Changing the Face of Pain Management
Hello, my name is Terrie Carpenter.
Over the last fifty years, I have learned how to effectively support those suffering from chronic pain. After seeing lives restored time and again I have crafted a model of care that does not depend on dangerous medications and invasive procedures.
I knew it was important to stop using the term chronic pain to describe what so many individuals are suffering from.
I blended all of my professional experience and personal development work to craft a model of care called Prolonged Pain Complex (PPC). Looking and working through the lens of PPC I saw hopes restored and healing become a reality.
I will guide you through this model of care with each publication, highlighting specific strategies for living and recovering. I will also share the inspirational stories of some of those individuals that have come under my care.
Prolonged Pain Complex in Action
At one point in my career, I was working in a local physical therapy clinic and was presented with a young woman suffering from a debilitating neck injury.
This woman was fragile, in pain, and terrified that the active life she had cherished was over. She also wanted to get pregnant and believed that option might have been lost.
She and her husband were in a treatment room and as I was evaluating her I recognized that none of my standard treatment modalities were going to be appropriate or useful. So I stepped back and realized I needed a new strategy to relieve the pressure on her neck without putting undo pressure on her muscles, bones, and joints, all the while calming her nervous system. This new approach turned out to be very effective. As I grew in my ability to use these strategies and came to understand that chronic pain was a deeply complicated entity with many layers I was able to put into reality the Prolonged Pain Complex model of care.
"Healing is a process of change. Change is a process, not an event.”
I learned that the very first step in the treatment and healing of PPC is to calm an individual’s nervous system. When an individual is in extreme pain and fear, their nervous system is in hyperdrive. They are constantly in a fight or flight mode and over time the human physiology changes and deteriorates. Cortisol levels go up and stay up. This creates a great deal of wear and tear on the body and it becomes more difficult to heal. Therefore It is vital to help an individual achieve a state of calm and quiescence to allow treatment to be effective.
Next, I learned that a "nesting" position would promote and enhance that state of calm. This "nesting" position is designed to offer maximum support to the body, decrease any external stimuli, create a feeling of calm and safety in the individual, and most importantly decrease pain immediately. Once the client has achieved this state of calm and reduced pain the success of the treatment has begun.
While the client is nesting I then work on them manually and gently to begin to help their soft tissue lengthen and unwind (this is not myofascial release work which is often quite painful). Think of it as gently guiding the soft tissue system, which has been in a state of "shrink wrap" to create more space in the body. It is incredibly powerful when an individual feels their joint spaces open up, their breathing becomes easier and deeper, and their pain reduces.
When an individual achieves this state in their first appointment a “trust bridge” has been constructed and I am then in the position to make recommendations and build a healing strategy that the client will be more able follow.
So began a steady healing process for this young woman and with that the dawn of a new model of care...Prolonged Pain Complex. After much healing, she was able to get pregnant and I had the great honor of being in the delivery room to manage and protect her neck. Her beautiful son was born and her life was restored.
I am deeply grateful to this young woman for trusting me and being so instrumental in the development of the Prolonged Pain Complex model of care. That early collaboration has helped me all these years in support of Changing the Face of Pain Management!
