Intend to thrive not just survive.
Learn to live a great life even if it hurts!
Work with Jo online – Transformational True Health & Pain Coaching
Jo also has an online business that enables you to have a video call one to one with Jo to assist you to discover new ways to assist your own growth & healing. This site is not for physiotherapy but for educating & teaching tools to assist in achieving better health outcomes & learn how to transform your life by increasing your awareness and learning to be in a better relation to your pain & unpleasant feelings. To learn more go to : www.johadley.online
Pain is an unpleasant sensation or experience. Our first instinct is to run away from it or avoid it. If we are in immediate danger, running from the pain can be the appropriate response. Unfortunately, in our society we have been conditioned to avoid all pain. We view it as bad.
Pain is actually a life saving sensation. Science has shown it is a danger detection mechanism and if we do not have the ability to detect ‘danger’ with our cells- nociceptors- then it can shorten our life span.
Pain is actually helping us. Our cells- nociceptors or danger detector cells – send signals up to our brain. It is in our brains that we perceive the signals as pain or not. this is where it can get tricky. The amount of pain we feel or do not feel has little to do with our injury but everything to do with context, past experience & a lot of other factors (similar to the factors that increase stress, anxiety, fatigue).
See my stress management page….
Pain can be perceived as stronger if we are in a threatening or unpleasant environment or less for the same injury if we feel safe and supported.
Pain can be perceived as worse if we have a past experience of not only physical pain, but also mental or emotional pain as well. The brain cannot differentiate between these.
The more danger we perceive ourselves to in can increase the amplitude of the pain we feel.
Often as we do things to avoid or minimise the pain without addressing its true origins can lead to a heightening of the sensitivity of the nervous system so the danger detection system is amplified and thus perceived as worse in the brain. This can lead to more behaviours that try to avoid pain but ultimately ends up with us living a more limited and restricted life scared of provoking the pain. This can get to very extreme levels in some people.
Learning techniques to address and feel the unpleasant sensations & learning how we can do things that give us some control over the amount of pain we are feeling, can be empowering and can be a vital part of the journey back to living a more movement filled life. Practicing these new techniques a little every day can build a new framework that allows pain to less dominate your life.
Education about pain and how it works in itself can calm a sensitive scared nervous system and assist in turning down the volume of the pain.