Fear can alter the decisions you take on a daily basis, preventing you from living a rich and meaningful life. It’s that voice in your head warning you about the likelihood of feeling pain if you push yourself or try something new. It tells you to take care and it usually predicts the worst will happen.
Fear is an intense emotion felt when the body detects and predicts danger. It involves an immediate alarm being raised (this is your sympathetic nervous system). Once triggered, physiological changes take place. Since your brain operates a continual surveillance system, these changes often occur before you have consciously realised there is a potential threat.
Your brain’s surveillance system also gathers other information, including data from the sensory systems of the body like temperature and touch (think of putting your hand in hot water or stubbing your toe). It also considers other things like location or what you think is going to happen. All of this information is processed by the brain before it decides to produce the protective feelings of pain.
In 2020 the definition of pain has had its first revision since 1979.
It’s been revised because we now know so much more about it. The new definition defines pain as: ‘An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with or resembling that associated with actual or potential tissue damage.’ The new definition also mentions how life experience affects how you feel pain.
What are your memories of pain as a child? Were you told to ignore it and carry on, or was pain thought to be a sign of weakness or a way of getting attention?
The expectation and fear of pain has been researched in depth and we continue to learn more about our individual responses to it. This is helping us to understand why we all feel pain differently and why it can be so unpredictable: sometimes pain disappears only to return without reason, move around or even change with the weather.
Our expectation of pain also influences our experience of it. This can be a conscious expectation of pain showing up to an subconscious processing of everything that has happened to us in the past. This helps your brain predict and make its best judgement, even if it isn’t always accurate.
If you suffer with anxiety and excessive worry of what the future might hold, it’s easy to see how this will almost certainly exacerbate your pain experience. Your mind is anticipating something dangerous and wants to keep you safe.
Pain studies will typically ask subjects to rate their pain intensity in order to measure it.
Most people think that pain ‘happens’ when damaged tissue sends a message to the brain (this actually isn’t the case; there are no ‘pain pathways ‘in our bodies). The new research takes many other factors into account and considers how your brain uses all the incoming data to determine the pain response
One study asked participants who had neck pain to put on a virtual reality headset and then rotate their head. When the headset was set to overestimate the amount of head rotation, the participants would report pain. This demonstrates how the visual data was more influential on the brain and its response to pain, even though participants were actually hardly moving.
This study also confirms that pain is always real, no matter what is causing it!
Your body is constantly changing, adapting and evolving. Think about how your skin and hair changes as you age, how tissues heal after minor injuries like a scratch. We are bioplastic and adaptable. This means that it is possible to break free of the fear and worry of not knowing how your pain will be in the future and what your life will look like.
By addressing your fear and worries you’ll begin to understand pain better. This is a journey that’s complex, and unique to you.
There is a lovely quote from Will Gadd, a mountaineer, who said, ‘slow down and walk with the fear. It’s not your enemy, but ignoring it is.’
As the mind and body guide, I help you make sense of the situation and show you how to safely re engage in meaningful life activities.I can help you build a set of skills which will enable you to develop an awareness of your bodies protection systems. This lets you to take action and lead the life that you want to live.
