From Boardroom Power to Purpose-Driven Healing

From Boardroom Power to Purpose-Driven Healing

About Alex Crowther

Alex Crowther shares his journey through hEDS, CRPS, and chronic illness, and how pain neuroscience, nervous system regulation, and coaching helped him reclaim function, agency, and hope and how this science can change care for millions.

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Introduction

Good, beautiful day, beautiful, beautiful souls! This is Charla Anderson, host of the Charla Anderson Show~Collector & Connector of Fascinating People (& EVERYONE is Fascinating!), especially you.

Chronic Pain!  So many people deal with it on a daily basis, and it seems that the medical system is clueless about it: just drug it!  My guest today, Alex Crowther, was a high-level successful executive, until chronic pain ended his career when he lost everything, almost his life, and re-emerged by creating The Pain Coach Academy.  If you or your loved ones suffer from chronic pain, share today’s show with them. It’s going to be great. I cannot wait to introduce you to Alex Crowther. 

…BUT FIRST…

We’re going to take our 22-second mini vacation, a little be still and know. We’re going to breathe in calm for seven seconds, hold for four seconds, and breathe out gratitude for 11 seconds. So please join me and breathe in some calm. Don’t we need it, right? Breathe in some calm. Here we go. Hold. Relax. Release. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Okay. Well, Alex, I’m so happy that you are here. And I think that it’s most of the people that I know I’ve met in some group or something. I was just inspired like crazy because I received this email, and I didn’t even pay attention to it, for you know, it got through the cracks. But this email was just like, I listened to your show. I listened to Bethany Stone. I might as well shout her out. And you just like, I am a fan. I’m like, wow. Whoa, somebody’s actually listening. You don’t ever know sometimes, right? So I am so grateful you did that. And then I’m like, hey, let’s do this. And you found it.

So I’m glad to be here. You said a lot of people deal with chronic pain. I think the number is 52 million people in the US who live with what’s described as chronic pain. And I’m just trying to remember the exact number. I believe the number is something like 10 million of the 50 live with severe, life-impacting chronic pain, meaning they need someone to help them take a shower and stuff like that. So it’s a big deal. And the number of people is growing. So, yes, a lot of people.

Wow. So the Pain Coach Academy is where you are now, but it was a long journey to get there because that wasn’t where you started. That wasn’t your lifestyle. Your lifestyle was a world traveler. You figured we probably crossed each other’s paths on airplanes back in the day when I was a flight attendant. It’s really a miracle that you’re alive.

Yeah, it is. You know, I worked in advertising for about 35 years. I worked pretty hard. I did all the things that, you know, you grow up, and you get told work hard and, you know, all the stuff. And I did all this stuff, and I was very ambitious and look, I found some success. And so life was good. And I had, you know, I had everything that I suppose I had wanted. And then I was driving along. It was my birthday in 2012. And I was driving along. And the road that I happened to be on had a highway exit that sort of entered it. And some person came off the highway, didn’t know there was a set of traffic lights there, was going about 50 to 55 miles an hour and t-boned me, flipped my car up into the air, rolled me a few times, and I landed up against a utility pole. And the EMS were actually called to a fatality because I was out cold, lying upside down in my car. And fortunately, I wasn’t dead. I was pulled out of the car. And the only thing that really was wrong was both of my thumb joints, because the way I was holding the steering wheel, both of my thumb joints had gone all the way back and were popped out of their sockets. So my hands looked kind of weird. And they’d already swollen right up. So my hands looked weird. I went to the hospital. 

They popped my thumbs back in the sockets, which was not a fun experience. But again, I was super grateful to be alive. My car looked like just a ball of metal. It was weird. It looked bizarre. And, you know, they told me that I would need to see a hand surgeon, I would probably need surgery on both my hands, which wasn’t the case. So, the hand surgeon said, we’ll start with your left hand because I’m right-handed. I was living on my own at the time. And I’m like, how am I going to do this one-handed thing? You know, living on my own, doing my tie up and doing my shirts up and whatever. So anyway, we did my left hand, and within just a couple of days, my hand swelled up so much that the cost didn’t fit me anymore. It was, again, it was weird. Shouldn’t have happened. Then my pins in my hand got an infection. I got a staph infection. Don’t know how that happened. Then the wound itself wouldn’t close. 

