Author | Lightnews

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Sep 12

Healthcare trains us to ask about symptoms. What it rarely teaches us is how to ask about the person living with them.

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Sep 4

No wonder so many leave appointments feeling more broken than when they arrived.

What is needed is not another tree to examine,
but a way to step back and see the forest,
a connected, whole-person approach that helps people make sense of their pain and return to living their lives.

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Sep 4

• Orthopedist with a different perspective
• Psychologist with yet another explanation
• Physiotherapist or Pain Specialist with their own terms

Each branch of the system speaks in fragments, while the person is left to patch together a story that never quite makes sense.

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Sep 4

Healthcare often adds to the distress people in pain already feel.

Instead of seeing the whole forest of persistent pain, the system breaks people down into isolated trees:
• Rheumatologist with one set of diagnoses and language
• Immunologist with another
• Endocrinologist with their own lens

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Sep 2

“Traditional” and “psychologically informed” aren’t two separate lanes.
They’re threads.
Weaving them together is where real clinical impact happens.

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Sep 2

Strength and mobility matter.
So do fear, avoidance, and meaning.
The art is integrating both—so rehab is more than fixing, it’s returning someone to life.

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Sep 2

It’s not traditional vs. psychologically informed care.

The skill is weaving them together.

Every exercise, every rep, every flare-up can be both physical and psychological care.

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Aug 28

Clinicians: trade the cape for a compass. Your job isn’t to fix every problem—it’s to support the person who will live the solution. Be Alfred, not Batman. #patientcentered #physiotherapy

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Aug 19

Clinicians—your patients don’t need you to have all the answers. They need you to be real. When you give yourself permission to be empathetic and authentic, you create space for true trust and alliance. False certainty is everywhere in healthcare—dare to be different.

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Aug 16

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Aug 5

Numbers tell part of the story—people fill in the rest. Qualitative research is how we stop guessing and start understanding what truly matters.

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Aug 2

Listening skills are vital yet we the majority of us don't get taught this

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Aug 1

Nothing wrong with doing some manual therapy but it is simply a support to the real deep work of engaging with someone's lived experience and ensuring they are pointed to their values

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Jul 29

Pain care isn’t broken because we lack information.

It’s broken because we lack transformation.

Stop lecturing. Start coaching.

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Jul 28

Most clinicians claiming to be biopsychosocial are giving it lip service at best. Identifying yellow flags is easy. Being able to create conversations that help the person connect the dots is where the skill lies

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Jul 19

🧠💥 Psychologically informed care isn’t a checkbox—it’s a clinical skillset.

Most clinicians stop at education. But real change happens when we help patients connect meaning to their experience and take action.

👉 Ready to go beyond the script?

#ModernPainCare #PainRehab #Biopsychosocial #PNE

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Jul 8

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Jul 5

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Jul 1

When you encounter pain with a "mechanical" assessment your reasoning for its presence must go deeper than the tissues underneath your hands.

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Jun 17

Manual therapy is a cultural need not a physiologic one

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Jun 3

Are we really practicing what we preach with psychologically-informed care? It's time we moved beyond theoretical knowledge to meaningful patient connections. The most transformative moments happen when we're brave enough to have difficult conversations and create experiential learning opportunities

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · May 1

What if the future of chronic pain care wasn’t in a biologic, but in building skills to thrive in tough contexts? Biology adapts to life—so let’s stop chasing fixes and start restoring agency. Teach people, don’t just treat them.
#PainCare #FunctionFirst #BeyondBiologics

Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Apr 11

I'm 22 years of practice in at this point. Without a doubt, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing someone's demeanor make a huge shift when they see themselves getting their life back.

#health #physicaltherapy #physiotherapy #chronicpain #painrehabilitation #dptstudent

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Mark Kargela @mkargeladpt.bsky.social · Apr 5

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