S03|14 - Chronic Pain in Motherhood with Betsy Jensen

Betsy is a Body and Mind Life Coach - helping people connect with their bodies and heal their chronic pain.  She teaches neuroscience principles to help people understand the current view of chronic pain and proven strategies to calm the nervous system and rewire the brain to produce less pain.

She was a Physical Therapist for 20 years before she discovered the mind-body approach for her ulcerative colitis. She has four teenagers (three boys and a girl) and enjoys traveling and being outdoors.

In our conversation today, you’ll hear:

• Betsy’s background with ulcerative colitis and the mind-body connection with chronic pain
• How chronic pain in childhood connects to adult pain issues
• The pain-fear-pain cycle and how parents can help their children through their pain

Recommended by Betsy: ‘A divided mind’ by John Sarno, ‘Becoming Supernatural’ by Joe Dispenza, ‘The Way Out’ by Alan Gordon, the app ‘Curable’,
 

IG: @bodyand,mindlifecoach
Body and mind life coach FB group
Find her podcast HERE  
YouTube Channel HERE
Website: bodyandmindlifecoach.com

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I would be honored to be your coach and help you get the changes you want to see in your life. The tools that I talk about in my podcast and use in my coaching have completely turned around my life and my relationships with my children. I know what it takes and how to make it happen. You can use the links below to get more of my content and to learn what we do in my program By Design. I love helping women tap into their inner expert and build radical connection in their relationships with their children.

Link to my program: By Design
Find me on the ‘gram: The.Parenting.Coach
My website: coachcrystal.ca

 

 

Episode Transcript

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, I'm Crystal, a certified life coach and mom of four. In this podcast, we combine radical connection and positive parenting theories with the How-To Life Coaching Tools and Mindset Work to completely transform our relationship with our children.

Join me on my journey, unleash your inner parenting expert, and become the mother you've always wanted to be. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and rate this podcast on Apple, and check out my transformative monthly membership for moms in the show notes.

 

Betsy’s background with ulcerative colitis and the mind-body connection with chronic pain

Hi. Welcome to Chronic Pain in Motherhood with Betsy Jensen. Betsy is a Body and Mind Life Coach - helping people connect with their bodies and heal their chronic pain.  She teaches neuroscience principles to help people understand the current view of chronic pain and proven strategies to calm the nervous system and rewire the brain to produce less pain.

She was a Physical Therapist for 20 years before she discovered the mind-body approach for her ulcerative colitis. She has four teenagers (three boys and a girl), and enjoys traveling and being outdoors.

Hello, Betsy. Thank you for being here.

 

Betsy Jensen: Oh, my pleasure, Crystal. Thank you.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, I would love for you to tell us a little bit about us. Our listeners got a little snippet of your bio, but I would love to know a little bit more about what you do, but then especially how you got here, like how you kind of got into doing what it is that you do now.

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah, I love talking about that. I started-- Actually, I went to-- I wanted to go to Physical Therapy School. I knew I wanted to do Physical Therapy, but I got my Bachelor's in Psychology; and even in Physical Therapy School, I was talking about, you know, psychology plays a part. 

And then, I was a physical therapist for 20 years, Traditional, Western Medicine. And then, I had my own autoimmune issues with ulcerative colitis, and I had a friend who was in medical school; and she was in D.O school, so a little more alternative – osteopathic. 

She said that ulcerative colitis is psychosomatic. And I was like, what? Psychosomatic, so meaning; the brain, the thoughts, your mind contributes to the state of illness in your body.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. I've never heard that. That is so cool.

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and she said it's very common with autoimmune because it's like your body attacking itself; and when you're under chronic stress, your immune system is compromised – and it goes haywire, basically. It goes hay-- Sorry, it goes haywire.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Haywire. Yeah.

 

Betsy Jensen: A little bit. Yes. So, that really excited me actually when she said that; some people are offended, but I was excited because it brought everything together for me. And at the same time, I was learning a lot about life coaching, going through a divorce – so, a lot of life changes. 

And so, I started integrating all of this together from what I was learning, and it fit perfectly with coaching. There was so much that overlapped as far as, you know, pain being more like an emotion that's brought on by thoughts – and subconscious thoughts too, which we can learn about through the body. 

So, what I do is integrate the body and the mind because our subconscious thoughts can't really arise to our consciousness very well, but our body can, kind of, be the messenger for that.