Everything that could have gone wrong seemingly went wrong. And I was back at that doctor over the course of a few months. I was like, Mac, that… you know, at least every week, if not twice a week. And, you know, they were sick to death of seeing me. I was sick to death of seeing them. And I kept complaining that this pain level is just like abnormally high, that it hurt worse than it did when I actually had the injury. And, uh, He got to a point about three or four months in that he’s like, this isn’t, this isn’t right. I don’t want to do your other hand at this point. We’re better off leaving it. I didn’t want him touching it. He sent me to go and see another, another hand surgeon for another opinion. They looked at the X or they looked at the images and they’re like, everything’s fine, but my pain is crazy. And then the conversation was, well, we think you should go and see another type of doctor. I mean, I’d seen every kind of doctor over time. So go see a rheumatologist, go see a XYZ.

Any ologist.

I saw all of the ologies and, you know, every doctor would give me a different test and I got told all sorts of terrible things that I might have. Maybe it’s this life-threatening disease, or maybe it’s that life-threatening disease. So you get terrified along the way. And then you’ll end up seeing… I was seeing a pain specialist at that point who was like, try this. This is definitely going to help. Well, you do, they’re definitely going to help, and it doesn’t help. And so over time… I’m a pretty hopeful person, but my hope got so eroded because when you’re constantly told something’s going to happen and that doesn’t happen, or you see another doctor and they’ll convince you that you’re literally a lunatic and there’s nothing wrong with you when it’s real. You know, my pain is real. All the time, by the way, I’m still working. 

I’m faking my pain at work, pretending that there’s nothing wrong because the business that I was in is a younger person’s business. And I’m in the most senior sort of ranks. And I can’t let my, you know, I can’t be sick. I can’t be old. I can’t be, you know, I just can’t be unwell. And so what would happen is, you know, for the longest time I would go to work and pretend everything’s okay. And I would come home literally exhausted from sort of pretending that the pain isn’t there.

You know, I can ask you, you know, was the pain you’re feeling only in your hand?

Yeah. So, initially, it was in my left hand. Over the course of time, I spent 10 years trying to figure this out, okay? So I went for my left hand, and then after about 18 months, my right hand, it started in exactly the way that I remember my left hand hurting, and I’m like, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. It can’t be. It can’t be. And so, yeah, sure enough, then it was my right shoulder that started to hurt and I’m like oh my gosh I it’s just the way I like the sense of how it would build was a familiar sense and you know so then it’s my left shoulder then it’s my right then it’s my left shoulder, then it was one of my feet. Then it was the other foot. Then it was a hip. Then it was my stomach.

They’re still telling you it’s all in your head.

They’re still telling me there’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with me. And I was terrified because I’m like, what if, what if this is something like, I know that I’m not crazy. Like I have a brain. I know I’m not crazy. I know this is real. I’ll give you an example. So now I know that I have this thing called gastroparesis as part of this overall illness, where my stomach doesn’t empty sometimes. And I… I knew, for example, that I wasn’t imagining that I would eat and 12 hours later, I would feel exactly like I had just eaten my food. And if I happen to excuse my graphic nature, but if I was to throw up, everything was still there sort of basically undigested. And so I’m like, I know that ain’t working. Okay. So I knew at one point, eventually I knew that I wasn’t crazy. And then the miracle that happened for me is a colleague of mine lived next door to a hospital network CEO, and they were having a party or something. 

And, I think by coincidence mentioned to a colleague that something was going on. I broke my rule of not talking about things. He asked his CEO if there was anybody he could refer me to. And instantly, his assistant called me and connected me with the head of their pain science clinic, whatever it is. This is a big hospital group. And I was whisked in there. And I got met by three doctors. I was given the full VIP treatment, which kind of pissed me off, excuse my French, because I had paid thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars seeing all of the ologists and all of the everything’s being told how crazy I was. And I then get the VIP special treatment and we all know how much we pay for medical insurance. And, I then get told that they’d gone away, they’d conferred, they came back, they all agreed 100% with each other that I had this illness called complex regional pain syndrome, which affects multiple systems in the body. 

It’s described as the most painful disease known to medicine. It also has a disgusting nickname, the suicide disease. I don’t say that very often, but I say it in case anybody that is listening who has this, I kind of, I want to give them the acknowledgement because it has that name because so many people that have it do it, but they follow through because, um, you know, one of the things that I was taught, so that, so that afternoon when I was given that diagnosis, I felt this instant sensitive relief of, I finally been validated. There’s something, there is this disease. It’s not me being a crazy person, but alongside that, very quickly, one of the, one of the, one of the less senior doctors said to me, and you know, there’s really nothing we can do. It’ll probably get worse. And I’m like, oh my God, like, just take me out and shoot me now. Because like, I had lost, you know, I would come home, I would do nothing. I never wanted to go out. I didn’t want to go to dinner anymore. I didn’t want to do anything. 

