Looking forward to 2023 after a great 2022!

2022 was a great year for TMH and we are so excited for 2023!
Here are some recent updates:

We had a string of interesting screenings with organizations we admire like RSDSA, the American Association of Pain Psychology, How We Heal, and Harvard University/Mass General Hospital. You can find some of the conversations on our Youtube page.

Now we are focusing on fundraising and strategy in order to continue the campaign in 2023! Please reach out to us if you know of any funding or screening opportunities with organizations you love!

CE/CME

Attention Therapists and Physicians! You Can Now Watch This Might Hurt and receive CE or CME Credits.

Both courses are available NOW on our website as home studies and can be done on your own time.

Get CME or CE Credit!

For Physicians:
Home-Study Continuing Medical Education (CME) course (2 hours) featuring:
Howard Schubiner, MD Intro
Film screening of THIS MIGHT HURT
Lecture by Howard Schubiner, MD for physicians at Michigan State University
A short quiz and evaluation

For Therapists:
APA-approved CE course (3 hours) in association with NJPA featuring:
Lecture by Jeffrey Axelbank, PsyD, “New Approaches to Psychotherapy for Chronic Pain,”
Film screening of THIS MIGHT HURT
Q&A with Dr. Axelbank
A short quiz

**Thank you to Dr. Schubiner, Dr. Axelbank, and Michael Galinsky for your help with these certifications!**

AROUND THE WEB

Podcast: Interview with Dr. Howard Schubiner on Feel Better, Live More
Article: The Emotional Toll When We Misread What Our Bodies Are Telling Us
Article: Can Psychedelic Drugs Treat Physical Pain?
Article: Can Pain Reprocessing Therapy Cure Chronic Pain?

🎥 Join us for a lively discussion of Pain Reprocessing Therapy

THE SPRING NEWSLETTER
News and updates from This Might Hurt!

Hello again from the directors of This Might Hurt, Marion and Kent! 

We’re in the second year of our grassroots screening campaign and hitting a stride with outreach and screenings for practitioners, universities, and pain survivors. There’s 50 million people with chronic pain in the US alone, so with two part-time staff, we have our work cut out for us.

We’ve recently been screening with CRPS support groups across the U.S. and we’ve been so moved to hear their stories, their openness, and their struggles with this illness. Several of them have told us they feel seen by the film. One person wrote us, “I cannot tell you enough, what a beautiful message and theory this documentary is sending to the world.”

NEW REVIEW

We’re so excited to share that we were recently reviewed by Documentary Drive, a website focused on reviews of feature docs and shorts! 

Illuminating and moving, “This Might Hurt” opens eyes to a new approach that should be considered in light of the on-going opioid epidemic across America. The film doesn’t sugarcoat things. It presents facts and human stories. It shows successes of the therapy but also how the complex nature of each person’s experience can shape the outcome and whether the relief they find will be on-going or not.

Read the full review here! 

DVDs & BLU-RAYs

We recently discounted our DVDs and Blu-rays of This Might Hurt. If you like physical media, grab your very own copy! They also make great gifts. But since we’re shipping them out of Marion’s shed, no gift wrapping available, sorry! 

PURCHASE DVD

PURCHASE BLU-RAY

NEXT WEEK’S WATCH PARTY

This Might Hurt Live Screening and Q&A in partnership with Pain Psychotherapy Canada

Join us May 25th at 6:30pm ET for a virtual screening of This Might Hurt followed by a live Q&A featuring directors Kent Bassett & Marion Cunningham and special guests, Howard Schubiner, MD, and Tanner Murtagh MSW, RSW.

In this special event, we will watch the film as a community, and then discuss how Pain Reprocessing Therapy can be used to treat chronic pain. Audience members will have the opportunity to interact with each other during the screening of the film and ask questions during the live Q&A.

For more information, and to reserve your ticket:

https://watch.eventive.org/tmh/play/624df67c3067c40061a646a9

And if you’d like to see some of our previous Q&As with experts like Dr. David Clarke, Dr. John Stracks, and Nicole Sachs, LCSW, check out our YouTube page!

CE OPPORTUNITY! View This Might Hurt and earn 3 CE credits

We are so excited to share an opportunity with you to earn CE credit for watching our film! On Thursday, June 9th from 12pm-3pm ET please join Dr. Jeffrey Axelbank for a Live APA-Approved CE Workshop through NJPA! Join us for the talk, "New Approaches to Psychotherapy for Chronic Pain," followed by the film screening and Q&A with Dr. Axelbank.

REGISTER HERE

AROUND THE WEB

We always like to share some mind-body resources we’ve come across. 

A thoughtful article about Dr. Allan Abbass dives into to the therapy featured in This Might Hurt. 

Dr. Schubiner is part of this NYT article on VR and chronic pain. 

Video: Being Human with Dr. Schubiner

Podcast: Science Vs - Chronic Pain: Can Our Brains Fix It?

