Tell Us About "The You Model" and YOU!

I'm playing a little game with myself today and hoping you can help me.  What elements would you put into something in order to teach people what they might want or need to know about chronic pain and illness and the base concept of Lumigrate, which is the 'You Model' of the home page?  You'll literally be helping formulate a big project which I'm working on the outline for right now. 

I was supposed to go skiing but luckily Lumigrate is kind of blossoming right now and it just isn't a day to take a break.  And since reality is what reality is, it's not a very good time to risk getting injured.  I mean, if I were concerned about hurting a hand in the furniture woodworking glue-up with Pablo Blanco on the weekend (and he DID hurt his hand) just based on how many mishaps we have cooking, I need to think about my priorities.  And Lumigrate's success is my #1 priority, right up there with maintaining my improving health.   And those two things go hand and hand ... all puns intended ... as seen on the home page of Lumigrate.  I don't know that people who haven't been really off in the ditch of wellness realize how much those of us who HAVE appreciate it and fear it.  Watch the Olympians when they see someone fall, they sincerely are concerned.  They relate.  In their heads they know it increases their standing, but overriding that is that they react based on what they know it feels like when they fall and get hurt. 

We're about to have our 1,000th read -- a 'first' on Lumigrate!  Ironically, despite all the great content that's in the videos, products, blogs, forums ...  it is the "about" me.   Why is that?  Because what I designed with Lumigrate was based on what worked with my patients in Grand Junction for several years.  Chris Young helped me understand that there was something unique about what I understood about their chronic pain condition and how it has affected their lives, and they valued what I knew about what to do about it more because of that.  So now I'm basically looking at a first year of success with Lumigrate for our relatively limited number of people who have found us, and figure out how to grow that to affect more people just as effectively.

The website is getting quite a bit of polishing done right now and then we'll be doing the search engine optimization so it will get found by people Searching on engines on the Internet.  Those people are going to be welcomed by a wonderful base of people -- "The Original Grate Group" from our first year, 2009, that have been writing there for a while, and who clearly know each other and interact, while we show that new people introduct themselves and they are welcomed.  It should let people know that they have found a legitimate website, sincere in it's information that presents as progressive, valid, streamlined and FUN.  I'm really wanting to encourage you to keep reading and to also Comment and start new Topics and contribute when you have the time and something to say, as your words really do get read by many people and it really does help in many ways. 

I'd like to see feedback about this blog in particular, because it actually has a big important project behind it. Which is: how do you take a mass of people and do with them en mass what Lumigrate's been able to do more individually?  Or for you in the South of the U.S., we've really worked with a 'mess' (which is a bunch like you'd grab a handfull of as I understand it).   And please think mass media... Internet, television, news articles, books.  When I look at the people I know of who have made really big improvements with their health and well-being since encountering Lumigrate, it's because they had some individual attention from me on facebook.  So just as I took what worked with patients in a medical clinic and have translated it in the first year of Lumigrate through using social media, primarily faceobook, I need to now figure out how to then take that model and bend it to different situations.   

And just as in the clinic not everyone wanted to do the work to get well, or our relationship didn't 'fit' because you're always having to fit two people together, Lumigrate will not 'be' for everyone.  For the number of people who are actively utilizing the website, which has been at least 1,000 interested enough to read about me on the home page, 250 to register to write, I have no way of knowing how many people actually have been helped.  At New Years many people stopped by the facebook walls for me or for Lumigrate to say 'you're helping more than you have any way of knowing', and I'd estimate there are 100 people whose health care changed to a great degree because of their reading and doing some of the things they had the opportunity to learn here.  I know there are a couple of handfulls who really latched onto the information and have drastically improving lives right now.  Really, those are pretty good numbers.  Part of what I set out to do was be able to help more people than I could in a clinic, and also to secure a financial security that I saw being eroded by the problems with the health care system and insurance-based medicine. 

But I want to make sure that I do the best job I can of capturing people's attention in a video about the You model's concept, and hope to catch anyone who is remotely ready to 'get on board with their health care reform' and become more empowered and/or more educated about health care and integrative medicine in particular.   Mostly the core concept of "You being ultimately who has the power" is the 'real deal'; it seems to be simple but why most people haven't embraced that is not simple to explain, and what to do about it is even more time consuming.  How to then quickly educate people about how we tend to gravitate to what we are used to and that why it's difficult for people to move in a different direction is the challenge.  I think an example of someone who can serve to be a good example would be beneficial, and in reality, that has to include something that scares people. I grew up in a house with a smoker and never smoked largely due to the lung that came around in a glass box and showed us what a smoker's lung looked like.  I wonder if they would have sent a liver along at the same time if it would have been effective for health education on alcohol. 