 

How Betsy Jensen’s coaching & healing journey started

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, that is so fascinating. So, when did you start kind of on your coaching journey then? Like you did physical therapy for 20 years – you kind of had this like personal healing journey, and what got you started into the coaching side of it?

 

Betsy Jensen: Well, you know what's so interesting is I started learning about coaching because of relationship issues and, you know, starting to get divorced; and that's when the ulcerative colitis got really bad. 

So, it wasn't like just the coaching alone helped with the body issue. But once I started reading some books and finding out about the actual neuroscience, about what we know now about how pain and the stress response works, then it's like I had permission to believe that I could heal this – and I had tools to use to calm my body down, to calm my nervous system down. 

So, I was in more of a healing state, you know, like our bodies naturally heal.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. So, do you deal with it at all anymore? Like, are you-- Are you saying, like, you're totally out of the woods?

 

Betsy Jensen: So, what they say is like, I'm active disease-free. I have been for two colonoscopies, but then I still have some symptoms sometimes, which my doctor says is IBS, which we actually know IBS is one of the very, very common mind-body syndromes because if you think about fight or flight, your digestive system is not getting blood. 

And so, you know, your absorption, all of these digestion things, it just is not happening when you're in chronic stress.

 

Books that helped Betsy in her healing journey

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. Okay. This is also fascinating. I would love for you to tell us because you said you kind of went through your own learning journey, maybe what a couple of books were that you read that you might suggest to people that are interested who were listening. 

And then, just like a couple tips that kind of helped you in that part of your journey. Beyond just the life coaching, what else kind of did you find supportive?

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah, so the first one that I read was called The Divided Mind by John Sarno – and he was, I believe back in the 50s or 60s. So, it's an older book that his principles, a lot of them have carried through; not everything is completely the same. 

Neuroscience hasn't backed up everything that he has said exactly. But that one is helpful in just getting the concept. And then, I really like Joe Dispenza, Becoming Supernatural.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I've heard of that one. It's on my list, and I have not read it. I'm going to put these in the show notes – so, The Divided Mind by John Sarno, and Joe Dispenza Becoming Supernatural, is that what it's called?

 

Betsy Jensen: Mm-Hmm. Yes. That one I listened to on Audible probably eight times in a row because he explains a lot of the science, which I really like. I mean, he talks about cells and genetics, and how genes can turn on and off. 

And he actually does meditation retreats, where he takes statistics research measurements of people's vital signs, their brain activity, and the changes that just a week of meditation can make.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Oh, that is so fascinating.

 

Betsy Jensen: And yeah, and genetic expression like changing your genes.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. 

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. That sounds like a great book.

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah. And then, one more – I have to say, I'm just starting it – but I would recommend the app Curable; the app has a ton of scientific information based on neuroscience – a lot of research. 

They have a podcast. And they just came out with a book, Alan Gordon-- The book is called The Way Out. And it's about all of this research-based, evidence-based information about how you can change chronic pain just by changing your thoughts and learning how to process your emotions.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow, that is so fascinating. I love meditation; I've only recently gotten into that. It wasn't something that I knew about or did, or anything previously – so, I haven't read a lot about it. But that just-- Yeah, that just sounds awesome. 

 

What else supported Betsy Jensen in her healing journey?

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I would also love for you to talk about maybe some other things besides coaching and besides books that you found were really supportive at that time of your journey.

 

Betsy Jensen: Okay. That is such a great question. Like, I definitely had this – I don't know – I would just say it was this desire, this calling inside of me to start going to yoga. 

And so, I started, and I was like, 'You know, it just was, like, hot yoga sounds really good to me, but I found a studio and I haven't gone back to the gym yet. Like I just stay at that studio and do yoga because it's been such a transformational journey of not just, you know, the exercise and the movements, but there's so much philosophy to it. 

I got trained as a yoga teacher, so much of the yoga teachings actually go hand-in-hand with what I'm learning with neuroscience and with what we know from coaching.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love how it all just interconnects, I guess the word would be 'integrates', right? 

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: All of the different, all the different things. And when I talk to parents about parenting, I'm always like talking about all these different approaches. 