You know, the hobbies that I had, I used to like cooking, I would ride my bike everywhere. And, you know, all these things that fundamentally made me, me, we’re falling to the side and then add to this, and I won’t dwell on this, but I, once I got this diagnosis, I was, you know, I, I made some inquiries about, you know, programs and trials and everything else. And I got, I got admitted into one of the well-known world renowned clinics and for a trial. that they were doing, and I said to somebody that I was working with at the time, I’m like, you know, got to confess, I got this going on, but I’ve been invited to this trial, 22 hours trial, I got the pink slip basically saying that I had, you know, I’m like a number two guy in the business, and I’m given the note saying that we’ve agreed to separate.

I ain’t agreed to anything. I was copied on a memo that the whole company got. And basically, it was positioned. I mean, I know what they did. They were afraid that the most expensive person on the payroll at the time was going to go out and maybe never come back, and, you know, be claiming salary for a long time and everything else. The reality is that I was going to be gone for a week or two when I would have worked and done my thing. So then, you know, not only do I have this diagnosis, I then get the punt, the gut punch of, okay

And, you know, at that point, my entire identity is sort of like shattered. Um, I’m like, you know, my career. Stupidly was my identity. And then the few hobbies that I had were, you know, the other parts of my identity, I’d let my friend network sort of fall away because I didn’t want to do anything. Eventually, when your friends ask you to come and do something enough, and you say, no, I don’t feel like it, they eventually stop asking. And so I found myself in the chair behind me. I leave it there on purpose because that’s where I sat. I sat there for hours and hours and hours, you know, feeling sorry for myself in pain, crying, wondering what the hell I was going to do. I would never sleep more than about 40 minutes at a time. You know, where I got to in that chair, I decided one day, middle of the night, I’m like, I can’t do this. If this is all it’s going to be, if this is going to be the best of it, then, you know, I’ve had a good run. And if it’s going to get worse, then like, and I’m feeling like this massive burden, by the way, you know, my wife was having to work harder than ever. 

I felt like she was always running around, picking stuff up for me and, you know, making sure I had clean clothes, like a good partner does. But I did feel like this massive burden. And I’m like, I just don’t want to be that person. And my brain, by the way, is still the brain that I had before this illness, and it’s whirling, and it wants to be active. It doesn’t want to be sat in a chair in a blanket. So I sort of said to myself, all right, I don’t want to be here, but I also don’t want to leave this wake of destruction behind me. I’ve got grown-up kids, and I’ve got a wife, and everything else. I don’t want to leave destruction. I want to make sure things are done, taken care of properly. And so I thought, if I can find a counselor, a therapist, who also understands pain, and I can have a conversation with them, because my brain is like foggy, it’s hard to think through this pain sometimes, right? 

Like, it’s can talk to I can sort of like just work my way through this a little bit and make a bit of a plan and that was my thinking and some of it sounds very illogical because it I wasn’t thinking very logically um so I at 6 40 in the morning I remember coming and sitting at my desk here and I got on the google and I typed in pain counselor just like I said I was going to And the weirdest, strangest, most divine, crazy, bizarre thing happened where, and I’ve done a ton of reading. I’ve done a ton of research. I did all the work. And these two words popped off the screen. It’s like they levitated off the screen in front of me. And it was all I could see. And it was pain coach. I’m like, what is this pain coach thing? Why have I never heard of these two words pain and coach together? Two very simple words shrunk together and I never heard of this. And I’d seen, I’d seen hundreds of doctors. I’ve read loads of books. I basically have a PhD in pain science at this point myself. Yeah. I’ve never seen these two words. So I clicked on the link. It took me to a company, a business. 

And again, at 6:40 in the morning, I ring it, thinking I’m just going to leave a message. And, um, you know, get someone to call me back. And yet this lady, Jenny answered the phone and I burst into tears because I think, I don’t really know why, except I don’t think I was expecting anyone to answer. I was expecting to hear the message and the beep. And I was going to say, I’d like to understand about this pain thing that you do. And instead I just like lost it. And she said, she said, yeah, sounds like you probably want to understand what pain coaching is. I can hear the pain in your voice. And so she explained it. She gave me about 10 minutes of what this thing pain coaching is. And she explained that a pain coach is really an ally that’s on this journey. Like any coach, a tennis coach, same thing. It’s somebody on a journey with you, helping you navigate, teaching you, guiding you, making decisions with you, et cetera, et cetera. So she explained kind of the process And I got booked. Like I met my pain coach the very next day. I’m like, I’ll try it. I’ll try it. It was given to me. And it seemed really quite weirdly divine the way it kind of like spoke to me. 

