Is my pain all in my head?
Yeah… Kinda!
(But don’t worry, everyone’s pain comes from the brain!)
To put it (very) simply:
Injury -> stimulates pain receptors -> signals travel up the spinal cord -> to the brain -> your brain decides what to do with this information -> sends signals to the body with directions of what to do (e.g. rub the area)
The good news is, we can influence the signals our brain receives:
Think about it, when you bang you knee on something, you automatically go to rub it right?
That’s because the pressure signals from you rubbing your arms are able to inhibit the pain signals (hence why I use vibration massage so much at the clinic).
This is called the Gate Control Theory of pain.
On the flip side, the brain can also get confused when it comes to pain - especially chronic pain:
It can interpret signals that shouldn’t cause pain, such as light touch, as painful. Or perceive pain in body parts that don’t exist (phantom limb pain).
This type of pain can be more difficult to treat & sometimes we have to trick the brain using things like mirror boxes that send pretend visual stimulus to the brain, that the injured body part is actually OK.
(Look it up on YouTube, it’s pretty cool!).
Pain is subjective:
It depends on not only how your brain processes pain, but also the context that the pain is occurring in. For example in an emergency situation, you may not feel pain until you are safe. Your brain is able to ignore the pain as it would distract you from getting out of the dangerous situation.
So why am I telling you all this?
1) I want you to know that you can influence your pain - to give you back some control
2) I want you to know there are options outside of painkillers, and for you to be open to the idea of brain-orientated methods (e.g. therapy, mirror boxes, etc) that might help you
3) To destigmatise chronic pain - the pain is real, it’s not “all in your head” - but it is coming from your head because that’s how pain works!
4) To highlight that lots of pain doesn’t necessarily mean lots of damage, and hardly any pain doesn’t mean minimal damage