As for facebook, which currently is how most people who come to Lumigrate know about us,  and with the "Grate Group" base on the Forums here at the website, I've been working for the last few months taking those people and others who have time or an interest, and making them 'Lumigrate liaisons' and leaders, which is wonderful. Yenta, Alice, Irene the Cutee-cle Lady, and Candace Grande most recently.   As an occupational therapist, I hopefully am finding strategies for suggesting activities that are beneficial to those people's continued growth.  I've found out what motivates these people and then asked them to do something to contribute to Lumigrate and they've been wanting to do that. I use something called The Just Right Challenge to set them up based on what they are able to do.  It's based on a psychological theory called 'Flow' where you will have your 'zone' when you're being asked to do something just slightly above what your ability is.  Occupational therapy basically is a cross between psychology and physical therapy and then branches out in both directions to basically work with one end of the spectrum to the other.  We work with everyone from newborn babies to people in hospice.  I've worked in driving rehab, hand therapy, nursing facilities, hospitals and outpatient clinics. And very briefly for a rehab hospital that was doing illegal billing.  The doctor I talked to just as I was hired was a family friend who had sold to them his hospital and said 'they know how to make money".  I should have known if he said that I should be concerned what I was getting myself into. But they weren't going under the way other facilities were!

Deirdre Rawlings and Llenar Blagg and Adam Cochran keep after me about using technology, and Jen Reynolds, Cinda Crawford and others inspire with what they are doing as well. Vince the Monkey Handler is still in the mix and advising and encouraging and coaching.  Pablo Blanco doesn't cut me any slack, and I think he just knows I can do better and is actually kicking me in the butt where I need to look at areas I could improve. 

I think we'll need to have FAC, or Friday Afternoon Chat (inspired by Dr. Lepisto's live version of that at a local health store), and utilize Skype and things that Llenar has been teaching me about where we can tie 20 computers together.  Webinars. Teleconferences. Hopefully having a conference here in Grand Junction on chronic pain can come to fruition that gets put on the web for others to connect to.  I can post more things in video format on facebook, and include me in it instead of the 'providers' I focused on for our launch and first year.  Because it's come down to my being the hub, or funnel as someone described me. 

But here's the deal and everyone who has been my patient knows that I'll cut to the chase when I need to and here's what should scare you:  There are not enough providers experienced and educated related to chronic pain to treat the people out there. But there are many who are good and competent providers who want to know more and who can move forward with their efficacy if there is a means for them to know about information and learn it.  Hence, my concept is actually that in addition to the public learning from Lumigrate, providers learn about Lumigrate from the consumers/patients, and that the providers will have the mindset to spend a relatively small amount of money in medical industry terms, to get valid, progressive, streamlined and FUN information and be able to treat their patient more effectively AND all their other patients.

So if I have the opportunity with a person through a mass media moment or 30, I'd want it to impress this upon them, and that THEY have the opportunity this moment to keep doing as they are used to or to open up their minds a bit and look at how it really is up to YOU how you spend your time learning, your energy for learning and telling others, and your money.  Realistically many people do not have $20 or the computer connection to download, but their clinics do!  Their libraries do!  And it's up to each person, once I've done MY job as an educator and speaker or writer in an effective manner, to take it from there.  And then having a "Mardy's List" for these types of providers and educational websites, books, magazines, education groups and medical consumers etc. to find each other. 

It is imperative that people understand what this means to them.  There is a growing shortage of doctors and other medical providers.  The expense of medical school combined with the expenses for providers when they are working is prohibitive to many.  Even the wealthiest don't buy private care providers who are doing well for them. Orpah, who overall I very much support and commend, had viewers writing in about the obvious thyroid condition they could see the signs of on their televisions while she went to FOUR doctors, none of which had tested her thyroid until she asked about it.  Yes, I'll drop names when I have to, and to me the biggest name in television is a fabulous example of health care's problems and I very much appreciate that her first show of 2009 was about this and how YOU have to take responsibility.  She's also the birthplace of Dr. Oz's television career too, and he teaches the same concepts about people taking control of their health from an allopathic model perspective. 

