My pain is chronic - now what?

In my last post I discussed how pain is created by your brain, not your body. With an injury, pain is usually temporary or acute, lasting for a short period of time. But many people experience chronic pain that seems to never go away, and today I want to talk about chronic pain resulting from injuries.

When you’ve had an injury, you will usually experience pain due to the actual tissue damage — this is your brain’s way of letting you know that it is sensing that threat and damage. And, this pain is protective; you are less likely to move the injured part of your body if it hurts, thus letting the healing occur more quickly. However, once the damaged tissue has healed (this could take one week to many months, depending on the injury) the sensation of pain should start to diminish. When I work with a client who describes a fifteen-year-old injury that still hurts, I know that we have work to do, because it shouldn’t hurt anymore!

So, what can you do?

• Check the sensation around the old injury. Can you sense light touch, vibration, pressure, temperature and sharp/dull on your skin around the injury? Are these sensations the same on the other side of your body? If not, perhaps hypo- or hyper-sensitivity (essentially, inaccurate sensation) is leading the brain to think the area is still a threat. Can you (by providing sensation on one side and then the other, repeatedly) make the sides feel more equal, with the previously-injured side feeling like the other?

• Check the movement around the old injury. Do you have the same range of motion in your body on both sides? Does this range of motion hurt on the injured side? Can you slow it down or make it smaller to eliminate the pain? If you don’t often move this part of your body, try to and see what happens. A lack of movement can lead to the brain feeling like the area is still a threat.

If you’ve tried these two things and don’t quite have the answers you need yet, contact me and we’ll go deeper to figure out some solutions. You shouldn’t have to live with your old injuries forever!