Or \u201cI\u2019m not as good as I think I am\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a massage therapist, you become aware that there are a\nmultitude of different techniques, styles and modalities that are being\ntaught. There are proprietary names,\nthree letter acronyms and jargon, jargon, jargon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a growing awareness that the narratives espoused by\nmost of these courses are just plain wrong and that those teaching the courses\ncould be argued are deluded about how their manual therapy techniques are\naffecting the body. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some therapists are happy to carry on doing what they\u2019ve\nalways been doing and believing everything that they have been taught. And it is quite understandable because they\noften achieve good results for their clients and their clients keep returning. If it ain\u2019t broken, why fix it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other (and may I dare to say) more discerning and learned therapists can become challenged by the realisation that they are not changing soft tissue structures.\u00a0 To quote from https:\/\/blog.amt.org.au\/index.php\/2018\/02\/07\/a-massage-therapists-journey-through-a-career-crisis\/<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re treating a person, not a skeleton with muscles,\ntendons, ligaments and fascia\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had a fairly heated online discussion the other day with a\ncouple of therapists who, tongue-in-cheek, wanted to change job title from\n\u201cMassage Therapist\u201d to \u201cMuscle Therapist\u201d. \nNot sure that the discussion resolved anything as all parties stuck to\ntheir own biases \u2013 mine being that muscles are just living pieces of steak \u2013\nhow can we think that we are doing anything to change them by massage and\nmanual therapy? Instead we are\ninteracting with the nervous system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to treating people who are in chronic pain\nthen there is a growing awareness that the strength of the therapeutic alliance\nbetween practitioner and therapist is more important than the actual techniques\nemployed. In addition, the phenomenon of\nRegression to the Mean suggests that therapists are probably overstating their\nimportance in impacting on client\u2019s chronic pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the title of this post \u201cRegression to the Mean\u201d sounds\nvery mathematical with the strong possibility of statistics being\ninvolved. Whilst it can be explained in\nmathematical and statistical language, it can ultimately just be considered common\nsense. Maybe a better title would be\n\u201cGet Better Anyway\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People who are affected by chronic pain are likely to have\nfluctuations in how much pain they are experiencing. Today might be better than yesterday, worse\nthan yesterday or the same as yesterday. \nOften any changes cannot be attributed to any activity of intervention\nthat the sufferer has undertaken. It\njust is and there will be bad days and not so bad days. The pain may change on a daily basis or there\nmay a few bad\/good days in a row before pain levels modify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most people will attempt to take action when their pain is\nworsening or reaches a particular threshold, eg they will call a massage\ntherapist on a bad day (or after a couple of bad days). The therapist will do their magic and lo and\nbehold the discomfort level may fall over the next few days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the therapist takes the credit for the improvement and\nit reinforces their bias that the specific treatment they provided was\ninstrumental in the benefits that the client obtained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the fact is that, very often, the pain levels would have\ndropped regardless of what interventions the sufferer took as natural variation\nin the client\u2019s condition took hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For detailed explanation of this then I would suggest that\nyou read the article at:<\/p>\n\n\n\n