So I spoke to my coach the very next day. Jareen is her name. And she was, oh my gosh, she’s a beautiful friend today. I still work with her. And the very first time I met Jareen, she said… she said, just tell me what’s going on. Just talk to me. Just tell me about what you’re dealing with. And so for about 58 minutes of a one hour meeting, I just told her. And a bit like you looking at me, you know, she’s nodding and she’s frowning and she’s giving these facial expressions that speak to you. And I see her writing things down and Anyway, that happened, and I got off the call, and I’m like, it occurred to me that this was the first time in 10 years, other than my partner, who’s got this weird obligation as a partner to listen to you and know your story, but this was the first time that someone actively cared enough to listen to what’s going on. It wasn’t the three minutes in the doctor’s office where they, you know, ask you one single question and you give them the answer, they know the solution. This was a long, deep conversation where I sort of explained everything. And I knew from the facial expressions and just the general behavior that I was being seen and heard and validated and cared for. 

And that made an enormous difference. I get goosebumps every time I say that because it was so impactful. Then I met with her literally just a couple of days later, and she said something that turned out to be very profound, which was, Do you know what pain is? Do you know how pain works? And I’m like, well, yeah, of course I know what pain works like. I know what pain is. It hurts. Yeah. She’s like, do you really understand how it works in the body? And she then gave me again. She took the whole time up. and gave me what is now, it’s called Pain Neuroscience Education, PNE. And it’s basically just explaining how pain is manufactured and operates in the body. Now there’s a really good reason she did that. And that’s because we know, science knows that when somebody basically understands how pain works in their body, the experience of pain is automatically softened because we stop catastrophizing about it. We stop wondering about it to the degree, you know, is it going to make you pain-free? 

Absolutely no. But it might knock it down at one point, okay? So the very act of learning about pain when you have pain will make pain, will soften the pain experience a little bit. So yeah, that was great. Then every single meeting I sort of had after with her, we would do something that sort of chipped away like that at the pain experience. So it might be, just as we did at the beginning of this call, we did a breathing exercise. So it might be that she says, and she sees me go on the phone, on the Zoom, and she might say, Looks like you’re having a tough day. You’re having a tough day. Talk to me about it. I get it off my chest and like, let’s try doing some breathing. So she teaches me breathing or any number of other things. Right. 

So over the course of probably about six months. I then learned these micro-skills, if you like, that you start to stack on top of each other. whether it’s grounding yourself, whether it’s learning to meditate, which I did, whether it’s doing breathing exercises, whether it’s learning more science, et cetera, et cetera, learning to advocate for yourself when you’re on a doctor’s appointment, whether it’s instead of going into a doctor’s appointment and basically re-traumatizing yourself every time you go into an appointment by explaining everything that’s wrong, we have it written down now. So I hand it to the doctor or I send it before my appointment so that when the doctor meets with me, I don’t have to go through it all and retell the story, right? So that’s the purpose of having this coach, this guide, this person holding your hand and walking the journey with you. That’s the power of that. Then… something really curious happened, and I realize I’m talking a lot, and you shut me up when you’re ready, but…

It’s fascinating, and I think it’s very valuable to have the process, because 10 years is a really long time.

It was a long time, and a lot of stuff happened, but the one thing that Janine did at one point is I’ve got stacks of these sort of like big fat journals, right, and they’re like 400 pages. And she knew that I was always writing in them. And she’s like, can you get your hand on the one from the first day that we met? Genius move. I pull it out. And she’s like, let’s go to the first couple of appointments. And she’s like, just start reading. And I’m reading out loud. F-ing this and F-ing pain and all these really sharp, pointy words talking about my pain experience. And I’m like, oh, wow. read some more and it’s like, Oh my goodness, you know, my relationship with pain was pretty brutal. And the way I would talk about myself, you know, the negative self-talk, you know, just generally.

