There is a large and growing body of literature documenting how emotional arousal interferes with the body’s ability to heal. Wounds are typically slower to heal in the presence of anxiety; the area of medicine called psychoneuroimmunology has much literature to show how one’s troubled psychological state negatively affects the immune system. In this talk I want to discuss the body’s healing mechanisms and how pain goes away in the case of pelvic floor related pain.

One of the Wise-Anderson Protocol’s major contributions to the field of pelvic pain treatment is the understanding that in chronic pelvic pain syndromes, the center of the body becomes sore and painful because it has been squeezed tight for a long period of time. This inner squeezing is usually an anxiety response much like a dog tightens its pelvis muscles to pull in its tail when it is threatened. In pelvic pain syndromes, the tail is chronically pulled up.

When the pelvic tissue has become chronically tight and painful, there is a primitive reflex inside the pelvis to guard against pain. It is not unlike an amoeba that sucks in if pricked with a pin to protect itself. So, when the tissue of the pelvis becomes sore and irritated, a primitive reflex occurs wherein the pelvis tightens up even more to guard against pain from this sore tissue. This reflex guarding traps and interferes with the sore pelvic tissue healing up, the way other sore tissue can easily heal up. We experience many small injuries to our bodies, where maybe we scrape ourselves or overuse muscles and they become painful, but they readily heal up because nothing interferes with their healing. When the tissue inside the pelvis becomes painful, the tissue tightens against its own soreness and interferes with its own healing.

It is helpful to talk about the phenomenon chronic pelvic pain by comparing it to what would happen if you’re walking around on a broken leg. The break in the bone would not be given a chance to heal up because what it needs for healing — namely a protected environment to allow break in the bone to heal. In the same way we need to provide an environment in which the sore pelvic tissue to heal up as sore tissue in other parts of the body need such protection.

But in the pelvis of those with chronic pelvic pain, there is a self-feeding cycle that interferes with the healing up of the sore pelvic tissue. Combined with normal activities and stresses of life (that normally don’t cause those without pelvic pain to experience any tightening or distress) like sitting or sexual activity or urination/defecation, the sore tissue of the pelvis in those with chronic pelvic pain remains unhealed. The typical life of the pelvic pain patient creates a unwitting situation in which they are continuously ‘walking on the broken leg’ of pelvic pain.

Once one has pelvic pain, the nervous system is necessarily aroused. Glomieski et al demonstrated this in the Journal Pain in 2015

Pain. 2015 Mar;156(3):547-54. doi: 10.1097/01.j.pain.0000460329.48633.ce.

Do patients with chronic pain show autonomic arousal when confronted with feared movements? An experimental investigation of the fear-avoidance model.   Glombiewski JA¹, et. al

The nervous system becomes activated and the neurons that flow in the nervous system move quickly and are more reactive. It is like a car that is idling at too high of a speed. Our nervous system becomes ‘jumpy’ when we are in chronic pain. Because pain itself increases the responsiveness of the nervous system, the pelvic pain patient feels in a trap that keeps the symptoms chronic because the arousal inhibits the healing of the sore tissue. The pain and subsequent up-regulated nervous system causes one to be more reactive.

How do you turn down the nervous system activity and free up the pelvic floor from its chronically tightened, healing-inhibited state to allow it to heal? Over the past 25 years we’ve come to see that the treatment must include a physical component, a behavioral component and a psychological/mental component. There must be extended periods of time in which nervous arousal is turned down. The mind and body components are not separate from each other.

Reducing nervous arousal to heal pelvic pain

We teach our patients to regularly loosen the tissue that is in a knot. The physical component of our program includes training in the use of our internal trigger point wand, our trigger point genie, the use of hands finger as well as other methods to loosen the chronically tight tissue between the knees and the sternum. This is not a simple matter but it is doable with the right skilled instruction and regular practice. We teach patients to implement the physical loosening of the tissue using myofascial/trigger point release methodology that we’ve developed, researched, and reported on over the years.

The physical release of the tightened pelvic tissue is essential. Equally important we have found that it is not enough to resolve chronic pelvic pain. If we do only the physical part of the loosening of the tissue of the pelvic floor and we don’t address the environment that is perpetuating this irritated and painful tissue, it is like dealing with a leaky water faucet by just cleaning up the spilled water from the faucet but never finding and fixing the leak in the faucet itself. The leak in the faucet of pelvic pain is the aroused nervous system keeping the pelvic floor tight and the nervous system inhospitable to what is needed for the healing of the sore pelvis.

When you’re relaxed and you were to say to yourself “relax” relaxation is easy. If you’re relaxed you can drift off into sleep, you can let go and just enjoy music or lie in the sun, watch a movie, just let go and enjoy yourself. If you are tense, anxious, worried or in pain and you were to say to yourself, “relax”, relaxation is difficult. Drugs, alcohol, and a variety of addictive behavior are the ways in which tense human beings relax. Without substances, most people have little ability in calming down when they’re anxious and nervous.

In a way, our nervous system has a life of its own. Imagine that you are relaxed and you’re about to go to sleep and inadvertently you drink a strong cup of coffee. You well might find yourself very awake, while the caffeine circulates in your body not allowing you to calm down to be able to sleep. The typically upregulated nervous system is the dilemma of the pelvic pain patient in learning to calm down their nervous system to allow the healing of the sore tissue in the pelvic floor.

Our program is focused on both helping our patients reduce their pain by learning to loosen the pelvic tissue physically and simultaneously reducing the nervous system arousal that arises from and is perpetuated by the anxiety, worry, fear associated with the pain.

We have developed a relaxation methodology for reducing the ongoing state of nervous arousal. Learning to do this was essential to me personally, in overcoming my pelvic pain. This reduction in nervous arousal is a central aspect of what we teach in the Wise-Anderson Protocol.