Previously on Painopolis, editor and health journalist David Sharp described his descent into chronic pelvic pain syndrome and recounted his early reliance on a urologist who repeatedly misdiagnosed the cause of Sharp’s pain as mere prostatitis.
In this episode, Sharp makes a physically agonizing trip out of state to attend an innovative pelvic-pain clinic. It’s a big gamble, because if the clinic’s approach fails to give him some relief, he’s got no plan B.
Sharp wraps up his chronic-pain story with specifics about how he’s doing today. He also reveals the strategies he now uses to rein in his pelvic pain. Thanks to these strategies, he’s gone from being nearly bedridden to living a full life.
Today, Sharp fills you in on:
• The key components of the six-day pelvic-pain clinic he attended
• How he learned a type of meditation called “paradoxical relaxation” that allowed him to downshift the tension in his body so his muscles could heal
• Trigger-point therapy—what it felt like to undergo the finger-in-the-rectum sessions and how the therapy deactivated his muscle tension
• How his turbulent childhood led him unknowingly to equate muscle tension with safety
• How psychotherapy helped him work through childhood trauma and gain a new way of looking at both life and his life-altering pelvic pain
• How he successfully overcame the panic attacks he started to get a few months into meditating, the cornerstone of his treatment regimen
• Why you need a support team to help you deal with chronic pain—and who to keep off your support team
• The top six things he does on a daily basis to reduce his pain.
Go to this episode’s show notes at http://bit.ly/2tzzH73 for more details on the resources and strategies that Sharp used to combat chronic pelvic pain syndrome and reclaim his life.