What is pain and how to conquer it
What is pain and why do we feel it?
Pain feels like it’s literally in our tissues, however the latest scientific research tells a completely different story. Pain is 100% perception from our brain. That tummy ache, cut, bruise, headache and even the pain you may have been experiencing more persistently; it’s actually all from your brain. What’s even more intriguing is given this fundamental understanding, you actually have the power to alter the perception of your pain.
So let’s break down what’s actually going on here…..
When we get some sort of change to the receptors in your tissue, this message is transported to the nerves of your body. At this stage it’s simply a message. The message continues up to our spinal cord and possibly to the brain stem. If there is a perceived or actual threat from this message (e.g. there is tissue damage or potential for tissue damage) the brain may get involved. Once the brain gets involved, some interesting stuff starts to happen. If we were to think of the brain as a computer, it starts to access and open a multitude of ‘files’ to try and make sense of this incoming information from the tissues.
The files we open may include information from past memories, motor patterns, our knowledge or even beliefs. Once it has made sense of this information, it can then decide what message to send back to the tissues. The brain basically guesses the best response based on the files opened and will conclude an output based on how it can best protect us. How smart, right? If the brain files opened summarise danger, we have the potential to feel pain. If the overall summary from the brain is of safety, we have the potential to feel no pain at all.
In the acute (early) phase of an injury it’s useful to feel pain because we will be more cautious around the injured tissue, we may seek medical intervention or rest — thank-you brain! Often pain is temporary, useful and passes. But problems can occur when the brain continues to access (or practice) danger files, it starts to ingrain neural networks that continue to produce the sensation of pain well beyond what is functionally necessary for us. It’s like your brain goes into over protection mode and gets stuck in a recurring cycle.
Remember physical tissues generally heal very well and often within three months of an injury. Sometimes excessive protection from the brain can slow this process down and make us stay in the protection mode for too long. If you’ve had pain for more than three months, it may be worth looking at soothing your brain to assist it to unlearn this protective pain signal.
What can we do about pain when it persists?
Have you noticed in your physical body or your mind that when you experience pain you reflexively tighten up? Like we are bracing, holding on as if this is going to protect us somehow. This reflex is 100% normal. To me it makes sense, if the brain is summarising danger then from a primal perspective, it’s good for our body to activate the fight or flight mode (our sympathetic nervous system) to send adrenalin into our bloodstream and blood into our working muscles to assist us to fight or to run away, to get our heart and lungs working harder and faster so we can supply our body with more oxygen. The problem is, many of us experience pain that persists, so for our body to stay in this fight or flight mode, is not actually that helpful and can tip our autonomic nervous system out of balance.
The fight and flight mode acts like a sprinter. It goes hard, fatigues and then needs a break. So, when pain persists, and we maintain the reflex of tightening our body and mind around it, we effectively keep our sprinter trying to sprint for hours, days, months or years. No wonder we feel fatigued, fed up, frustrated, in more pain, with poor concentration and a range of unpleasant emotions and thoughts. If I was made to sprint all day, I would feel this way too. So, when we learn to notice the reflex of tightening around pain and then choose to actively relax body and mind, we can start to break this habitual pattern.
The opposite mode of the autonomic nervous system is the rest and digest mode (parasympathetic nervous system). This is when our muscles relax, our thoughts quieten, we feel more content and at peace; we then begin to restore balance in our body and mind and repair any tissue that requires attention. The stickiness in our system shifts to a state of flow. This mode, in contrast to the fight or flight mode, is more like an endurance athlete that can just keep going and going without hitting the same levels of fatigue as the sprinter; slow and steady wins the race as they say.
I’ve now seen countless patients successfully change pain when they’ve simply focused on getting familiar with the feeling of this rest and digest mode and given their sprinter a chance to have a break for many short moments during the day. When we are in ‘endurance athlete’ mode it helps to give our brain signals of safety. Remember if more of the brain’s capacity is taken up with safety and we tip the balance into the favour of safety, we have the potential to change pain.
The two modes of the autonomic nervous system should work in beautiful synchronicity, one dominating over the other when we attempt different tasks, activities, think different things and experience different emotions. What I’ve seen in many people I work with, especially those experiencing chronic pain, is the fight or flight response is dominating a little too much in order to maintain a healthy balance. This is why much of the work at Refocus is, for lack of a better word, ‘focused’ on getting familiar with our rest and digest mode and encouraging our brain into more safety.
How do you change the balance of your autonomic nervous system?
There are numerous ways we can encourage more activation of our rest and digest mode. A great place to start is to become more aware of our physical body. I’m not meaning focus, analyse, protect and guard your body more, as this will just further encourage danger, your fight and flight responses. I’m meaning focus on your reactions to pain with the intention of curiosity. Notice how you may be subconsciously tightening yourself further around the pain and encouraging your sprinter to stay sprinting.
Let’s play with this concept… focus on an area or tension or density in your body. It may be the part that has been sore, or it may be subtle tension around the head, jaw, eyes or stomach. Scan your body and choose what area stands out the most. Sense it, feel it, watch it move and change naturally. After you have witnessed it, see if you can relax around the borders of this tension by 1%. Softening the tissue consciously. It may feel like dropping of the shoulders, melting of the muscles, expanding of the tissue or a subtle feeling of more space. Can you sense a very subtle shift in either the physical sensation or even a relaxation of the mind? Even the slightest change means you are slowing down the sprinter and this is the direction we are wanting to move in.
No need to expect perfection here. We all come in to this in different places, so be patient, kind and stay curious. For some, pain intensity may reduce instantly. For others it may be a subtle loosening of the mind around the pain. Get curious. Every time we will experience something new.
Repeat this exercise many times over so your brain learns how to let go of this habitual tension and can have more opportunities in the rest and digest mode. Let that endurance athlete take over and give your sprinter a break.
Relaxation sounds easy but can often be quite foreign to us. It’s an art and I say this because we cannot think our way or action our way into relaxation. Although action or thought may be the first step, it is the actual moment of letting go and surrendering that we achieve the rest and digest mode and a sense of relaxation. This can take time to practice but trust me, this skill is worth its weight in gold if you can get familiar with it.
Can you believe our brain guesses the output of pain? It’s just a guess. You can see how helpful it will be to provide the brain with new safety based information so we can compassionately guide our brain into relaxation and allow the brain’s guess to get more accurate over time.
If you enjoyed this article please follow Refocus Education here on Medium. For the short term we will be focusing on how to continue to facilitate a change in pain. In the long term we will be discussing a wealth of topics around optimising our brain and nervous system for a better life.
Lastly if you’ve been suffering with chronic pain without resolution for longer than three months, you may also be interested in our Change Your Pain Online Course. This course is a 4 week program that gives you the tools and techniques in exceptional detail to change your pain.
