thank goodness I do this work because I don’t believe that. Now in that moment I got treatment and like I healed and I don’t have pain. And I certainly don’t have pain year after year getting worse, but those are the messages that we get about aging. Yeah. And I think in some ways I’m really lucky that I came to both body work and mind body work in my forties, because what I noticed was I feel better the older I get, regardless of what it is that I’m being told about what’s happening on the inside of my body.

And there’s all

Jill: I love that.

Deb: And it’s like, it’s this. core belief that I have. And now, and some of it is like, you know, I have some goals like I really want to crush a watermelon with my thighs. That’s a goal. I don’t know why there’s some fun videos and I just feel like, cause it’s kind of a, you know, it’s like a, has nothing to do with your weight on a scale. It almost doesn’t even have anything to do with like how much weight I can lift if I’m lifting weights. It’s really like fun and novel and weird. Yeah.

Jill: And It’s a great party trick. Every time you go to a party, just carry a watermelon with you. And people are like, what’s that for? Well, let me show you.

Deb: Totally. And so I think it’s like those things, like what we, it goes into like, what do you want to be doing? With your body, with your life, and then, and then creating the pathway to that and I, there was something else I wanted to say.

There’s a, there’s a cool study or multiple studies by Ellen Langer, who’s a psychologist and a researcher on aging. And she, I’m going to get the details incorrect because I. I also have ADHD and I not great at remembering details, but she did this like really cool study where she took a bunch of men and took them. And this was in the seventies, I believe, and took them like to a monastery for, I don’t remember if it was like two weeks or two months and they, everything was set up like it was in the fifties and there were no mirrors and they couldn’t see themselves and they were just told to act like they did when they were younger and everything was organized, you know, it was like a one of those movies where you’re like going back in time. Right? So they were back in time acting as if they were younger, there were like only playing the music that they listened to when they were younger and all of these things and then they tested a lot of different biomarkers. They tested memory and physical agility, and they all improved. And it was so trippy and that kind of same experiment has been. Different parts of it has been recreated over time and. Even countering like people who were told to just reminisce about being younger, didn’t have those same experiences. But the people who were kind of embodying this younger self had these experiences and. What I, what I think we can, I mean, like, I think it might be weird if you were like, I’m just going to dress and act and like, you can’t control your circumstance like that.

But I do think what’s interesting is like. It, it goes into like, who are we around and what are we doing and what are we believing about ourselves and I feel like there are, you know, and I don’t want it to be like, I don’t want to sound ageist and I don’t want to sound. Like ableist, but I also feel like if we are around people, maybe of all different ages who are doing all different types of physical activity who have different beliefs about themselves at different ages that will at least teach our brain that like we can’t just think one thing we can’t just think. Oh, yeah Is this is the slippery slope decline and that’s how it goes. Yeah, it’s like when we introduce enough kind of Disbelief into the mix where you’re like, yeah this is not necessarily how it’s only gonna go and I think that’s been what I’ve noticed for myself and That’s kind of what I think about, you know, for what’s possible for people for aging. So,

Jill: Well, and there’s a lot of like, if you go on Instagram, there are a lot of examples specifically I’m thinking of women who are there’s a woman named Joan and then there’s another woman whose name escapes me because of an E it might be like Evelyn or something like that they’re in their 80s and they are bodybuilders and did not start lifting weights until at least their 50s or 60s Yeah And I think like when we so you so you might not know those people personally, but you can follow them you can find them on the internet and observe and like retrain it’s like It’s like when you’re a fat person and all you see are skinny people on Instagram, you’re like, Oh, this is, I can’t be, I can’t dress cute. I can’t do these things. And then you start following other fat people on Instagram that are doing amazing things. And it like, it shakes your brain up. You’re like, wait, what? What? That’s a thing. So I love that concept of like surrounding yourself with images and influences of people at all ages doing, doing all things.

Yeah, I just read this book and the name of it escapes me. but it’s by a 102 year old woman. And so she, she’s 102 and she wrote the book. She was a physician. I think she stopped practicing in her, like her eighties or nineties and she just kind of wrote this book about how to live a vital life and how to like, keep going and like, stop, you know, like stop stressing about getting older and just start like living in the moment.

