How unfair is that? Lyrics

Emotions don't just live in your head they also come out in your body

I was a kid who had chronic stomach aches

Poked and prodded put on a bunch of different medications

Told that it was like lactose and I did the elimination diets

One of the number one signs of stress and anxiety in a child happens to be stomach aches

I did my post doc in pain management and these non pharmacological treatments for pain

Which a lot of people think are fluff and pseudoscience it's actually really real

But nobody ever tells us about pain

How do I take this critical information and spread it to every single person

Because if we don't have chronic pain now pain is coming for everyone

This idea of the separation between patient and doctor

I like the quote if you're actually looking for an expert ask a patient

We go do doctors who talk about structural who talk about physical

Who don't say and if they do it's usually in like a pretty dismissive way to say

Like you're just stressed out you need to relax and breathe

How do we teach doctors to talk to patients about the emotional side of pain without minimizing

What is that taboo idea between doctor and patient when it comes to chronic pain

How do we find that balance between my pain is being taken care of physically

And I'm being talked to about the mental aspect of it without wanting to blow my brains out

Or punch someone in the head

Yes right danger to self danger to others

Chronic pain patients in medicine are considered among the hardest patients to treat

A chronic pain patient is someone whose been dealing with pain for a very long time

And so far, nothing has worked

96 per cent of medical schools in the United States and in Canada have zero compulsory pain education

Of the med schools that do it is usually purely biomedical

Anatomy, physiology and chemistry

Pain is not biomedical ever

The experience of pain is this biopsychosocial phenomenon

Genetics tissue damage system dysfunction all very important for pain

And there are all these psychological factors which have so much stigma around them

Thoughts beliefs emotions coping behaviours family and support system

Isolation culture and religion and context and environment and history of trauma

Trauma is so important when it comes to pain

Medicine doesn't reimburse a lot of treatments for pain that are not pills and procedures

As you probably have already discovered

But most physicians haven't been offered pain education in medical school

All these things together create this perfect storm

The other thing that really frustrates me is that what I do is I'm a pain psychologist

Everyone always says do you treat physical pain or emotional pain

And now I just nod my head and I say yes

The fact that that's the number one question tells me no one has ever had their pain explained to them

And how unfair is that