Stage 1 Archives - Back in Control

Thoughts are like viruses

posted in: Let's Wake Up, Recent, Separating Your Identity from RUTs, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 2 |

Overview Thoughts and viruses are inert and only active when they connect to live entities. Unwanted thoughts link up physiologically because we fight them. They become our identity (cognitive fusion), and we can’t differentiate unwanted thoughts from physical threats. Skills are required to separate you from your repetitive unwanted thoughts … Read More

Science has the Answer to the Opioid Epidemic – Is anyone listening?

posted in: Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 1 |

The Federal government has spent billions of dollars on combating the opioid epidemic. In 2022, 1.5 billion dollars was allocated to enforcement and treatment. Yet the death toll climbed 85,000 deaths a year in 2022 to 110,000 in 2023. The estimated cost to the US economy was over 1.5 trillion … Read More

With every word I release, I free my heart and return to myself.

posted in: Expressive Arts Project, Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 1 |

Expression Pain has a way of becoming a quiet tenant—settling into the soft chambers of the mind, curling into the muscles of the body, threading itself through emotions that whisper long after the moment is gone. We ruminate, we replay, we wander the same worn pathways of thought … Read More

Be Heard to Heal

posted in: Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 1 |

You must understand the nature of a problem before you can solve it. It is well-publicized that over 100 million people suffer from varying degrees of chronic pain in the US alone. As I talk to colleagues around the world, it is clear that it an international problem. So whatever … Read More

Evolution of the DOC Framework

posted in: Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 1 |

DOC beginning The DOC (Direct your Own Care) program evolved after I discovered that, through a systematic approach that addressed all aspects of a chronic mental or physical problem, I could almost always help patients become more functional. What surprised me most was that not only would they improve, but … Read More

Begin Your Healing Journey at Home

posted in: Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 5 |

It has become increasingly apparent to me that chronic pain is a family issue. Your deepest human interactions happen at home and members trigger each other. These powerful reactions have severe consequences. Partners and parents often end up acting in ways that they would not tolerate in their children. How … Read More

Degenerative Disc Disease Isn’t a Disease

posted in: Important, Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 1 |

Surgeries being performed for axial neck, thoracic, and low back pain on normally aging spines was a major reason I quit my spinal surgery practice in 2019. Not only was the success rate low, patients were often much worse after the surgeries and few physicians were willing to take care … Read More

Physical versus Emotional Pain

posted in: Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 1 |

The Swerve, by Steven Greenblatt is a historical account of a papal scribe’s discovery in the 1400’s of a poem, The Nature of Things. Lucretius had written it almost 1000 years earlier. He makes a case that it was the discovery of this poem that ushered the human race out of … Read More

The Myth of MUS (Medically Unexplained Symptoms) – It’s MES

posted in: Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 1 |

There is a deadly diagnosis that has evolved and become increasingly embedded in chronic pain terminology – Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS). (1) It means that you are suffering from symptoms, but we physicians don’t know the cause. Therefore, the solution is unclear, and you will have to do the best … Read More

Motivated by “The Talent Code”

posted in: Recent, Stage 1, Stage 1: Step 1, Stories of Hope |

Dear Dr Hanscom, Having read (devoured actually) The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, I can now share with others the benefits I received through reading this book. The author demystified that very mysterious quality of world-class excellence. He teaches that through deep practice, anyone can train themselves (and hence their … Read More

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