What we then talked about was really, because my experience was so incremental, it’s a bit like seeing your hair grow or your fingernails grow. You don’t really notice it until your hair is too long or your fingernails are really long. I didn’t notice how far I had come and how much I had been able to take control. I was not pain-free. I’m not pain-free at all. But I know how to manage pain. I know… the things that I can do to soften pain to a degree that I can live with it, live alongside it. And so that was a really interesting thing for me to see kind of how far I’d come. That led me to say to her, Jareen, I’m really in, you know, I’m now out of work. I’m on this journey and I’m feeling a little bit better. And I’m like, I want to understand this pain coaching thing that you do. I asked her a bunch of questions and I said, who trains these people? 

So she explains, he makes an introduction. I talked to the people that train people to become pain coaches and just had a super long, maybe a couple hour conversation with one of the guys there. And he inquired about my career and what I’ve been doing. And I inquired about their business and organization and I found it stimulating because I was having a conversation about business that I’d not had in a while. And so I think I basically said, hey, look, can I help you with something? Can I just do something like websites or whatever it might have been? I’m like, let me help you. So I got in, I helped them with a few things. And over the course of a little bit of time, sure enough, I mean, I’m adding value. We’re growing the business a little bit. 

And they’re like, hey, we want to do the coaching stuff. We want to do the teaching stuff. Will you come in? Will you run the business? We want you to be our CEO. And I’m like, well, this is awesome. But I noticed something else. I noticed that when I was doing the work that was in servitude to other people. So when I was helping someone. If I was, whether it’s taking a phone call from someone that’s living with pain, or maybe I’m writing a little blog, or whatever it is, I found that when I’m writing or talking about pain, like I am with you right now, my pain experience vaporizes. It falls away. And There is a little bit of science to that, but there’s also a little bit of woo-woo magic to that, which is I believe that part of this is a gift that was given. 

I believe that the pain that was given to me was given to me in such a way that I go and I help. And I try to drive this as a little bit of a mission, like we’re talking now. And look, if this conversation helps one person if I only ever help one person, it’s all worthwhile. And so that I believe is sort of like why it was given to me. I have the experience and the tools to be able to have conversations like this, or to write the things that I get to write, or to create the courses that we create, and this, that, and the other. Yeah, I mean, I’ve decided that this is my mission. There are too many people. There’s 50 million people in this country suffering with pain. And I use the word suffering on purpose. So many of them are suffering unnecessarily. You know, you go to the doctor’s office, the white coats know one thing, and that’s to prescribe an opioid or something else. And look, in some cases, hey, that’ll work. But normally it’s a medicine or it’s a procedure. It’s a device, a medicine or a procedure. That’s what gets served up. We’re not being taught how to regulate our nervous systems. 

We’re not being told any number of these things. And the thing is the science, has leapt beyond the medical system, that the science knows more about how to manage chronic pain now than the medical, that the doctor’s office does. And we need to regulate, you know, again, you started with a breathing exercise, you know, grounding ourselves, meditating. And I don’t say this to frustrate anybody. I’m sure that someone listening has an experience with pain, but these things, these things, if we can do them, will help the process of pain. You know, they just absolutely will.

So I had recently, and I’ll just toss this out because it came to me while you’re talking, you know, we get more of what we focus on, right? I mean, completely, whatever we’re focused on, and that is scientifically proven without a doubt, there is no woo-woo there. Nope. And so when I… I’m going to mention this in the framework of depression, so to speak. So I believe what you had discovered along the way is, you know, so many of these things, you’re focused on the pain, it’s inward thinking, it’s so focused on, you know, your pain of depression, whatever is inward thinking, and taking one tiny, even if it’s just this tiny step of like, Feeding a stray cat or doing something outside of yourself as service. It’s miraculous. It’s miraculous what it can do. 

And it’s not diminishing or demeaning what’s wrong. It’s offering an opportunity. Yep. to consider what’s right or what else is out there outside of your circumstance. And like you described, it’s almost like, you know, all of a sudden I’m so involved in making a difference for something or someone else that this kind of diminishes. And it is phenomenal and it works. Now, those are simplified terms in a way, but… Or maybe not, or maybe not. You know, you can do something different for someone else and it will relieve the hurt or pain. There

There are many, many, many, many studies that prove, that demonstrate that servitude, whether it’s working in a soup kitchen, or like you said, it’s helping the stray cat, or in my case, it’s answering a call with somebody that’s living with complicated pain.

They just need somebody to hear. That’s what you said too, somebody. Absolutely. please. And this is a core need. We all just want to be heard. We all just want to be heard. And I’ll say it this way for, and I’ve said it many times. I want to be heard for what I’m saying and sometimes for what I’m not able to say. And so there you listening involves a deeper than listening than just words. Right. So.

