Episode 13
· 25:08
People aren't broken, and whatever they carry in, there's always a way forward. That's true whether it's anxiety, grief, or a kind of pain that's never quite switches off, and it's true for today's topic too. Hi, I'm Gary Johannes, Solution Focus Epithe therapist, founder of Inspire to Change, and the host of Moving Minds Forward. One condition per episode. What's going on?
Gary Johannes:What's keeping it going? What's actually happening? And what actually helps? Let's get into it. So, chronic pain.
Gary Johannes:This one's a little different because today, I'm not doing this alone. But before I bring in my guest, I want to name something a lot of people living with chronic pain quietly believe and rarely say out loud: if the pain is still there, something in the body must still be damaged. It feels like common sense, and for a lot of people, it isn't true. Sometimes the tissue has healed, and the nervous system just hasn't got the memo. It's still sounding the alarm long after the danger's gone.
Gary Johannes:That one idea changes the whole conversation, and that's exactly why I wanted today's guest. I'm joined by Claire Noyelle. Claire spent over thirty years as an NHS pharmacist, working alongside people living with long term pain and medication used to manage it. She knows exactly where medicine helps, and exactly where it reaches its limit. She's retrained as a solution focused hypnotherapist and joined Inspire two Change.
Gary Johannes:Based in Maidstone, where she now works with people on the role the brain and the nervous system play in chronic pain and fibromyalgia. That combination is rare. Claire has seen it from both sides: the prescription pad and the therapy room. So this isn't a conversation about ditching your medication, and it isn't a conversation that tells you your pain is all in your head. It's about understanding why pain can persist, and what that opens up.
Gary Johannes:If pain has been part of your life for months or years, and you've quietly started to wonder whether this is just how things are now, stay with me. I think you'll find this useful. Let's get into it. Welcome, Claire. Hi, Claire.
Claire Noyelle:Lovely to be here. You know I love a podcast.
Gary Johannes:Yeah. Let's start by introducing you. So tell us a bit about you and your experience both as a pharmacist and a solution focused hypnotherapist, but also then in both parts of your life from a chronic pain point of view.
Claire Noyelle:So I'm Claire. I'm a pharmacist within the NHS. I worked for many years for one of the big chain stores and I now work for an independent company. I've been a pharmacist for thirty odd years, which is a long time. I've been a hypnotherapist for ten.
Claire Noyelle:And one of the reasons that I decided to retrain as a hypnotherapist and start practicing was because I felt there was a gap where medication ended and nothing else began. So it's really worthwhile having two things. And it's even more heartening to hear that actually the NHS is catching up. Their latest guidance on dealing with chronic pain now says you will never deal with chronic pain unless you deal with someone's psychological well-being alongside that. Okay.
Claire Noyelle:So that's Hallelujah.
Gary Johannes:Refreshing, isn't it? You've been practicing for ten years, and it certainly wasn't there ten years ago. Right. I did say many years. I didn't mention the thirty plus years.
Gary Johannes:I was trying to stop in that play.
Claire Noyelle:I think it's thirty three now, which is Jesus. A long time.
Gary Johannes:So I'll just keep it with many years So I don't
Claire Noyelle:How that works.
Gary Johannes:Don't don't don't
Claire Noyelle:make a
Gary Johannes:laugh of you. So I guess as a pharmacist, as a solution focused hypnotherapist, you've got your ear to both grounds so you can hear the slight changes in the NHS approach or what they're saying at least. What listeners want to understand is what actually they're gonna experience and because they won't know that the NHS have a slight change in perspective necessarily. That might take a while to come through. So I think there's a lot of people I know from my experience.
Gary Johannes:There's a lot of people suffering. So how can you as a pharmacist help? And then how can you as a hypnotherapist help?
Claire Noyelle:As a pharmacist, some of it is about actually having those conversations with patients. We quite often see patients who we know are overusing pain medication. They're taking more than their recommended dose because that dose isn't working. So there's clearly something not there. We see that escalation in people.
Claire Noyelle:We see people being put on different kinds of painkillers which is not huge amounts of successful evidence. So part of it is about having that conversation with people. I see you keep coming in. Is there anything I can support you with? That works over the counter too.
Claire Noyelle:We get so many requests for pain relief over the counter and it's a fine line between who's using the pain and who's using it because they're dependent. That's another podcast. Yeah. Is I might
Gary Johannes:be inviting you back to talk about it anyway.
