Chronic Pain Relief Basics
What is pain exactly?
Pain neuroscience is having a heyday of late, and it tells us that pain is exactly this: a danger signal generated by the brain.
It is not, as we often believe, indicative of damage or injury itself.
You can think of pain as your internal alarm system; a neurological signal generated to protect you from danger and harm.
If you accidently lean against a hot stove, for example, you want that pain signal to quickly and efficiently yell at you so you don't do significant damage to yourself, right? It's highly functional.
Similarly, if you break your leg it’ll be remarkably painful, effectively keeping you from walking on that leg so you don’t damage it further.
In these instances, pain is (perhaps a bit paradoxically) a very good thing, right? It’s keeping you safe from danger.
Those examples aren’t reflective of all pain, however, especially chronic pain. So it’s important to understand that there are different types of pain. We can break them down generally into two camps:
Structural Pain: Pain that is directly-connected to a bodily injury or abnormality. Think about the pain when you've broken a bone or sprained your ankle. Structural pain is normal and healthy in acute injury situations, like the examples I mentioned above.
Neuroplastic Pain: Pain that’s caused when the brain misinterprets safe signals from the body as if they're dangerous. With neuroplastic pain (sometimes referred to as “mind-body pain”) you can think of that internal alarm system as being stuck on "on," very often by mistake. This type of pain is remarkably common in chronic pain situations, and is very often a factor even when there's clear evidence that long-term pain situations are connected to structural factors.
So, how do you solve pain then?
In the case of acute / short-term pain or structural injury, well, ya just gotta let it heal.
But when we get into more complex & long-term chronic pain and/or neuroplastic pain, the foundation of healing rests on one key thing:
Creating safety in your nervous system.
You need to learn how to teach your nervous system to dial back, or off, the alarm bells signaling danger and therefore causing pain.
Here are some key ways you can do just that. Choose one or a few and give them a try:
Building a new understanding & beliefs that nothing's broken, injured, or damaged when the culprit is neuroplastic pain. This can potentially be all it takes for some people, aka "the book cure." And, this will most often take educating yourself, having a conversation or several conversations with your physician or practitioner, and pulling together some solid evidence that this is the case.
Building a regular, mindfulness-based Somatic Tracking practice to take the fuel out of your pain.
Learning to allow your body to actively rest and receive support from the environment rather than working so hard all the time to hold your body in an upright, rigid posture that you might believe is "correct" (pro tip: there is no “correct” posture). And, if your body feels tense because you're protecting against pain (a very natural response), see the next bullet.
Take a step (or two) backward to move forward. Regressing movements or activities that are painful back to a slower, less expressive version that you can do with just a little discomfort and then building back from there. Can't run? Start by walking. Can't walk? Try walking really slow. Can't stand? Lean. Just tensely holding yourself to protect against pain? Practice slowly relaxing just a few degrees at a time using the Active Rest practice above. You get the picture. This one takes some creativity and precision to dial-in the just-right dose of activity, but it works great when you do.
Messages of safety work really well for some folks, especially if you've clearly determined your pain is neuroplastic. Next time you experience pain, try offering yourself a short & simple message that reminds you you're not in danger and that your body's not injured -- "right now you're safe," "it's OK to relax," "you're not injured," etc. Make sure it's true and at least part of you believes it!
Distract yourself. Yep, it's true. Sometimes when pain is really uncomfortable, doing what you need to do to get your focus off of it is a great tool. Netflix, time with friends, playing cards, reading. Anything you know that works to distract you for a bit so you get a break.
And, for most folks, some blend of these and other tools will be what's needed to break the pain cycle.
Foundational to nearly all of my clients' healing has been establishing a set of safety-making practices like these.
Want some help with this stuff?
Reach out anytime. I'm always happy to help.