Absolutely. Yeah. So I, I’ve kind of gone kind of a little bit out of my way. Um, You know, I figured pain coaching is not, you know, it’s not been very well established. You know, it’s a young thing. And so I’m making a bit of a noise wherever I can about pain coaching. You know, if somebody is living with complicated pain, hit me up. I will help them figure out how to get hold of someone. I’m working on building a directory of coaches so that folks have a very easy resource. But I want to help anybody that I can because this will soften the experience. I’m not saying for one second, do not go to the doctor. I’m not saying don’t take a pill. If a medical professional is telling you to take a pill, take a pill. 

But there is hope, there are things that you can do, and having somebody that, you know, most pain coaches have a lived experience of pain themselves, by the way, which happens to make them a good coach. They’ve lived it, they’ve worked their way through it. Having somebody that can walk that journey with you is gonna be invaluable. The tools and the tricks and the tips and everything else are gonna be invaluable. And then, you know, the other thing that I did as part of my own healing, but because I couldn’t find something myself, and this isn’t like some big unashamed kind of plug, I did write this book, Reframing Pain. And, you know, I’m not an author. I’m not a professional writer. I mean, hopefully I can string a sentence together so it makes sense for people. I think it does.

Reframing pain, understanding pain in everyday terms and working and you’re offering it for free to the audience here, right?

Let’s stop right here and just get your information in here before we get to the end.

Yeah. So I wanted to make it really, really easy. So I’ve got a URL here. reframingpain.com. Super simple. Go there, you can grab the book. You can also, if you fill out the contact form, if you’re a medical professional wanting to know about pain coaching, I’ll help you. If you’re a person living with complicated pain or know someone, I’ll help you. If you’re interested in becoming a pain coach, I will help you become a pain coach, okay? If you want a rewarding career, imagine this. Anybody can do this. Anybody can learn to become a pain coach, and if you get to it, you know, you’ll spend about 18 weeks meeting a couple of times a week. 

Um, some really good, um, some, some, some pretty deep education and, um, you then are able to work with clients. And just like me, in a course of six months or so, you can dynamically change lives. I mean, like, holy crap. Like, it doesn’t get more cool than that, in my opinion. Like, literally, you want to make a difference in the world? There’s a way to make a difference. There’s lots of ways of making a difference, but this is one. So if someone wants to use the contact form at Reframing Pain, it is my life’s mission at this point to help people in the right direction. 

The book that I put together, it’s sort of like a book in three parts. The first part is… When I talked about pain neuroscience education that helps soften the pain, the first third of the book, I sort of explained what the heck is going on in your brain and your body. So what is pain? How does it work? So explain a little bit of that. The second third of the book is some of these skills, these basic skills of… things that you can do that you can stack together that maybe work for you, don’t work for me, maybe work for someone else, don’t work for you, but there’s a number of skills in there. So I’ve probably got 15 different breathing exercises, along with, you know, a plethora of other things you can do. 

The last third of the book is sort of more resource focused, where So I have something, for example, like a trigger response plan. Now I know that there are things that will trigger my pain. So in the case of the illness I have, my senses are hypersensitive. So a strong smelling candle can give me a pain flare. Weird, I know, but it will happen. Bless my mother-in-law, but little yapping dogs, make me insane and they will trigger a pain flare. Big dogs, they don’t do it. Little dogs, I don’t know why.

Well, recognizing that is huge. I mean, I believe that you’re… acknowledging, acknowledging being heard and then recognizing these triggers is a huge piece of it. So reframingpain.com, they can get this free ebook. You said you’re updating it regularly and it’s a, uh, a resource for anyone with pain. And I’m going to, if I just may, I, my former husband, a Force Recon Purple Heart Marine Vietnam vet, had. He never called in sick in 37 years of working for Delta Airlines. An amazing human being. I call him a grumpy old man, but a good guy, right? 

So to his face. So never took a step without pain. I mean, he, you know, but he had that, I’m loyal and I’m going to push. Mindset of punching through it. And I, you know, I don’t know. He’s had knee replacements and things. I think he may be doing better now. I’m sure he is. But, you know, you live through all those experiences and pain. You know, you were talking about physical pain, physical chronic pain. Yep. And this just came to me. Does some of this kind of work for… You know, we’ve got a lot of emotional pain and other pain as well. Or is it primarily what you’re talking about is chronic pain in the body?