Like, let's look at sleep and food and, you know, connection and screens and all these different things, because I think looking at the whole picture is so much more helpful; and I feel like that's kind of what you did. You were like, "We'll do yoga, and meditation, and life coaching, and all of these things all mixed together."

 

How mindfulness helps with chronic pain

Betsy Jensen: Yeah. And you know, what it all boils down to is what I realized is it boils down to mindfulness. So, to rewire your brain, the approach when you have chronic pain is that basically, there's ways that you can react that make the pain more severe – and there are, sorry, there are ways that you can react more mindfully, which literally can rewire your brain. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. 

 

Betsy Jensen: It teaches your brain that this isn't important. Because when you focus on something and you're thinking about it a lot, then your brain creates more neural pathways; they get faster and stronger. More of your brain is used to create pain and to look for pain, but when you can--

 

Pain catastrophizing: An example of how mindfulness helps with chronic pain

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, let's imagine, so give us an example. So, you're dealing with your ulcerative colitis and maybe you have like really bad, you know, stomach pain or whatever, and let us-- Just let us know how that would work in a real-life scenario.

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah, yeah. What is cool is they've found, in research, that even the phrases that you use can contribute. So, they call it pain catastrophizing; and there's certain phrases that are like, not in the present moment – usually, worries about the future or the past. So, it's like, 'Oh, I always get hurt – my body is always in pain – I can never do anything to help this.'

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I think that what you mentioned was super helpful because it's interesting how this kind of correlates. Like, I talk to parents about parenting all the time; and they're talking about all these negative problems with their kids – and like, it's all about like all the things they're doing and they're not doing, and all the negativity. 

And so, what we really try to focus them on is like, 'What is going well? What's going well with you? What's going well with them?' And the more that we focus on that, the more it kind of amplifies and grows. 

And you're saying that that works like inside our body, which is so fascinating because it's never even occurred to me that – I mean, obviously, it makes sense – but that would be the same thing. 

Like, so if we're constantly saying like, "I'm always sick," and like "This always happens to me and this is never going to change," that our body would actually respond to that.

 

Betsy Jensen: Isn't that amazing? 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. 

 

Betsy Jensen: That's really, really crazy. When they study pain catastrophizing is they can predict that more people, their acute pain will turn chronic; they're more likely to have new acute pain. 

They're more likely, if they have a surgery, for their surgery to take longer to recover from if they're high-pain catastrophizers; they can predict this by how you talk about your pain and your body.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. Wow. I'm just thinking of like my labors and how much worse they got when I was like, 'This is awful, and this is never going to end.' And like, this is so--

 

Betsy Jensen: Yes, exactly. You’re out of the present moment- you're like catastrophizing, you're amplifying. You're saying, "This is always like this – it never gets any better, I can't see any hope for the future." And that literally, stresses your body out. You have this stress response; you tighten up, your body produces more pain.

 

Does Betsy Jensen use her Physical Therapy background on clients struggling with chronic pain?

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. That's so interesting. So, you-- Now, when you help people through what they're going through, do you have, like, do you just do life coaching or do you kind of bring in your Physical Therapy background? Like, what does that look like?

 

Betsy Jensen: So, I do bring in Physical Therapy in the sense that I work with a lot of people who – I work with a lot of physicians, actually. And so, they are quite convinced that they have a structural injury, sometimes; you know, there's kind of that concern in the back of your mind. 

But what they've shown through research is that most of the time, injuries heal within three to six months. Like, even a broken bone will heal. So, it's not actively needing to cause you pain. So, even if you have some structural issues – they've found that most people have disc bulges, even pain-free people.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. That's interesting.

 

Betsy Jensen: So, I bring in the Physical Therapy to help people understand, you know, when they say, "It's with-- this motion, it does this," and I would say, "You know, a disc wouldn't behave that way." So, I used all of the Western Medicine training to back up the view of 'I don't think it's that, I don't think it's that anymore'.

 

How chronic pain in childhood connects to adult pain issues

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Okay. That's so interesting. So, we talked a little bit before about childhood conditions; and I want to talk more about that because I hadn't heard that before, but how childhood conditions can contribute to current pain or to adult pain. What's the connection there?

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah, it's so interesting because when I talked about the fear catastrophizing – the pain catastrophizing, what they've found is people who catastrophize are also more likely to have grown up in a scenario where a parent or loved one had chronic pain. 