Claire Noyelle:There is another escalation. So you see people whose pain is not being well managed. And unfortunately they do seem to all think that the only route to dealing with pain is medication. Where you and I know there are other elements that need to come into that.
Gary Johannes:So let me get the understanding that we're just talking about pain. But from my understanding, there's different types of pain and some which painkillers are really useful and other things where that will not necessarily work.
Claire Noyelle:Yes. So acute pain, painkillers are absolutely the right thing. If you've put your back out gardening or you sprained something, acute pain relief, absolutely the right thing. If you have end of life care, if you're looking at sort of cancer pain, tumor pain, or extensive damage due to some kind of abrasion, acute pain, or is absolutely well dealt with painkillers. But that big gap in the middle where people have pain that just doesn't resolve.
Claire Noyelle:We define chronic pain as being three months or more, and it's that bunch of people who are probably not well served by just focusing on medication. There needs to be a conversation around that whole holistic care of looking at their support. And that's particularly important with things like fibromyalgia, with neuropathic pain, with chronic pain where the original damage is healed, but there's still a level of discomfort or pain after that. Those tend to be the big ones.
Gary Johannes:So are they the ones which are if I went to a doctor and they go physically, we've X rayed you, everything's in place, we can't see any physical damage. There's no cause of the pain specifically, but you're definitely feeling most will pain. Yeah.
Claire Noyelle:And I think those those are the situations where people get very frustrated because your GP or your health care provider is telling you there is no immediate damage, so there shouldn't be any pain. But there clearly is. Pain is something that only you can measure. It's not something you can measure with any other metrics. No blood tests, blood pressure, nothing like that.
Claire Noyelle:To have pain that seems to be from damage that's resolved is really frustrating. And the end message often ends up being you're making it up. You're exaggerating. It's all in your head. When that really isn't the case, it's not an imaginary pain.
Claire Noyelle:But if we reframe that comment around it's all in your head, that's where you and I come in as hypnotherapist because your brain is the central point for all of this. Your brain needs what pain actually is. So in that sense, pain very much is in your head because that's where it's created, modulated modified resolved.
Gary Johannes:But it's felt.
Claire Noyelle:It's felt anywhere else. It's felt from the original part. Could felt somewhere else and it is incredibly uncomfortable. There is nobody that is being told it's in their head and it's not genuinely in pain. And I think that misunderstanding of it's in your head really needs unpicking and describing better than most So
Gary Johannes:what actually is happening psychologically?
Claire Noyelle:You can almost think of it as an app in your brain. Your brain has been receiving a pain message from that part of your body. Let's call it your back. It's been receiving a pain message from that part of your body for so long that your brain has almost got, okay, this needs to be dealt with by a proper program. And it's created a little app in your brain that deals with that pain from my back.
Claire Noyelle:Pain could still be happening even when the back issue is resolved because that app is still running. Nobody, nothing has told your brain, it's all good. We can turn that off now. Your brain has got so effective at processing that pain. It runs without any other stimulation.
Claire Noyelle:That sounds really counterintuitive to how we all think about pain. But it's like your brain has got stuck in a kind of loop. It's got so used to it that it just keeps playing. A little bit like the echo that you hear in your ears after a big loud concert. Maybe you wake up next your ears ringing.
Claire Noyelle:It's not you're not hearing it, but it's still there because there's a little bit of a loop that keeps playing in your brain. Does that make sense?
Gary Johannes:Oh, I can remember many a concerts I can
Claire Noyelle:hear all the way home. All done that. But that's the best parallel that I can find for why that's still there the next day. And obviously So
Gary Johannes:the signal stays on long after the
Claire Noyelle:body failed. Switched on. That your brain is trying to help you process that information more effectively. And the most effective to deal with that information, that pain signals, is to create a separate program that then runs so efficiently your brain doesn't need to think about it. That's very helpful in that pain context.
Claire Noyelle:But once that pain served its purpose, once the damage is fixed, there's no need. But it's stuck.
Gary Johannes:And painkillers, and there's lots of different varieties and versions, go after the physical damage.
Claire Noyelle:Absolutely. They won't touch what's in your brain.
Gary Johannes:So what do we do as hypnotherapists?
Claire Noyelle:Oh, we do lots of things. So the first one is give people the idea that this is not imaginary. You're not making this up. We believe you that you are definitely in discomfort. And while that sounds so simple, it's often the biggest thing that people need.
Claire Noyelle:I'm not broken. There's nothing wrong. I just need to retrain my brain, which is how we like to think about it. By telling your brain, you're safe now. You can let go of running that program automatically.
