The Five S’s of Better Pain Coping™ is an approach developed by Dr. Liou that can offer us a world with less chronic pain.

1. Patients  can consistently feel seen and heard
2. Doctors and practitioners can have better success treating pain
3. Parents and teachers  can help kids learn how to cope with pain in a healthy way.

This methodology uses what we are now learning about the shared neural pathways by both emotions and pain.   It's not about treating your emotions, nor thinking your way out of pain.  It's about recognizing that physical pain requires the exact same support that emotional pain does.

SEE IT - it’s okay to pay attention to pain – you’re not a wimp, you’re being smart!

SUPPORT IT – we don’t necessarily realize it but we need validation and reassurance. Does this pain make sense or am I over reacting? Reaching out and paying attention is the right thing to do – you have a valid concern – and there is a solution.

SPECIFY– take time to find language to describe your pain – using adjectives not nouns. A lot of people confuse diagnoses (nouns) for pain-descriptions.  Nouns suggest a foregone conclusion.  Adjectives are clues that can lead to new discoveries.  

STUDY IT – take time to learn and understand the variety of tools you can use to troubleshoot the pain and ease your  worry  

STRATEGIZE  - this is the piece that everyone needs help with at first – but the goal should be to develop our own tools for how to cope when pain hits and flares at home.

Better Pain Coping  Decreases Suffering.

I am a chiropractic physician, author, teacher and TEDx speaker. I teach better pain coping and how to use conversation and context for more effective pain care.

Being raised in a multilingual household gave me a special appreciation for nuance in communication, but also an acute awareness of the endless potential for miscommunication.

I bring this heightened sense of both the spoken and unspoken within each human interaction, to all of my work.  

None of the popular approaches to pain, fully account for the neuroscience of the pain-experience.  The Five S's  strategy for better pain coping does.

Finding ways to move forward with less suffering and better pain coping is the real solution that we've been missing.  

The Everyday Pain Guide Book Series

2017 Bill Fisher Award for the best first book - Non Fiction

2016 Best Book Awards Winner - Health Category

IAN 2016 Book of the year Finalist

Medalist 2017 IPPY Awards