And that was a really good book. I. I completely forget that, and I’m like looking around my office to see if I can

Deb: That’s okay. We can just, we’ll just embrace the forgetting. Like, I would say how we deal with change for me, like, like menopause has been such an interesting lesson in that where it’s like, when I’m just like, yeah, I just forgot that. It’s okay. I like remember the important things. Like I know my name and where I live and I know I remember most things. Yeah. And I remember all really important things. You know, whenever I forget, I’m just like, okay,

Jill: must not have been important. Also, I feel like, like sometimes we forget things that brought us pain in the past and like, you know, somebody will remind me of something and I’ll be like, Oh, I totally forgot about that. Yeah. That was a terrible time. And I’m like, Well, damn, it was much better to not think about it. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m, I’m kind of curious about,

Some of the things that people might sort of inadvertently say to themselves, thinking this is helping me get past pain that actually is creating more problems.

Like. Like I wrote down a few ahead of time. One is like, I don’t have time for pain. I don’t want to end up like that person. Right. Like maybe an aging parent or relative. Or I just need to keep pushing through. Yeah. And like, do you hear that from people? And if so, like how, like, do you think that’s helpful?

Do you think it’s something that needs to be reframed so that you can move forward?

Deb: I think anytime that our first response is resistance to what is whatever is happening in this moment There’s the sense of denial, like wanting our experience to be different. And of course we do, but. When we’re working on like. Again, that sense of threat or a sense of fear the very useful thing is to be like, what am I making this mean? What do I think? I mean, sometimes it’s like, what do I think my body is trying to tell me is sometimes a really good question to ask. So like when I work with clients who maybe get migraines or they get kind of like pain that happens around stress one of the things that I work with people on is slowing down and not just reacting to pain or trying to like take a medication to make it go away and starting to think of their pain as some kind of intrusion in their life. I like to think of pain in its complex, but as some kind of communication. So there’s something that this pain is wanting me to pay attention to. And so when we’re just trying to manage it, we miss that part. And so sometimes pain is like a distraction from an emotional pain. It’s like it’s easier to have a physical pain than manage some kind of complex emotional stuff, whether it’s helplessness or anger or un, You know, rage, which I think rage is really common, right? A sense of helplessness, right? So these are all really like challenging and difficult emotions. Sometimes we want other people to act and be different. We want our government to be different, all kinds of things. And that kind of like internal stress. Sometimes can be kind of like, we can just be distracted away from it by focusing our attention on our physical experience.

And so, in some ways, that’s our brain trying to help us. It’s really, I’m like, Ooh, could we come up with a better way to help? Cause I don’t really like that. Like, but so sometimes I just start with what is it that my body is trying to tell me? What is it that I need right now? And oftentimes it’s like, it can be like my, your body wants you to like go to the bathroom or eat a snack or have some water. Right. Like our, you know. We’d have different physiological cues and oftentimes we’re kind of trained out of them. So it’s like lots of teachers who have like pelvic pain issues because they don’t go to the bathroom because they’re working, they’re overworked and on a schedule or, you know, so every person’s.

Experience is like individual to them because the way that their life is organized is, is individual to them. So I would just say the first thing is understanding, like listening with curiosity, not reactivity to these thoughts that come up. Like, I don’t have time for this pain. It’s like, okay, well. You know, well, one, the pain is here in this moment. What is it that you’re doing? Like, what is it that’s giving the feeling like you don’t have time, you know, it’s like, what are all the responsibilities that you have? And it’s like this, this sensation that’s an intrusion on this kind of like, you know, I have to get all of these things done, right. This sense of like urgency and importance and, you know, kind of like, what are. Sometimes we’re driven to, you know, do a lot of things because they’re expected of us, or we’re, we’re really helping people or we’re responsible for everything in our family, or, you know, we have these like pressures on us at work. So it’s like kind of, it’s a response to something else you’re saying, I don’t have time for this pain. It’s in response to something else.

So it’s just an invitation to deconstruct some of these thoughts and beliefs. And not, you know, and just in that moment shift from reactivity to curiosity and just be like, okay, well, what actually brain, what I’m hearing you say is like, maybe in this moment, can we just slow down, take a breath, like get out of that sense of urgency.

And there are things that I teach people like some neuroplasticity techniques of like, if you do feel like you’re running like this, there’s this sense of urgency and there’s this spin to it. It’s like, how do we, we want to like, unwire that response. That like fast, habituated response to stressful things in our life.