Chronic pain and it is physical. But what has become really clear to me, Charla, recently is what we are dealing with with chronic pain actually does apply to other forms of pain too. And it actually applies a lot with chronic illness quite generally. Most chronic illness comes with a degree of pain. But again, if we can regulate our nervous systems and everything else, you know, that is actually going to help soften the experience and da-da-da-da-da. There’s a lot of benefit in us learning as a species how to regulate ourselves. I’m actually building a consumer course as well that I’m going to start putting out to the market on how we regulate our central nervous systems. 

And I’m going to do that because, and I’ll be really quick, that the reason I’m doing it is You know, our biology as human, you know, homeo sapien sapien hasn’t changed for, you know, 50, 50,000, between 50 and 200,000 years. The biology hasn’t really changed very much. However, in the last 100 years, we’ve gone from the industrial revolution to the technological revolution to the second technological revolution to now we’re entering this AI revolution. where we take our work home with us, where we’re always connected and everything else, the way we don’t rest like we used to rest. We don’t, like, you know, we used to be chased by tigers and this, that, and the other, right? So we would go into this fight and flight mode, and then we would sleep for two days and recover. And we don’t do this anymore. It’s

A constant noise, the constant stress, the constant ding on the phone. And even if you just… click your eyes over there. It’s a distraction. And we’re very, we’re, I think that if you’re finding ways to manage that, you know, I’ve had a picture and then kind of, I had a picture of something when I was reading about your stuff and thinking about you going through that in for a decade or so, which is horrific. I can’t even imagine, but that. You know, I feel like you had a pain that was like you’re in a crater of the volcano, right? 

You’re in this crater of this volcano and the fire, the fire is coming up through your body and you’ve got all this pain, but you’re still, you know, things are crumbling around you. And that’s the picture I got of your life during those many years of not knowing. And another little piece, I was thinking you’re, your colleagues and all those people, I’m assuming that all of a sudden you’re not all that. And that, you know, you just kind of got, you know, those people had nothing to do with you anymore because you’re not that person anymore.

Those are psychological things to deal with as well. And one more thing, I just want to add it while I paused you for a second here, because it’s so fascinating to me. But I’ve said before, there’s a difference between therapy and coaches. I believe a therapist has you going over what’s wrong and what happened and you never, and they, you know, it takes a lot to get from that point to what’s possible. From what’s focusing on what’s wrong to focusing on possibilities that a coach is able to shift your mind along that way. So everyone should have a coach. That’s the

Right. So we use the language. We go from what’s wrong with me at the doctor’s office and the therapist’s office to

what’s right with me. And that’s all they’re focused on. And that white coat syndrome, I did a rant about that white coat syndrome a while back. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So we do use those words. We’re going to talk about what’s right with us. Okay. Once we figure out what’s wrong, now we can talk about what’s right. So it’s kind of cool. I’m glad you said that. Thank you.

It’s a huge distinction from focusing on what’s wrong and living there. Yes, they did that. Yes, they did that. Yes, that happened. Yes, you know, I was abused or whatever it was. But do you want to stay there? And that’s, to me, the difference between having an advocate and a coach that walks alongside you, which is the way you described that, which is awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. So that, I mean, that’s, that’s really it. I mean, I do believe that there’s hope for all of us and you know, I can tell, you know, you give me two people and one of them has a glimmer of hope of being healed. And the other one is dead fast set that they’re not going to get better. And one of those people will get better, you know? So we can all, we can all make a difference. We can all get a little bit better. Yeah.

Yeah, and you get what you literally, I mean, we talked about that in the very beginning. You get what you focus on, right? So, you know, we’ve only got a couple of minutes left. So I would really like for you to wind it up. What’s most… uh, impactful. What do you want to leave people with? And I, and I was looking for your quote. I have,

I always, so I always say, you know, this became my own mantra actually when I was doing meditation and stuff, which is, Purpose is more powerful than pain. And if you can find purpose, if you can find a reason to keep living, which there’s a lot of reason to keep living, you know, having that purpose is always going to be more powerful and, you know, change our focus than the pain. And I always try to remind folks that they’re not broken. It’s not a big failure or anything else. Pain is information. It is literally information, okay? So it is information telling, it’s your body telling your brain that there is something wrong. 

