Understand Your Pain (Get Rid Of It For Good)
1.5 billion people in the world experience chronic pain.
Pain is felt when a threat is detected. A signal gets sent through the nerves, to the spinal cord, up to the brain.
Pain can be a sensory or emotional experience. Even though it is defined that way, they often are treated separately.
Majority of the clients I see in a day are dealing with pain that won't go away.
Some people experience injuries that have specifically caused their pain. Others aren't sure how their pain started.
What I've found in people with chronic pain or unexplained pain is there are a lot of layers.
A lot of things contributing to their pain.
We are complex human beings with a lot going on.
We have a social life, work, family & life struggles, etc. that all can weigh on us.
When we don't know why our pain started it can be very challenging to figure out how to get rid of it. Even if you do know what caused it, it can be hard.
When I work with clients a common question is "why does this hurt?" or "Why did this start hurting when I didn't do anything to injure it?".
Most people don't understand how pain works.
Then we get frustrated with pain because it limits us.
It holds us back from feeling good & doing the things we enjoy.
When we can't get rid of our pain it is frustrating and we can start to feel helpless. Like we aren't every getting better.
People are tired of taking medication for pain. They want their pain to go away for good.
So,
What Is Pain?
In order for you to get rid of pain, its important to understand what it is and how it works in the first place.
Like I stated earlier, pain is a sensory or emotional experience. It signals up the spinal cord and then the brain.
It tells us when something is wrong - its our guidance system.
"Pain is a signal to do something different". - Missy Bunch
We don't experience pain always for a specific reason. Most often, especially in chronic pain, it is a collection of things.
The body wants to feel safe and when it doesn't we will get symptoms & pain.
Pain is your bodies way of communicating with you. I always say that pain is your body's way of saying "Please, stop doing this".
This signal forces us to slow down or to not do certain movements to protect us from doing more harm.
How Does Pain Work?
The easiest way to understand pain is to understand what's called 'the threat bucket'.
I learned this concept from one of my mentors Missy Bunch and the concept comes from Dr. Lorimer Moseley.
We all have a threat bucket.
As you can see in the photo above, we add all kinds of experiences into this threat bucket. Any aspect of your life can enter this bucket if we hold onto it.
Once the bucket reaches its threshold, then we experience pain.
Things build up in our life and go unresolved. When these things compound over time you could end up with pain with no logical explanation for it.
So what influences & fills the threat bucket?:
- injuries/accidents
- digestive issues
- vision or hearing problems
- relationships stress
- poor sleep
- beliefs
- muscle weaknesses
- social environment
- culture
- emotions
- ethnicity, etc.
Pretty much anything in your life can be added to the threat bucket. The more life experiences you have, the more your threat bucket fills.
This is why when I do my assessment with clients I always ask about their health history. This includes mental, physical & sometimes emotional aspects of life.
Many times people don't realize the impact previous ailments caused on their body. Or that it could be affecting them years later.
Life adds up & it stays with us!
Once this threshold is crossed you will experience some sort of pain.
This leads to the next question.
How Do We Get Rid Of Pain?
The simple answer... we take things out of the threat bucket.
Healing or working through just one or two of those problems in the bucket can take off some of your stress.
Take the picture from before. If you get better sleep and fix your digestive issues this could bring you under the threshold.
When we can heal some of our situations in the threat bucket it takes the pressure off the threshold. This will decrease and get rid of pain.
When we reduce stress on our body & it functions better then pain will go down.
Some peoples pain is multifaceted. It's not always one specific reason why you have pain. It can be a collection of things.
This is why making lifestyle changes is so important to health, especially long term.
Once your pain is decreased or gone all together you can enjoy your life again.
You can play with your kids, exercise, do your hobbies, etc.
We no longer will feel limited by our body.
We can live a better life & be the best version of ourselves when our threat bucket is lower.
What Is In Your Threat Bucket?
This Journal was more educational, but here is something to do.
Write out things that would be in your threat bucket!
We have to first know what is in our threat bucket before we can work towards removing them.
This doesn't happen over night but we can work towards it. Some things will be easier to take out of the bucket than others.
Even if you don't have pain, knowing what is in your threat bucket can show where you can improve your life.
Whether you have pain or not we all can work towards lowering our threat bucket!
I hope you found something useful in this journal.
Have a wonderful weekend!
All the best on your journey.
- Jo
If you're needing support along your health journey, here's how you can work with me.
1:1 Manual Osteopathic Treatment (in person): We will go through an assessment and treatment based on your needs & goals.