So maybe that would be like spinning it backwards and more slowly, like taking a breath, doing certain activities like a physiological sigh. So these things are meant to cue us inward to do better caretaking of ourselves. That’s kind of where I go with this work so that we’re not just saying like, I don’t have time for this pain, but the pain is there.

You know, you’re kind of left with no options when you’re like, well, I don’t have time for this. Your body’s like tough shit. Exactly. It’s like your body is in some way saying like, I need you to make me a priority. Yeah. And that’s how it’s doing it, which is like, it’s pulling your attention, right? You know, if you have like a child and they’re trying to like, Get your attention. They’re going to like tug on you. They’re going to ask you, you know, questions. They’re going to be like, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, you know and like our internal self is also doing that. And it really, it only has a few ways to do it. Like, it’s not gonna send you an email. It’s gonna, you know, get your attention through your own body.

Jill: Yeah. I love that. I mean, I, I think we often think that. Pain is an intrusion. Pain is an inconvenience and By just shifting a little bit into what is this here to teach me? How can I learn from this? What is what is my body trying to tell me? It just kind of yeah, it like takes that edge off a little bit so that you can be a little bit more pay a little bit more attention and Maybe even have a little bit of compassion instead of feeling like your body’s betraying you because your body is your body is not like an entity unto itself that is looking at you saying how can I fuck you up today, right?

Deb: Like exactly it’s not like some kind of evil force that’s like looking to destroy your life. Yeah. Yeah We’re in collaboration. I love that we’re in collaboration. That’s so beautifully. Yeah, and our bodies like I, I do think like, yeah, we do a lot of things in our twenties and when we are younger that we do have an easier recovery period from, right.

You can stay up all night, you can get little sleep, you can drink and smoke and, you know, party and then like go to work the next day. Yeah. And that does have a time limited. You know, offer, but also at the same time, it’s like, we’re not fragile. We’re not like, if you stay up late or you, you know, do whatever, like, you’re not just going to be like, Oh my God, I’m destroyed and I can’t recover from that the next day.

So there’s, there’s like a, having like a flexible mindset and the sense of dynamic ness. And I kind of, I love what you said about like following Joan or these other women who are aging and also moving into movement in an older age. Yeah. It defa it just defies everything we’ve ever been taught about aging.

Yeah. And so we can start to look at what are the influences? What do I want to believe about my body today and tomorrow and if we have goals, you know, people don’t go and most people don’t go and run a marathon tomorrow just because they had the thought about it today. Right. So there is a certain kind of, people try and usually are like that, that was a dumb idea.

Right. So there is a sense that our body needs a certain kind of Conditioning and support and how we create physiological change is slowly over time with repetition. And some of it is just like, what would happen if we even just stopped believing like I’m, I’m on this decline and it’s inevitable.

Like what would be different then?

Jill: Yeah. And that’s a powerful question. Like if you just erase that belief from your brain of I’m on a decline. This is inevitable. Yeah, then what like, what might you try? What might you do? How might you show up differently? I love that

Deb: Yeah. And there are people who are old, who don’t have pain, who, and their body is in all different kinds of shape. They’re not like super fit, you know? So they might not

Jill: Or maybe they have pain and like, it doesn’t really register as much cause they don’t ascribe meaning to it. They’re like,

Oh, well, Oh, well my, my hip feels a little achy this morning. Okay. Moving on. Like there’s no like big, Oh my God, I got to manage this pain.

It’s just like, all right. Yeah, it’s actually not top of mind.

Deb: Here’s another interesting thing. They’ve done some studies. on back pain. And people who get x rays or imaging of their backs, heal, like, recover from pain slower than people who don’t. So, there is this idea of the more we, like, go in and investigate and, like, find out we want to fix what’s wrong, we make more wrong.

Jill: Interesting.

Deb: Yeah. So there, yeah. Like usually people from you know, who have an acute back, you know, and that’s like, maybe they didn’t like have an accident, like a car accident or whatever. Right. So they, they’ve had just a nonspecific lower back pain or some kind of back pain. Come on. Usually like in eight weeks people feel better, but if you get imaging done, it takes longer than that.

Jill: That is fascinating.

