By Kent Bassett

Dealing with chronic symptoms that don’t respond to biomedical treatment can be very costly.

I’ve watched dozens of clients navigate how to heal from chronic symptoms (including pain, fatigue, anxiety, as well as fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, migraine, IBS, Long Covid), and over time I realized there are some simple principles for saving money while recovering.

Note: These principles only make sense to consider after you’ve been assessed using the F.I.T. criteria and after determining that your ongoing symptoms are due to a neuroplastic, or mind-body process.

THE COSTS OF BIOMEDICAL TREATMENTS AND “ALTERNATIVE” HEALTH TREATMENTS

People spend large sums of money on unnecessary tests and treatments for symptoms that have been incorrectly medicalized. Their bodies are healthy, but so many doctors, naturopaths, and other clinicians are willing to provide treatments that have not been shown to help better than placebo in clinical trials. These treatments usually only provide short-term relief, if they help at all. And there are significant risks to most medical interventions, especially surgery and psychiatric drugs.

People also spend significantly on various “alternative” (a.k.a. un-tested) treatments. Short-term reductions in symptoms may have encouraged months of treatments that do not ultimately result in lasting relief.

Reducing biomedical or body-oriented interventions—which can implicitly deny the complex psychosocial origin of most chronic symptoms—can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

PRINCIPLES FOR SAVING MONEY

The most affordable way to recover from chronic symptoms is to check out a mind-body healing book from the library, sign up for free online classes about pain neuroscience, or listen to podcasts and webinars, internalize the ideas, and apply them. A list of those resources is at the bottom of this page. This was how I recovered from chronic symptoms: simply from learning the science and reassuring myself my body was healthy. This was sufficient to switch off the pain signaling in my brain.

Unfortunately, the so-called “book cure” only works for an estimated 10% of people with neuroplastic conditions. Most people need additional help—from fellow humans.

FINDING THE RIGHT PRACTITIONER

Most people with neuroplastic conditions will need to hire a practitioner in order to recover. The best practitioner is not necessarily the cheapest, but rather someone who can help you heal most effectively. Ideally you would be able to connect with them personally and feel comfortable opening up about vulnerable areas you’d normally keep hidden—things that are beneath the surface of awareness.

In terms of pricing, the cheapest practitioners are usually coaches ($100-200 per hour), the next cheapest are physical therapists and psychotherapists ($150-$300 per hour), and then physicians ($300-700 per hour).

DO YOU NEED TO SEE A MIND-BODY-INFORMED PHYSICIAN?

It may make sense to see a physician, especially if you have concerns that your symptoms are medical in nature. For example, if that MRI really frightened you and you can’t get it out of your mind, a visit with a mind-body-informed physician like Becca Kennedy, MD, Howard Schubiner, MD, or John Stracks, MD may be an important step. Another reason is if you have skepticism about whether to “buy-in” to the mind-body diagnosis and let go of all the warning messages from biomedicine-oriented physicians or PTs that you’ve encountered.

Mind-body physicians are especially useful for people with steady pain that is not inconsistent, especially in the following body areas: necks, backs, shoulders, hips, knees. They can help rule-in physical damage (like severe osteoarthritis, which may require hip replacement or knee replacement) or rule it out based on their medical knowledge and expertise.

In most cases, though, as Dr. Howard Schubiner, MD has pointed out, any competent physician can rule out the major medical problems that could be driving your symptoms, so you may be able to accomplish the “medical rule-out” during a physician visit that’s covered by your insurance and therefore is much cheaper.

In other words, one principle to save money is only hire a mind-body-informed doctor if you need a special assessment that only a physician can provide, OR if you have a lot of skepticism and you need to “hear it from a physician” in order to engage with the neuroplastic healing process.

After getting a clear mind-body perspective on your symptoms, it is usually cheaper to work with a coach or therapist on a weekly or biweekly basis rather than continuing to see a physician, though many people choose to work a physician with whom they establish a strong connection. If you’re debating between saving money by seeing a coach, or spending more to see a therapist, you can find my reflections on that here.

HEALING IN A GROUP FORMAT

Healing in a group format is often cheaper than healing in a 1x1 format. It’s not for everyone, though, since it involves making time and space to listen to other people’s suffering, and sharing intimate details of your life with a group of chronic pain survivors. The benefit, though, is that you can heal as part of a community, which can be beautiful and empowering, and in my view, is a way to start to change culture to be more accepting and loving towards people with chronic symptoms. When we see others like ourselves—suffering with chronic physical issues—we feel less alone, and less stigmatized.

DOING THE WORK ON YOUR OWN IF YOU CAN

A big chunk of the work of mind-body healing falls under the umbrella of “personal growth” or “self-improvement.” Once you learn the the pain neuroscience that underpins the healing work, and once you can apply it to your own symptoms, then you can avail yourself of various tools which are ubiquitous these days. Tools like learning how to feel emotions more deeply, letting go of emotional avoidance tactics, letting go of fear, drawing boundaries with others to protect yourself, challenging habits of perfectionism or people-pleasing. Much of this work can be spearheaded on your own time, or with practitioners who are not necessarily “mind-body oriented.”

In my view, there is no substitute for getting an outside perspective on emotional blindspots, and yet a person can do 20-30% of that emotional-healing work on their own, and sometimes that is enough to substantially reduce symptoms, increase confidence, and propel the healing process.

Many free resources are available online, and if you’re trying to be frugal, it makes sense to take on this work on your own, and see how much progress you can make before hiring a professional. Alternatively, doing a large chunk of the mind-body “homework” (see list of resources and practices below) between paid sessions can reduce the overall number of sessions, and thus save money.

Many people cannot do the work on their own at all, and that is understandable. Many people have a high burden of trauma (aka adverse childhood experiences), or lack the skills to do the work solo. That is okay—we all need help to see our blind spots. As social beings, we heal in relation to others, and we learn from others who can hold space, or who can impart skills. Even people who seem to heroically heal on their own often choose to work with a practitioner at a later point, if and when symptoms return.

STEPS FOR TACKLING MIND-BODY WORK ON YOUR OWN

1. Learn the Pain Neuroscience

Free 6-Week Course for Healing Chronic Symptoms Offered by Howard Schubiner, MD

2. Learn How to Practice Mindfulness and Do Somatic Tracking Meditation

Free Somatic Tracking Meditations for Working with Fear and Chronic Symptoms

3. Take Alan Gordon’s Free Online Healing Course

IN SUMMARY, WHAT’S THE CHEAPEST WAY TO FIND HEALING?

My opinion is the the simplest and most affordable way to find healing is a two-step process:

1. Spend about 20 hours learning and applying the mind-body healing principles to your life.

2. Seek out a 1x1 healing relationship with a coach or therapist who you feel would be able to open up to.

You can reserve doctor’s visits for if you struggle to know what’s going on after reviewing the FIT criteria, including taking the FIT quiz, and talking through an assessment of your symptoms with a coach or therapist. For the majority of cases, chronic symptoms can be assessed for causality using the FIT criteria by a coach or therapist without resorting to a medical visit. This is because most clients have already had medical visits that have ruled out biomedical explanations for chronic symptoms like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, muscle diseases, Celiac Disease, fractures, and infections.

It is always important to assess for medical problems for each person before starting mind-body treatment.