Physical Symptoms With No Physical Cause?
Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience have demonstrated that most forms of chronic pain are due to how the brain, nervous system, and body work rather than being caused by structural damage in the body or disease. Let that sink in for a moment... This likely means that even though you have pain there could be nothing physically wrong in your body causing the pain. How would it feel to say to yourself "there is nothing wrong with my body," and truly believe it? When you live with chronic pain this can be extremely difficult to accept because it doesn't match your experience.
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Does that mean your pain isn't real? Absolutely not, chronic pain is as real as any pain! It hurts the same and is just as debilitating.
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Pain is always an alarm to signal danger. Our bodies are danger detection machines. When danger is detected our body, nervous system, and brain quickly adapt and change to become better at detecting danger. You've likely experienced the immediate area surrounding a wound or injury becoming more sensitive to touch, temperature, pressure, etc. This is one example of those neuroplastic changes in action. Sometimes when this process carries on for too long and we become over sensitized to danger, this danger detection system begins to see danger everywhere, even when there might not be any. This can lead to pain when there is no physical cause for it.
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Often times when someone has chronic pain doctors will go searching for a physical cause. When you look close enough you will likely find something eventually. However, typically these "explanations" for chronic pain are nothing more than normal abnormalities. Meaning normal wear and tear from aging, insignificant differences in some structure of the body, or injuries that have already fully healed. The reality is that even when you go searching for these types of things in people with zero pain you almost always find them still. This explains why so often when these perceived issues are corrected through surgery or some other means the pain still doesn't go away or it changes to something else. This is easily explained by a danger detection system that has become over sensitized to the point that normal abnormalities are being interpreted by the brain as dangerous. A root cause approach would mean retraining your body, nervous system, and brain what actually is dangerous and what isn't.
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Want to know more?
I offer a free virtual class on the neuroscience of pain. Classes are typically offered once a month. The class consists of about an hour of material followed by Q&A.
Recovery From Chronic Pain is Possible!
The fact that chronic pain is likely created by the brain and is not the result of a physical injury, structural problem, or disease is great news! The neuroplastic changes that occurred and are trapping you in a cycle of pain are not permanent, they can be undone! Neuroplasticity is always happening in the background and if we don't take an active role it can end up in some dark places. Yet, we have the power to take the wheel and steer the process where we want it to go. Once you learn how, the benefits extend far beyond eliminating chronic pain. You gain more control of your life as a whole.
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What does chronic pain recovery look like? Recovery involves gaining an understanding of how pain and neuroplasticity work. This will allow you to begin to look at and think about your pain differently. You will learn many tools and skills to begin to retrain your brain, nervous system, and body to turn down and eventually turn off the pain. The recovery process is not necessarily a linear path, there are ups and downs along the way and everyone's journey is different.
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As a neuroplasticity coach, my role is to meet you where you are and support you through the recovery process. I will help you in applying the tools in ways that work for you and fit into your life. In many ways this is a process of self-discovery. We'll get to the root of what is driving your pain and develop strategies to retrain your brain, nervous system, and body out of pain.
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"Healing severe or chronic pain, I believe, includes transforming our relationship to the pain and ultimately, it is about transforming our relationship to who we are and to life."