M1 : Lesson 7.2: Pain
Transcript
Chronic pain is another condition that can be exacerbated by a stress response in the brain and body. Chronic pain has more to do with brain processing than a physical injury. Chronic pain occurs when the brain inappropriately sends pain signals to the body far after the injury has passed. This is often caused by a misperception of threat, whether it be emotional or physical. Teaching the brain to more accurately perceive threat can rewire the association with pain and decrease the sensation of pain throughout the body.
Many of those who struggle with chronic pain feel that they have injuries that are just not healing or they think their body is in pain. There are many who spend years of their life trying to fix their pain, trying to resolve an injured tissue in the body. Fortunately, new understanding of chronic pain is starting to make headway and helping people look at things differently. Rather than an injury that is not healing, or a random diagnosis with no solutions such as fibromyalgia, we are learning how pain is modulated in the brain, and it’s often a result of assessed, unresolved inner emotional conflict. While pain is created, the brain creates the pain experience.
With an actual injury or tissue damage, there’s a signal sent to the spinal cord from the injured tissue of a potential danger or threat This is not yet pain. The spinal cord then relays the information to the brain Again, this relay of information only tells the brain of a potential danger. It is not yet pain. Multiple areas of the brain process this relayed information from the tissues of the body, and the brain assesses if the danger signals indeed warranted and decides, should a pain signal be produced to be sent back to the body? If a certain threshold of danger is detected by the brain, the pain signal is produced by the brain.
Point number 1. It is the brain that creates the experience of pain, not the body. In chronic pain, the tissues might not be providing much input or not at all to the brain, and yet the pain is being created. With chronic pain, doctors and physical therapists often use the term central sensitization, which is a type of misprocessing in the brain being the cause of chronic pain. In other words, the brain thinks the body is still in threat, injury, or damage, and produces a pain signal back into the body.
Why does this happen? Again, one reason is because we have a deep unconscious habit of not feeling okay. Not feeling safe. And when we’re stuck in chronic stress, it might even be unconscious to us that we’re doing this. We often have conscious and unconscious chronic stress affecting many systems and contributes to the heightened tendency of the brain to misinterpret pain signals.
Chronic stress can dysregulate this autonomic endocrine and immune system and even intensify the pain signals. This internal and often unconscious stress loop from the brain to the body can cause pain to spread, intensify and persist even without injury. Point number 2, chronic pain is often a perception of threat. Chronic stress can increase the threat perception loop. The threat might be unprocessed emotions from the past that are being expressed as pain, The threat might be misinterpretation of signals in the present moment.
Either way, the brain is misinterpreting the emotions or other signals as a need to send pain into the body. The Anadot is sending the brain and the body to use of safety to unravel the stress pain response loop. Neuroplasticity practices such as brain retraining and somatic awareness tools are helpful solutions here. The brain’s signal of pain can change even with long term chronic pain. Yes.
That’s right. Chronic pain is reversible. The brain can get cross wired to create pain inappropriately. However, pain and emotional neural networks are shared pathways in the brain, So doing practices to change emotional processing in the brain has a direct effect on chronic pain. As we learn in the brain retraining module, neuroplasticity is a process of using repetition in a new way.
With chronic pain, The brain has a habitual repeated stress response to the signals from the body. So we need to teach the brain a new association with the sense of threat that’s coming from the body. The brain has learned to create a pain signal response. So we need to teach the brain to expect something else or to unlearn creating pain. How do you begin?
You may need to unlearn what you think your pain means such as my back is still injured. Instead, you might need to be certain in your belief that there is nothing wrong with you regarding the pain. Psychological certainty that what you are feeling is not an accurate indicator of a threat, injury, or a problem. Your conscious mind needs to interrupt these pain signals as non threat, or I’m okay even though I feel this pain. I recommend learning more about the current pain brain science so that your belief about what you’re experiencing can shift if you’re somebody who deals with chronic pain.
When you believe there is something within your own power that you can do, this can be a very liberating step. Now for some, they’re able to unlearn their pain relatively quickly. For others, it’s a longer journey. It just depends on the factors contributing, so as stressful lifestyles and unconscious emotional resistance patterns. Chronic pain is brain based just like emotions.
Like I said, some people almost feel their emotions as pain instead of emotions. Chronic pain is a pot of hot water that boils over when you have suppressed enough emotions, and stressful thoughts without giving yourself the space to process them. The internal tension and energy buildup in the nervous system eventually causes this outlet to become chronic pain. Pain and emotional processing. As I just mentioned, one type of pain miss processing in the brain has to do with emotions.
The ability to properly process emotions in our brain and nervous system such as anger or grief has been shown to be a leading contributor to chronic pain issues. Emotions and pain can cross wire. And chronic pain can be a signal created by the brain to keep you safe or from feeling the emotion, albeit in a very dysfunctional way. Tools for learning how to feel emotions and process them in the present moment are very helpful for chronic pain sufferers. I’ll present a few tips for those who are struggling with this issue later in the semantics module of this course.
Simply put, Emotional processing is about learning how to feel your feelings rather than think your feelings. Does that make sense? Do you know the difference? It’s not about digging up old emotions necessarily, although some methods do have you do this. Rather, it’s about being someone who can fully feel their emotions in the present moment so they can move through it.
Present moment reprocessing of information and sensation and sending messages of safety. Even if this idea that suppressed emotions causing chronic pain doesn’t resonate, I recommend you still focus on learning to assess your present moment experience. Another way I see chronic pain present is when the brain has a habit of creating a pain signal as simply a way of communicating, I’m not okay. I need to fix myself or I need to fix that. In other words, The pain is an expression of the internal subconscious mind that wants to send the message of this moment is not okay.
Certain pathways from the brain to the body become over sensitized to send messages of threat with a minute stimulus, meaning it doesn’t take much for a sense of threat in the brain to cause a pain signal to be relayed back to the body. First, you must learn how to teach the brain to repattern its unconscious habit of internally scanning the body for danger. If I could stress a key mindset to those struggling with chronic pain, it’s that learning to habitually and consistently send queues of safety to the brain and the body regardless of what you are noticing is key to reversing this issue. We will learn more about this in the somatic module. The brain basically sends messages of pain as a way of saying, I feel danger, and it becomes a feedback loop.
The pain is coming from the brain, and the pain scares you or causes an internal stress which sends messages of danger to the brain, which results in the brain sending more signals of pain. Interrupting this loop and sending messages of safety is the way out. In order to get rid of chronic pain, You have to refrain what the pain means and send messages of safety of self assurance that the pain you feel is not indicating anything dangerous is happening in this moment. This is the hardest mindset leap to make. As it goes against the experience of pain and the meaning that there’s something wrong.
10:18Yes. The pain hurts. But it can be a faulty message coming from your brain, and it might not be dangerous. Be sure to watch the somatic tracking pain reprocessing practice in module 5 under somatic awareness. Next, we’ll move on to mold toxicity.