Deb: And then just like, Oh yeah, I don’t know, you know, I don’t really know. Like. What people are thinking about when they’re going through that, but that is. That is, I think, been in more than one study. Yeah. That’s been true. And, and there are, there are a lot of there’s a lot of scientific evidence that says imaging is actually not good for our health.

And now of course I think imaging can be really useful when we want to rule out big things like cancer. tumors and all kinds of stuff. So it’s a mixed bag, but I think like we get trained into thinking like, I’m going to go to the doctor. We’re going to go find out what’s wrong. We’re going to go like fix it. And then I’m going to feel better.

And I was like, Oh, we can just start with believing we can feel better. And that my body is strong and healing. And that healing is actually just kind of baked into our human physiology. We heal all the time, even as we age.

Jill: Yeah, right. I mean, you, you accidentally cut yourself.

Your body is like, okay, like it has all the instructions. It knows exactly what to do to, like, heal that. And that doesn’t change when you’re 80, right? Your body, your blood still clots for the most part, right? I mean, unless you have a. Your blood still clots, your skin cells know how to knit back together.

Deb: And so it doesn’t, it doesn’t even require our conscious effort. I mean, like maybe it requires our conscious effort to like rub dirt in it. Right. Like put a bandaid on it or something, put a bandaid on it. Like try to get out of, try to get out of our body’s way of healing. Yeah. That’s kind of. You know, and that’s that same sense of collaboration.

It’s like when we, when we build in a sense of trust that my body has these inherent factors that are not under my conscious control, right? It’s like breathing. We can affect our breath consciously, but thank goodness we don’t rely on conscious control of our breath.

Jill: Yeah. I would forget.

Deb: We would forget. We would not be alive. That would be really bad. Like there’s so many things that are happening under the hood, under the surface that do not require our conscious participation. And so then when we bring in just the right kind of conscious participation, we actually have a lot of ability to change the way we feel and change.

You know, and like kind of, yeah, be in that kind of collaboration rather than conflict with our bodies and that sense of conflict is that thing where you think of your body as an enemy or the obstacle for the kind of life that you want to have. Yeah.

Jill: Oh, I love that. So body’s not the enemy. Your body is a collaborator.

Yeah, I love that. So how can people find you, work with you, learn how to collaborate with their body from you?

Deb: Sure. I have, the website is called the curiositycure. coach. I also have a podcast in which I talk about mind, body healing and these concepts of pain reprocessing. And then, you know, sometimes you just hear me tell stories about me and having a body and so yeah, that podcast is also called the curiosity cure. You’ll find me on Instagram and yeah, and reach out.

Jill: What’s your Instagram handle?

Deb: Is that my Instagram handle? I think it’s also curiosity, cure. coach. Everything is under that. Or if you Google me, you’ll find me. I love it.

There are not many other Deb Malkins. Out there now,

Jill: I don’t know any others. You’re the only one. You’re the,

Deb: I do know there is a an estate lawyer whose name is Debra Malkin. And I wanted to have a moment where I was like, oh, I want to hire her to help me stay. But that didn’t make, you know, it didn’t make any sense, but I thought it was funny.

I love that. Maybe we’re related. Who knows? But yeah. And I just, I, I love helping people shift. It’s like these subtle shifts that have these very kind of epic. effects. And actually a podcast that I just released today is with a coaching colleague of mine named Callie who had over 20 years of, of dealing with fibromyalgia.

And I think we’re the same age. And now she’s like mostly pain free and traveling all over the world and doing all kinds of things. And so I love talking especially to older people and older women who recover from having chronic pain and just helping people understand that that is even possible. I think like, we just don’t have enough messages and understanding that that is.

That is a possibility. And so it could just be a possibility for you.

Jill: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I love that. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Deb: Oh, you’re so welcome. It’s such a pleasure to like talk about this and, and also just like being some good Gen X company.

Jill: Yeah. I love it. I absolutely love it. I. I just want to surround myself with only Gen X women because I feel like we all just have the same, that same vibe so thank you so much. All right. All right. Well, and, and for everybody who is like completely smitten with Deb now, she will be back on the podcast because she and I, before we recorded this had a million ideas for other things to talk about. So stay tuned.

Real quick before you go! If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out Up and Running. It’s a thirty-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to notyouraverageunner.com/upandrunning to find out when the next class starts. I’d love to be a part of your journey.