Claire Noyelle:You don't need it. There is no data coming from that part of your body, And we support people to tune into their body and realize that but also train their brain to update that information.
Gary Johannes:Okay. And if we do that how long do we need to do that for that app or that message or the signaling system?
Claire Noyelle:It's it's a really hard thing for me to give you a number of sessions for. For most things, we work really quickly. Eight to 10 sessions is about average for us. For things like chronic pain, it will be a lot longer because a, we've got to deal with the level of upset and overwhelm that person's experiencing. What we talk about when we say empty the buckets, get rid of all that background stress and anxiety.
Claire Noyelle:But once you've done that it's about convincing your brain that it's safe and then once you've convinced your brain that it's safe that program takes a little while to unpick. If you had a big scribble on the bathroom wall you're not just going to cover it with one layer of paint it might be two three four or five not as sessions that we need to get clearing away at that. But we don't all do that on our own the client does most of the work. It's not about me fixing my clients not least because they're not broken but it is about working with my clients, taking them step by step when they're ready to deal with something, the next small thing they need to get on top of to convince their brain that that's okay. I can let go of that loop.
Claire Noyelle:I don't need to keep reprocessing that information. It's historic. Don't need it. Go on. But that takes a while to unpick because our brain is so good at picking up habits.
Claire Noyelle:It takes a long time to work out them.
Gary Johannes:Do you from your experience, does stress and anxiety hinder and make that pain worse?
Claire Noyelle:Hugely. For lots of reasons. One is that we worry about what will happen if it never goes. We worry about what each situation will be like. Will going to a cinema cause a flare of my back pain?
Claire Noyelle:Will sitting in the car cause me a problem? What if I can't deal with that? So all of those kind of worries put people off doing things. But stress and overwhelm itself raises the level of stress can be caused within the body and brain, but then enhance that pain.
Gary Johannes:Right.
Claire Noyelle:So dealing with stress, anxiety, overwhelm, choose your vocabulary, will make that pain less intense to start with. And we all know that intuitively. We know when we're on holiday, when we're relaxed, reading a book, sitting by the pool with a cocktail, we're a little bit less uncomfortable. And that's why because the stress has gone down. Our brain is recording that pain level is less intense, and we can deal with it better.
Gary Johannes:And pain itself causes stress.
Claire Noyelle:Oh, absolutely. So so we come at it from lots of different angles all at the same time. We teach people why they feel like they do. We explain to them a couple of different ways they can help themselves even between our sessions, and then we work on each little thing step by step to break that cycle and get back in control.
Gary Johannes:So we're not actually working on the pain. We're working on
Claire Noyelle:Oh, not really.
Gary Johannes:The causes and circumstances of our lifestyle Yes. Which keep the pain flowing.
Claire Noyelle:And that can feel quite counterintuitive because when people go and see a doctor, the first thing you're asked is, what's wrong? Whereas when you come and see us, we know what's wrong. You're here because you're in chronic pain. We don't need to keep talking about that. That's done and dusted.
Claire Noyelle:We know that fact. What we work on are the factors that exacerbate it. So we make it much more tolerable for somebody. But there is a level that relaxation helps. That's one thing.
Claire Noyelle:But it's not the main crux of what we do. It's a lot more it's sneaky. I often call it ninja therapy because we're not talking about the problem. We're sliding in from the side and dealing with all those other factors that make it worse.
Gary Johannes:Yeah. And as we get more control, we can manage our pain better and slowly but surely, the app stops engaging.
Claire Noyelle:Absolutely. And the more control people feel they have, we open up that space in their day where they're not in pain, they realize that it's possible. The more they realize it's possible, the more confident they feel that they can do things. And when they do things comfortably, they realize that if they can do this, I can do more. And they gradually reopen their life to all those kind of experiences they've met step by step.
Gary Johannes:And I guess that's given the brain more evidence of what they can do rather than their negative forecasting, which has been giving them evidence of what they can't do.
Claire Noyelle:Exactly that. So focusing on what you can do. Even now, at the very beginning, what are you capable of doing? What's comfortable? What can you cope with?
Claire Noyelle:If you do that, how much better is it?
Gary Johannes:That sounds pretty cool. So as a clinical hip therapist, solution focused, what two or three tips would you give to someone who's currently suffering with any level of chronic pain for fibromyalgia or any other sort of chronic persistent pain?
