Why for Chronic Pain and How to Heal

As a pelvic PT for 25 years, founder of PelvicSense, and a certified chronic pain rehabilitation practitioner, I and many other healthcare professionals have excellent news about healing chronic pain.

People with chronic pain can significantly heal when they implement a self-care, mind/body home program and practice this for about 3 months.

Self-care includes:

• Learning about pain science.

• Practicing techniques that lowers fear of activity.

• Doing mental exercises to soothe the hypersensitive nervous and immune systems.  

• Moving your body

We’ve assumed you’ve ruled out a major medical cause for pain and that tests have resulted in normal findings. So why do you have ongoing pain?

The reason for ongoing pain is that your nervous & immune systems have become too sensitive, and the brain behaves like a hypervigilant, helicopter parent. Scientists call this “central sensitization.”

Your nervous and immune systems have elevated their sensitivity to threats, even ones that may be potential (not just actual) danger to your well-being. Threats aren’t just physical, like sitting on a wooden piano stool if you have pelvic pain.

Negative self-talk, stressful social interactions, self-criticism, worry that you can’t meet with friends, be intimate with a partner or hold a job. All these are interpreted by your nervous and immune system as dangerous. Their job is to send these dangerous messages to the brain. In turn the brain determines if you’re in danger or not.

Remember the scene in Harry Potter when a flurry of letters inviting Harry to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry flew into the uncle’s home, through the chimney, pouring through the letter box? 

When the brain is barraged with threat messages, like the letters in Harry Potter, it stops its normal assessment process and automatically sends pain to your body. Pain is the one of the ways your brain protects you. The brain also signals the muscles around the painful area to guard, to protect the area even more. You may find moving and functioning of the affected body region a bit wonky, uncoordinated and uncomfortable.  

If you just twisted your ankle, feeling immediate pain is an excellent response from your brain. It’s not healthy if the ankle has healed in the typical 4 months and you still feel intense ankle pain.  

Your central nervous system is wired to focus on danger and pay less attention to good things. This is true for all people but has become supercharged for the person in chronic pain. The good news is that this faulty pattern can be dampened and unlearned. We can develop a healthier loop to use instead. 

How?

By learning about pain science and practicing techniques that increase a sense of safety, you create

healthier habits within your neuro-immune system and brain.

Safe techniques can include:

• self-compassion

• taking a walk in a natural environment (put the phone away)

• petting your cat/dog (releases love hormone oxytocin in both!) 

• accepting a compliment

• helping a friend

• using your imagination of doing a feared movement (called Graded Motor Imagery)

• saying Positive Affirmations out loud in the shower or during your daily walk

Whether you’ve had chronic pain for 6 months or 25 years, your nervous/immune system and brain can

learn a better way to behave, based on the science of neuroplasticity.

It takes your effort to achieve this and about 3 months of practice.  So, continue your good medical care

and do a self-care home program to enhance your inner healing skills.

For those with chronic pelvic pain or pelvic floor dysfunction, consider PelvicSense, an affordable online

pelvic healing home program. www.pelvicsense.com.