Understand Pain

Pain and the brain.

Learn more about the purpose of pain and how the brain changes when pain persists over time.

Here are some recommended sites to learn about pain science in an entertaining way:

www.retrainpain.org

www.tamethebeast.org

You should now understand that pain serves a purpose in your body, but that sometimes the pain system becomes oversensitive and inaccurate.

For example, something that should not be painful at all, such as a light touch or a breeze on your skin, can become highly painful. We have an internal bias towards recalling in detail anything dangerous or negative over more positive experiences. Your memory of someone insulted you will be recalled in great detail years later, but you will likely forget receiving warm compliments from the same person.

Recalling the negative experience is more helpful for our survival as it helps us to quickly learn to avoid threats.

We must pay attention and work to notice more positive moments in life, to savour them, and also to recall them later. In doing this, we start changing what the brain attends to and this modifies the overall pain experience.

Read this “Introduction to Pain Recovery”