I somehow have to figure out how to effectively coerce a person who is watching, reading, whatever ... in fifteen minutes, WHY they should get active in their health care.  Make it the #1 priority in how they spend their time, energy, and money!  "If you have your health, you have everything" is very true.  If you don't have your health you often can't have a home anymore, or if you do it's very much a struggle for too many, as they live on limited income combined with increasing expenditures for health care.  

Many health care providers, like myself, cannot work in health care anymore.  There are many reasons for that in the details, but it comes down to the fast pace, the paperwork, falling pay, and we've seen our health be affected by the stress.  Many communities even in beautiful Colorado do not have enough doctors or therapists.  I'd like to say it's going to be better tomorrow but I don't think that is going to be the case.  Things might completely fall apart before they get put back together again.  Think Humpty Dumpty if that helps.  Don't get mired down thinking about the big national problems or more statewide or local even, start doing what you can for YOU.  And the system will follow YOUr lead. 

I'm really glad all the experiences, which required time that I would not have had if my life had been different, have led me to be in this challenging place today.  "Gads, how to get people to take half an hour and get serious about 'the occupation of their health care' as it relates to chronic pain'. It's increasingly falling on each of us to use ourselves -- due to lack of insurance, money, and professionals in the community!  Educational sites such as Lumigrate and many others, books like Dr Oz's popular "You" series has shown, as well as his new TV show, and many others are tools which can help people with education about how to 'be the next best thing'.  But none of it does any good if people don't 'get' that piece about 'you being in the central control position'.   

The "You Model" was drawn by a guy who grew up right down the road from where I grew up, and years later the creators of the comedy show and movie 'South Park', were in the very same school our home community of mountainous Colorado.  Within both of our families there are chronic pain stories, interestingly.  The website developer has family members with chronic illness.  And by the way, he was the developer for Ron Paul's website, one which probably is getting a lot of traffic since it was announced he is the frontrunner for his 'flavor' of politiical party yesterday.  Both of the Lumigrate employees who were along last year when the website was being developed had stories of chronic illness and pain for themselves and family as well.  It is a chronic and HUGE problem.  Having had these people on the team was critically important to what you see now, so I wanted to recognize that, as THEIR motivation about the project was one with experience at heart. This connection to the cause of chronic pain is very important and shows in the end results, it is important to point out.

So how would I describe in a short period of time, effectively enough to get people with chronic pain or at risk for it to spent their time and energy with what I have to say if I have 30 or so minutes of their time?  You basically have to find their 'locus of control', which is what motivates them.  Emotion motivates them, and presenting a storyline they can related to.  That includes the family / caregiver system.  I know in my situation, I had a father with chronic pain growing up, an alcoholic mother and I later married a person with a substance abuse problem that went from controlled to out of control during our seven years.  I got out of that when the legal ramifications were not worth it for me to stick around hoping for my love to go back to the way he was.  Then I married someone with chronic pain/headaches, whose daughter had many problems as a teenager related to the difficulties she had grown up with in a family system so embroiled with chronic illness and including pain and related health expenses, in addition to the outright threat of a parent dying her entire life.

Yes, I married what I was comfortable with!  THAT is what has to be the hub of the story about how to get people to identify with their story about pain. We tend to stay what we're used to, unless the reality of that -- or the threat of it -- makes it worth it for us to do something different.  We will attract to what we are used to and what we relate to.  So to make people 'get that' and look at what they are continually doing that keeps them in that place AND what to do to start moving forward to doing the work that it takes to get better.  If you make work FUN, it seems more like play.  And isn't that what a game is?  

The foundation of occupational therapy comes from World War I in the US, with many soldiers in facilities that were supposed to be doing exercises per the physical therapists.  But the men were pretty devastated emotionally, physically and spirituallty.  One of the nurse aids noticed they weren't interested in doing what their minds might know was needed for their physical bodies, and suggested they work on projects around the place.  Painting, gardenting, woodworking, etc.  From this the motto of occupational therapy has been 'engage the mind and the body will follow'. 

As the academia organizations latched onto educating people about this, there were many 'famous' theorists who published on 'the model of human occupation' and in college I truly loved truly learning and taking to heart the theory, not just learning it to pass a test.  But I'll spare people that detail and just 'cut to the chase'.  I think any good story should have a chase scene in it as well.  Someone I know who has a substance abuse problem from "self medication" after years of never having been properly identified or treated for a medical condition actually HAS a VERY scary story of a chase when in a car when the driver opted to run from the law.  Maybe THAT would get someone's attention! After all, we all know that every good story has a chase scene, a love scene, and some humor!  Oh, and hopefully makes you think AND changes your life.