I am sharing these letters from a former patient to explain why I continue to work to help people escape from pain. As a complex spine surgeon, much of my practice involved treating patients deeply in The Abyss who had lost hope of escape. What drives me is not just that patients heal, but that it happens to a breathtaking degree. People thrive and continue on their paths. Your body knows how to heal.
Letter #1
I received this first letter many years ago, and don’t recall any details.
Hi Dr. Hanscom. I just wanted to thank you for your book and your work in the field of chronic pain. I was a back pain sufferer for over 20 years and miraculously healed from that condition, in no small part because of your work. Your book was pivotal in my journey, and I’m so thankful that you were brave and persistent enough to write it. What a great service to others! I just wanted you to know that you have helped me regain a life that I only dreamed about for so very long, and I’m sure you have done the same for countless others.
God bless you, my friend
Letter #2
I received this letter this week. She describes her journey out of pain. I am continually amazed every time I witness it, and feel privileged to be able to pass on these healing concepts. What I am also excited about is her sharing her issues with OCD. OCD is considered an entity to be managed and rarely solvable.
Repetitive Unpleasant Thoughts (RUTs) were the worst aspect of my 15-year ordeal. I was battered by extreme intrusive thoughts every few minutes towards the end. I also escaped and have learned to help others out of this miserable situation.
My new book on RUTs will be published later this year. There is a lot of data supporting the way out, and what the medical profession has overlooked is that threat physiology is the driving force. It is solvable by separating from your thoughts, calming down the nervous system, softening your ego, and stimulating neuroplasticity.
People who engage in The DOC Journey course often have fewer RUTs and less anxiety. I am committed to streamlining the process.
Hi Dr. Hanscom, I have meant to reach out to you for years to thank you for how you’ve changed my life. I saw you for one visit back around 2010 – it was a post-op visit from a back surgery I had right before moving to Seattle. I’ll never forget meeting you, having you look at my scans, and looking me in the eye to tell me I had an excellent chance at recovering and living pain-free. I’d never heard that from a surgeon before (I’d never heard it from any providers I’d seen over 10 years of ongoing chronic pain and searching for answers). You then handed me your book and also connected me to one of your MD facilitator doctors for follow-up and ongoing visits as I managed my pain.
I’ll admit I did not want to read some book to help me with my pain. I’d tried everything, but there was no way a book would do the trick. However, my husband began to read it, and eventually, he told me, “You need to read this book! I think you also struggle with anxiety!”. I reluctantly read it and immediately appreciated how you explained chronic pain as a real experience for the person in pain and yet how neural pathways can amplify the pain (the real pain). Very few people get that right, and it was so common to feel like no one believed you and your pain. I followed the protocol in your book – I read all the books included (the talent code being my favorite). I began to dig into my past, which I had never done before. I also met with your facilitator, MD, and followed her instructions. I slept well for a month; I started free writing (and I couldn’t believe what my thoughts were). Long story short, I eventually came out of most of my pain.
The pain I have left I am no longer scared of – I know how to manage it and feel in control. I know how to still get strong and continue being strong physically. Most importantly, I ‘woke up’ for the first time in my life. I slowly became psychologically healthy (a long process, given a difficult childhood). I realized I had dreams. Although I had two young girls, I went back to community college. Eventually, I transferred to a University to finish my bachelor’s degree in psychology, all because of what I learned starting in your program.
Tangentially, I began to break cycles in how I parented my daughters, compared to how my mom had parented me and her parents parented her. I began to actually connect with my little girls, and they began to securely attach to me. They are now in adolescence and some of the most alive and healthy kids I’ve seen. I began to take responsibility for my issues in my marriage, and grow strong enough to support my partner, become regulated and committed to a healthy, equal relationship.
During all of this, I continued to fall in love with psychology (including the mind/body connection) and related research. I began to grow some confidence and a sense of self and experience happiness/joy in life in ways I’d never before. I applied and was awarded a prestigious research fellowship and subsequently applied and was accepted to an extremely competitive PhD program in clinical psychology, and I have been thriving ever since.
I also found out that I have struggled on and off with OCD and have shared this with my siblings, who struggle with the same thing, as well as some of my nephews, who are now in treatment. I’ve been able to manage and approach OCD with success. I’ve wanted to share all of this with you because I would have a very different life trajectory without your willingness to ask questions and pursue out-of-the-box answers and ways of thinking while within the medical system. I would be in a lot more pain, have difficult relationships, most likely never have pursued a meaningful career, and still be in a very toxic religious community. Thank you for all you did to create and share your program with the world. I will forever be grateful for it and hope that others continue to discover it and you/your work for a long time.
I wish you all the best.
Only 2-3% of people have intrusive thoughts that that are severe enough to meet the criteria for OCD. However, just by how our conscious brains interact with physiology, everyone has some level of bothersome thoughts. The severity varies by the level of stress and your response to it. The mental health world sees them as something to be managed, but they are solvable by learning tools to consistently lower threat physiology. I am committed to learning more about chronic pain and finding better ways to present the concepts leading to deep healing. Our world needs you to heal. It is the only way real change will occur.