So, imagine a child that's growing up and witnessing their parents constantly fearing pain, not able to do activities, talking about pain – you know, they're starting to be primed for pain. Their brain is on the lookout for it. And so, when they have something in their body, they tend to catastrophize it more.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: That's interesting because it's not even like they do that consciously, right? But they're just so used to that being their state of being that it would just kind of amplify when it does happen, when the pain inevitably comes up, because everybody has some sort of pain at some point that it would go to the pain catastrophizing.

 

Betsy Jensen: Right? Yeah. So, our thoughts are literally changing our bodies because those thoughts of catastrophizing cause fear, and we know through research that that causes more pain.

 

The pain-fear-pain cycle, and how parents can help their children through their pain

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. So, before this call we chatted a little bit about the pain for pain cycle, which I had never heard of before. So, first of all, tell us a little bit about what that is.

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah, so, what we know is that pain and emotion share the similar area of the brain – the amygdala – which you might have heard of with the Stress Response and Fight or Flight. 

So, the amygdala is this area that controls stress, fight or flight; and it also controls pain amplification. So, where we-- It's like a volume switch on the pain. So, pain can even be activated by high stress, by high fear because they share overlapping neural circuits. 

So, when you have pain and then you respond with stress, fear, or the stress cycle – then that tends to also amplify the amount of pain that your brain is looking for and the amount of pain that your brain is producing as well.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, interesting. So, if you feel the pain – because the pain comes first, right – you feel the pain and then your response to it is to be really afraid… then it actually amplifies the pain, so you're going to feel more pain.

 

Betsy Jensen: Right.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. I'm totally thinking of some of my kids right now when I'm like-- We have a really hard time around pain; and I can see that happening because they notice the pain, and then they really start to freak out, and then they freak out more – and then, it's more pain.

 

Tips on how to avoid the pain-fear-pain cycle

Crystal The Parenting Coach: And I can see-- I can think of times in my life when that's happened also. Do you have any tips for moms and dads and their kids to help themselves through this and to help their kids so that they don't go into that pain, and then fear, and then amplify the pain?

 

Betsy Jensen: Yes, absolutely. I think just trying to be that calm presence. So, maybe as a parent, even taking a deep breath because it's very easy when you see your child in pain to also get into that Stress Response with them. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes, yes. 

 

Betsy Jensen: And we know that, you know, there are mirror neurons – and especially with parents and children, our children are looking to us to see how to react and how to behave. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. 

 

Betsy Jensen: So, if you have your own tendencies to fear, sensation, and pain, that might be something to even look at. If you have chronic pain yourself, just knowing how that pain catastrophizing plays into it, I can give you that pain catastrophizing scale so you can look at what sentences to watch out for and how you can change them. 

So, you can think of those different ways to speak. But basically, it comes to being calm, being in the present moment. There sometimes will be injuries, right? There will be actual injuries that aren't, you know, mind-body type of things. But the advice is the same either way, staying calm is good advice – no matter what.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. It sounds like, this is how I tell people to deal with tantrums. I'm like, 'Okay, just be mindful – just be calm and present and really try to have our emotions.' I call it 'holding peace', but I'm like holding the peace or holding the space for all of their emotions. 

And I'm just sitting there, kind of breathing, trying to do that. Even if I can't say the right phrases or do the right thing, if I can just stay there and be really present, then it helps their brain to kind of, like, lower. So, you're pretty much saying exactly the same thing – but we do that in the times when our kids are also experiencing fear and pain.

 

Betsy Jensen: Exactly. Yes. And you know how setting that presence can create that space for them. And another interesting thing is that sometimes when there are painful events like falling--  

Peter Levine talks about how even like falling off a bike could create some kind of trauma, if it's not processed. And so, that holding space, and just being there and talking to your child can actually help them process trauma. So, it's not something that they're continuing to, you know, subconsciously carry around or be fearful of.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, that's so true because if we, kind of, add our own negative energy to the negative energy that they're having. 

And then it's probably going to like leave some things in the back of their mind like, 'Oh, that was really hard – that was really painful, I don't want to do that again, that's like not okay,' or whatever goes through their mind that could help them kind of keep it stuck so that they're not able to process through it. 

So, I love this idea. I wish that I had heard of this years ago. I'm like, 'Oh man, I probably really put my kids through some like pain cycles when I freak out and they're freaking out.'