Claire Noyelle:Understand that there's a way forward. That's the first thing. Medication is helpful to a point but there are so many other factors that influence pain and we haven't got time to go into all of those now. But I think it's really interesting to note that the use of painkillers is highest in areas of low unemployment, high poverty. That speaks to a psychological link so it's not just the level of pain that someone's experiences it's the rest of their background and their environment too so there's always something we can do to improve that.
Claire Noyelle:The second thing is they'll have more control than they think and if they focus on the things they can do tiny as they may be it just reinforces what they are capable. There's so many little things they can try but focusing on the small wins it sounds so trite and so minimal but focusing on the small things you can do in your day. The small moments where actually the pain is less and get those gaps bigger and bigger.
Gary Johannes:Yeah. That's cool. So we we're starting a short podcast. We've now done our sort of fifteen, twenty minutes. So if somebody wanted to find out more about Claire, have you written blogs or articles or done anything where they can find out more about what you do?
Claire Noyelle:They go on the Insights Change website. There's my page, Mind Over Meds, bottom me. So find my page and you can scroll down. There's some blogs on there. But there's blogs on the ITC web Inspires to Change website that talk about all kinds of things to do with pain and they're not all.
Claire Noyelle:And that will have an impact. For instance, your confidence will have an impact because we're dealing with the stress and anxiety that it's static.
Gary Johannes:Okay. One of the reasons we do this podcast is to help people know that there's an answer. There's a way forward moving money forward. You've just done that beautifully. So massive thank you for that.
Gary Johannes:And I will be inviting you back to talk about addictions.
Claire Noyelle:I'd like that because the two things overlap, don't they?
Gary Johannes:They do.
Claire Noyelle:I really enjoy is supporting people to minimize their dependence on medication. Often in a quest to be pain free, people are overusing their medicine. So if we can give them a little bit more control over pain, they need less medicine. That's always a good place to start.
Gary Johannes:Fantastic. And I think you've done a great job telling people where to find you, is on the Inspire to Change website. They can find Claire and all the other associates, and we've got a nationwide network of people. Thank you very much Claire and you never know we might do a follow-up to this one as well.
Claire Noyelle:I think we should because it's a big area and I think even with just that sort of fifteen twenty minutes you've barely scratched the surface. But I think one of the nice things maybe people try is to look at the website and download our relaxation. Don't underestimate simply relaxing and just letting yourself go. That's a good place to start so I'd encourage people to try that too.
Gary Johannes:Yeah absolutely go on to the Inspire to Change website download one of the relaxation. You've not just got Claire, you've got every other associate. So if you don't like the sound of my voice, you can choose Claire's or somebody else's, and it will massively help in all areas of your life. Thank you so much, Claire.
Claire Noyelle:Thank you. Lovely to be here.
Gary Johannes:I want to thank Claire for that. Thirty years of watching what long term pain does to people from behind the farmers counter, and then choosing to spend the second half of her career helping people change their relationship with that pain from the inside. That's not a small thing. And I don't think it's a coincidence either. If anything in that conversation sounds familiar, here's what I want you to take from it: chronic pain is common.
Gary Johannes:Current NHS guidance puts it around a third of UK adults, rising to over half of people in their late 70s and beyond. So if you're living with it, you're not the exception, and you're not imagining it. But here's the other thing Claire made clear. Pain that lasts isn't proof that something in you is broken beyond repair, And it isn't proof of ongoing damage either. Sometimes, it's a nervous system that's learned to stay on high alert, an alarm that's kept ringing long after the danger has passed.
Gary Johannes:And a system that has learned a pattern can, with the right input, learn a different one. If you take one thing from today, take this, your brain is already listening to everything you tell it about your pain, all day, without you noticing. Start noticing it, not to deny what you're feeling, just to see how much of the story your mind is adding on top. Let me speak directly to you. If this is you, you're not broken, you're not making a fuss, and the same brain that has spent months, years learning to amplify this pain can learn something different.
Gary Johannes:That's not me being kind. That's neuroscience. Understanding what's going on is where it starts. You've just done that. If you found this useful, hit subscribe wherever you're listening.
Gary Johannes:There's a lot more to come. One condition per episode. What's going on? What's keeping it going? And what actually helps?
Gary Johannes:And if you'd like to find out whether Inspire two Change can help you with chronic pain, we have a nationwide network of solution focused hypotherapists across The UK, including Claire in Maidstone. You can find your nearest therapist, read more about how we work, and book a free initial consultation at inspiredtocange.biz. The link will be in the description. See you in the next one.
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