Having had had two spinal surgeries, ending up with kidney failure, ulcers and post-operative infection, David Hanscom has first-hand knowledge of chronic pain. This has left him with extreme empathy for patients who come to him. Since medical school he’s educated himself on mind/body syndromes. Discovering he had a lot of anger issues he says, “I wrote a section in my book called the disguises of anger and, looking backward, I could see that I had every disguise going. When you come from a difficult childhood like mine, anger and anxiety are your baseline; that’s your norm.” He describes three causes of pain: structural, soft tissue, and fired up already established, neurological brain pathways. Pain pathways are very, very specific and he advocates a program he’s developed that he calls DOCC (Defined, Organized, Comprehensive Care), which takes into account the Mind/Body Syndrome. He went through the Hoffman Process and learned, “You either create bad habits or good habits. Anytime you’re anxious or angry, you’re in an automatic pattern, a reactive pattern. That’s not who you are.”