Matching Donations Through Dec 31, 2021 // This Might Help

For a few years now we’ve been growing a community of supporters who care about people suffering with chronic pain, but so many people are still suffering.

How do we help people with serious, debilitating symptoms heal and return to their lives? Many chronic pain patients will have success healing through mind-body medicine, but only if they’re lucky enough to hear about this type of treatment. We want to empower doctors and patients to explore treatments that don’t over-medicalize non-structural disorders, and look to other effective solutions for chronic pain. But we need your help! Your donation can help us with our continued outreach, and help us connect with even more medical schools, psychology programs, and patient groups.

We currently have a team of four - your donation would help us continue to do outreach and logistics and fund patient group screenings so that we could offer the film for free. We’re getting booked up with film screenings at medical schools and psychology programs like Rutgers, Emory School of Medicine, the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, USC’s Keck School of Medicine, AT Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine, Michigan State College of Human Medicine, and more.

Help us double a recent anonymous donation of $7,500! Whatever we raise up to that amount will be matched from now until December 31.

Your support goes a long way toward making our urgent work more sustainable.

MAKE A DONATION TO THIS MIGHT HURT

Recently we had an honest and lively post screening Q&A with a chronic pain group in British Columbia, their program director and chronic pain survivor, Elaina Moss, as well as Dr. Schubiner. We talked about predictive coding, how to talk to your provider about chronic pain without being stigmatized, conversion syndrome (and how it relates to learned neural pathways), chronic Lyme disease, and many other topics. Catch the replay here:

“This is is exactly the kind of hope I needed right now.” ~ a chronic pain patient from that screening, after seeing the film.

These intimate conversations with people who care about chronic pain have been so inspiring, and we can’t wait to bring them to more people!

As always, thanks for your support.

Marion and Kent

PS: If you know of any patient groups or medical programs/ organizations that would benefit from seeing the film, or would like to organizer a screening for your community, please get in touch at tmhfilm@gmail.com

📣 New Pain Reprocessing Therapy study shows 66% of back pain patients become pain-free

Hello! We’re still beaming from our recent screening at the Freep Film Festival. It’s an incredible experience to be able to share This Might Hurt in a theater with an in-person audience! We hope we can bring it to your organization soon. If you’d like to help with that, sign up to host a screening. In the meantime, we have some other updates to share.

BOULDER BACK PAIN STUDY: JAMA Psychiatry recently published the randomized control study on back pain that Howard Schubiner, Alan Gordon, Yoni Ashar, Christie Uipi, Tor Wager, and other colleagues conducted with the Wager Lab at the University of Colorado.

The results from the study are that 66% of participants randomized to 4 weeks of pain reprocessing therapy were pain-free or nearly pain-free at posttreatment, compared with 20% randomized to placebo injections and 10% to usual care. This is an important step in validating this medicine as evidence-based, so please help us share the results far and wide.

AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION FILM FESTIVAL: We’ve been asked to present This Might Hurt at this year’s APHA film festival as part of their Addressing Mental Health and Stigma Through Personal Stories panel. We’re honored to be included in this important festival.

PPDA CONFERENCE: Join the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association for the largest mind-body conference in history! On October 28-30, twenty-two experts will share how to eliminate chronic pain, chronic functional syndromes and medically unexplained symptoms through an evidence-based, biopsychosocial approach. 12 CE/CME hours available. Attendees will have access to the conference on-demand with enduring credit for one year. Learn more and register here. A discounted rate without credit is available for students/patients here.

WISDOM OF TRAUMA: Dr. Schubiner recently spoke on a panel hosted by Dr. Gabor Mate as part of the latest Wisdom of Trauma talks. Check out the informative conversation below!

FROM AROUND THE WEB:

Dr. Schubiner’s interview on Body of Wonder from the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.

A new study from Harvard found that 64% of people with back pain became pain-free after a Mind-body + Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) treatment. For a second group of patients — who were given only MBSR without the mind-body component — 25% of them become pain-free. This suggests that making a clear mind-body diagnosis and educating patients about neuroplastic retraining of the brain can be critical for healing.

Watch the replay of our conversation with Dr. Allan Abbass & the IEDTA.

SIGN UP TO HOST A SCREENING:

https://www.thismighthurtfilm.com/host-a-screening

Help us bring these ideas to other healthcare professionals and people with chronic pain.

Dr. Howard Schubiner and Kent Bassett on The Mental Health and Wealth Show

We were thrilled to be interviewed on The Mental Health and Wealth Show. Melanie is a great interviewer and we covered so much including:

• The relationship between emotional trauma and chronic pain

• How we can deal with pent-up emotions (like anger) to help mitigate physical pain

• How the majority of people who have chronic pain do not have a structural problem/injury

• 2 factors that drive pain to become worse or chronic

• Why traditional doctors/medicine are hesitant to use this kind of treatment

• How this treatment is proven to be effective

• The 4 steps to healing chronic pain using the mind-body connection

• Is relapse possible once a person had been healed

• How we can find safety within our own bodies

Check it out here!