One of the things I very often do, by the way, if I’m feeling really terrible pain in a particular part of my body is I will say, hey, body, brain, thank you for letting me know my foot is hurting. I’m in the house. It’s nice and warm. My leg is up. I’m safe. If you let yourself know you’re safe, your brain goes, oh, we’re safe. Thanks for letting me know we’re safe. We’re good. We can stop sending those signals

Now.

The other thing that- That’s

An acknowledgement of, and it’s, oh my gosh, it works. It’s so amazing. Yes.

Yeah. No, it’s bizarre. It’s crazy. The brain is so incredibly powerful and stupid at the same time.

Well, and gratitude. Let me just say this. Gratitude. is another piece of what I was talking about before. If you can find something, something to be thankful for. And I remember telling someone, I was like, they couldn’t think of anything to be thankful for. And I was like, aren’t you glad you have toenails? I mean, gratitude has to go along with that. And I think what you just said, thank you for letting me know. That’s gratitude. It’s acknowledgement. It’s giving a release to your cells and your body to do something

Else. Yeah. And then the only other thing I add to the whole kind of purpose is more powerful than pain is, you know, apart from the pain being an output maybe from a diagnosis of some sort. But I always try to think about what is it guiding me towards? What is my pain guiding me towards? And I know I’m going to say something pretty simplistic. Ultimately, my pain is guiding me towards servitude because I know that when I am in a really bad pain place, and maybe I don’t want to get out of bed or I don’t want to get out of the house, but I know that if I go and do something, if I help that person that’s really struggling with pain right now, I just had a conversation with somebody who was looking at amputating a limb with the same disease that I have. 

And that is the protocol that the doctor is talking to them about. And I’m having a conversation with this person about like, let’s try and do some of these other things and try to guide them in the right way without telling them what to do. Getting them out to do some of these things That is the message. That’s the message that my body, that’s what I like to, my pain is guiding me to go do this.

It’s your purpose, obviously. And you had to go through that. I mean, didn’t you say, I think in this show, you know, you’re grateful for the experience because it brought you to your purpose and so many things.

I’ve met so many incredible people and the experiences, the work that I would never have guessed I’d be doing this. I was kind of a jerk before. Well,

You were in a superficial world of commerce, so to speak, instead of this hugely impactful world of service. And I think that that defines the difference, right? That defines on who you are. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m so grateful for you today. And I’m excited to see where this goes. I don’t know. I mean, lots of great things are going on in our world. I’m outrageously optimistic. That’s who I am. That’s my mindset, right? And outrageously optimistic. And I’m very grateful that I don’t have to suffer through those things that you’ve had to suffer through. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Because I live in gratitude around all that. thank you i’m grateful so you um reframingpain.com get your free downloadable book and get in touch with Alex Crowther and that’s A-L-E-X-C-R-O-W-T-H-E-R and i’ve You know, most people listen instead of watch, you know, so I like to spell things. So,

Yeah. If somebody’s having a terrible time with pain, I will make myself available to help anybody.

And mention the Charla Anderson show or Charla in the subject line of anything that you send. And so he can relate it back to this conversation. And we’re going to, you know, we’re going to find the win-win here. That’s what I like to do. Yep.

Fantastic. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

It’s been amazing. And I can’t believe how fast time goes. How did we already get to the first week of 2026? I mean, I blinked. 2025 was over. I was like, whoa, time is going fast. So let’s take care of each other. Let’s love each other. And remember to always, always, always choose joy.

Important Links

• WEBSITE:  Reframingpain.com / PainCoachAcademy.com 
• Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068063355401
• LinkedIn-  https://www.linkedin.com/in/crowtheralex/ 
• YouTube-  http://www.youtube.com/@PainCoachAcademy

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“Reframing Pain: Understanding Pain in Everyday Terms” at ReframingPain.com

I wrote this book having struggled myself to find a resource that could practically explain what was going on in my body with regard to pain, how I (alone) might be able to soften the experience of pain, and helpful resources in one place.

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About  Alex Crowther

Alex’s life took a dramatic turn when he developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, on the background of lifelong hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

Through pain neuroscience education, nervous system regulation, and coaching, Alex reclaimed function, agency, and purpose. Today, he leads efforts to change how pain and chronic illness are understood, taught, and supported. He is the CEO of Pain Coach Academy and the founder of Reframing Pain, a platform dedicated to bringing hope, clarity, and modern science to those living with complex conditions.”

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On The Charla Anderson Show, We discuss Mindset, How much Your WORDS matter, Princess to Queen energy, mantras, HOPE, Faith, Miracles, Overcoming, and much, much more, including learning from amazing guests.

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