From pitch-side to online therapy: How I came to support people with chronic pain
Long before I started my university degree, I dreamt of working in professional sport and having grown up in rugby-mad Wales, I specifically had my eyes on the biggest prize - working as the national team physiotherapist. It was a slightly ambitious dream but I was determined nonetheless! I worked my little socks off as a personal trainer in a physio clinic and a sport therapist on the side of numerous pitches. I finally got myself a place at university and passed my 1st year relatively unscathed. Everything was going to plan. It seemed to be the way things worked - create a plan, work extra hard, achieve said plan and go set another one.
Unfortunately, by the time I started my 2nd year and despite a relatively healthy lifestyle, my health started to go downhill and without much warning. I put it down to feeling a wee bit stressed with the physio training but I soon began to experience all sorts of weird and terrifying symptoms - panic attacks, black-outs, fatigue, racing heart, nausea and night terrors. I felt completely frazzled and none of it made sense! The cardiologist that had assessed me eventually referred me to a counsellor and diagnosed me with anxiety. I couldn’t quite get my head around the diagnosis and couldn’t even pin-point a time that may have even triggered these symptoms. Surely there was something medically wrong with me?!
My symptoms did eventually reduce after a few counselling sessions and I returned to complete my 3rd and final year. I started to include self-care practices into my daily routine, built up my exercise tolerance and refined my diet to give my body the best chance to get better. I was functioning well and even managed to bag a first degree and even a prize for my dissertation! But despite all of this, my symptoms never truly disappeared and it just kept chipping away at my confidence. Eventually, I gave up on my dream of becoming a rugby physio. I had managed to convince myself that I wouldn’t have been resilient enough to do the job. I just couldn’t imagine a life without panic attacks and not worrying about the next time I might collapse without warning! To the outside world I had picked myself up after ‘a wobble’ in my second year of university but internally I felt like a vulnerable young child that wanted to just stay in her comfortable bubble and shy away from any further ambitious dreaming!
Once qualified, I started working within the National Health Service (NHS) and dabbled in a bit of private practice too. As much as I enjoyed my time in each role and learnt a great deal, they were also very stressful roles due to the usual lack of staffing and resources and working waaaaaay longer than my contracted hours. Soon enough my symptoms began ramping up again and they eventually got the better of me which prompted a little bit more time out. This time I could link the intensity of my symptoms to the stress that I was under at work but I still couldn’t figure out why they had started all those years ago at university. Determined to find some answers, I started to do some research and tried all sorts of therapeutic modalities. I tried many many things. They worked for a bit but my symptoms never really truly resolved and sometimes they would come back stronger. To be honest, I started to feel less and less hopeful.
Just as I was about to resign myself to a life of panic attacks and all sorts of other symptoms, my brother introduced me to Somatic Experiencing. I wasn’t really interested in finding out more about it to be completely honest. It just felt like something else that would help for a bit and then eventually become ineffective. I was mentally and physically tired and needed a rest. Thankfully, my brother kept on gently nudging me to give it a go and I booked myself in for my first appointment. Since those sessions, my personal and professional life changed quite dramatically. It was truly an eye-opening experience and I started to see the world through a completely different lens. It was the very definition of a light-bulb moment!
The penny dropped. My nervous system was frazzled and it was manifesting in all sorts of physical symptoms. I didn’t feel safe in my own body. The deeper I got into my own healing, the more I realised where these symptoms had come from - difficult past experiences. I did such a fantastic job at keeping the lid securely tightened and ‘getting on’ with life, my body had to act out in quite extreme ways to get me to listen to it. Everything that was unresolved and festering needed to heal and sure enough my body did what it needed to do for me to stop and listen. As painful and difficult it had been, I wouldn’t have changed the experience for the world.
Not only has my experience helped me to grow and evolve as a person, it has also had a direct impact on my physiotherapy career. During the earlier years of my career, I felt increasingly uneasy with the idea that patients were not expected to recover from persistent pain and that they were always advised to manage as best as possible with exercises and medication. Following on from researching my own physical symptoms, I started to further explore the effects of trauma on the physical body and came across a ton of literature that reinforced my understanding of the mind-body connection. I learnt how trauma and the health of our nervous systems had such a direct impact not only on our minds but on our bodies too. It was truly fascinating. I started to attend various training courses in trauma related practices and haven’t looked back since!
So here I am today - a specialised pain physiotherapist and somatic practitioner proudly supporting individuals on their own healing journeys and helping them find freedom from persistent pain and live well. A long way away from the pitch-side of a 6-nations rugby game eh! How life evolves in such unexpected ways. I am proud to have overcome my own difficult experiences and being able to apply these experiences to my work in supporting others - work that I thoroughly enjoy and find incredibly rewarding. Life continues to have its ups and downs but are dealt with in a much healthier and productive way - at least most of the time! It’s not been easy and it continues to be challenging, but that’s just what it means to be human right? We aren’t hard wired machines and I continue to strive to be perfectly imperfect each day.
So that’s my story :)
Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions or if you would like to know how working with me could benefit your own healing journey online. It will be lovely to hear from you! Also, don’t forget to sign up to my mailing list to stay up-to-date with all news, events and content.
Lisa x
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