 

Betsy Jensen: Right? I know. At least, we can pass this information along. I think it is so helpful. I love how it all just comes back to the more like grounded, mindful not over-reactive in the present moment, not in the future, not in the past. That is actually what calms our nervous system and allows us to be in that state where our body can naturally repair itself.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. That's lovely. That just fits so in line with what I teach all of the time because that is the kind of parenting that we want to try to be in, right? And not in the reactive and upset and negative energy space, which sometimes we do and is fine also. 

And then we bring ourselves back to that present moment and focus and calm, and that that's what can help our kids to process all of those difficulties. So, I love that it fits in hand-in-hand with not only chronic pain, but just any pain. As we know, our kids--

I've been to the emergency room with my-- I have three boys before I had a girl, and just constantly is like stitches or a broken arm or whatever, just weird injuries that they do when they're being crazy. So, I think this is really helpful. 

 

Betsy Jensen’s final advice

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I would love for you to-- I always ask people at the end of my show, so what's one tip or piece of advice that you would like to leave us with today?

 

Betsy Jensen: I think that-- I mean, I was just talking about it, so maybe it's a little repetitive, but sometimes we need the repetition – just to take that breath and breathe. You know, take a moment when you feel your system amping up – ramping up – just to check in with yourself emotionally. 

It's kind of like putting on your own oxygen mask before you go to, you know-- And it's just like with a tantrum, you're not going to be that reactive person and feed into it – you are going to be that calm, you know, presence. You can handle it, you can help your child through this, you can show them how resilient they are on the other side of it; it's a beautiful thing.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: That is beautiful. I love that your one tip was breathe because I just love that tip. I think that it is so helpful; whenever we don't know what to do, just breathe and just doing that--

 

Betsy Jensen: We always can do that.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. It can just really calm ourselves back down, bring ourselves to that present moment where then we can make a little bit more of a logical decision than when we're feeling such strong emotions.

 

How to calm your nervous system: Belly breathing

Betsy Jensen: Yeah. And actually, can I add one thing? One way to remember it too, to really get a deep breath is to belly breathe. I think this is important with kids, if your kid has like a nervous stomach at all--  

I know my daughter really struggles with that and ,you know, when she's going to school or something, she'll say her stomach hurts. So, I always have her breathe all the way down into her stomach and just really, I imagine, you know, oxygen going down to that area and, you know, bringing blood flow back to that area

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Awesome. 

 

Betsy Jensen: That belly breathing. Plus, we know when you're slowly breathing – exhaling longer than inhaling, especially – that engages the parasympathetic nervous system. So, those are literal ways to calm your nervous system.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. Tell me a little bit more about belly breathing. Like, what does that actually look like?

 

Betsy Jensen: Yeah. So, if you put your hands on your stomach, you inhale – you want your hands to actually push out because you're-- Usually, how we inhale and exhale is just through our chest and our lungs. So, what we want to do is actually breathe all the way down – almost into the hips and the pelvis, and expand that whole area.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I'm doing it as you're talking because I'm like-- I wasn't like a physical learner. I'm like, 'Okay, wait, it's working still good.' 

 

Betsy Jensen: Do you feel good?

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. Yeah.

 

Betsy Jensen: Did you do the belly breathing? Did you push your hands out?

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah.

 

Betsy Jensen: It's not like you're pushing your hands out, you're just like letting them expand; and then, you know, just letting them-- You watch babies, and that's how they breathe; they’re belly breathers. 

I don't know when it changes as we become adults; you know, we have this like faster, shallower breathing – and that alone, just changing your breathing can change so many things physiologically that are helpful to your body.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I'm totally going to do that with my kids and teach them that belly breathing. 

 

Betsy Jensen: Yes. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Thank you. Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your knowledge. I think this was all really helpful; and there's lots of things that I had never heard before and I'm sure that all the moms that are listening and dads – it's okay if dads listened too – feel like this was helpful too. 

And make sure that you reach out to Betsy if you have any other questions. We will have her info in the show notes; and you can reach out and message her, tell her what parts you liked or, you know, if you have more questions – or for her whatever, you can do that. So, thanks for being on here.

 

Betsy Jensen: Thank you so much.

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure that you give it Five Stars on Apple, and check out my monthly membership for moms in the show notes.