A recent survey for BBC News has revealed that 1 in 4 adults in the UK suffer from chronic pain and are not getting proper treatment. That’s a lot of unmet need, when you consider that this means almost 17 million people are struggling every day to live and work, with pain!
I specialise in helping people living with chronic pain. Among them are people with fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, endometriosis, arthritis, IBS, joint hypermobility syndrome, tinnitus, neuropathic pain due to cancer treatment and other conditions.
What happens when we experience pain?
Despite the wide range of conditions responsible for chronic pain, there is ONE COMMON ELEMENT which all conditions share:
Whilst the way in which we experience pain is completely unique to us as individuals, our pain is intimately connected to what’s happening between our body and mind.
For all of us, pain is an unpleasant physical sensation leading to body tensions. It also generates worry in our minds and unpleasant emotions - usually fear in the first instance. If the cause of the pain is benign, quickly understood and treated, then we go back to “normal”, i.e. we don’t keep repeating a vicious cycle involving more body tensions, more worry and more fear.
However, when pain becomes chronic - which means it lasts over time - we experience more and more body tensions, generating the sensations that pain is getting worse and spreading through the whole body. The initial emotions of fear turn to deeply rooted frustration and hopelessness. Finally our minds are constantly worrying about the pain and how it’s going to evolve, worrying about the future and doubting our capacity to cope. The mind is then in catastrophisation mode.
Further, the experience of pain is often made even worse when diagnosis is delayed, as is commonly the case in complex conditions. As our mind, body and emotions work overtime, we can often find that some of the pain experienced may not even be linked to physical tissue damage.
The effect of chronic pain on our lives
Repeating the vicious cycle body-mind-emotions eventually leads to sustained physiological and cognitive changes which in turn results in changes in behaviour. If you suffer with chronic pain you may have noticed that there are activities you avoid, because of the fear of aggravating the pain. This leads to feeling more and more isolated and lonely. You’re not making plans anymore to meet with friends and socialise because you just know you’ll pay the price afterwards, or because you know you may have to cancel yet again.
More and more, there is only one thing to focus on: the pain. We feel frustrated, angry, sad, hopeless, anxious, and exhausted, and struggle to function, day to day. Ultimately, it can feel that pain has taken over our lives and we don’t know who we are anymore.
This is why chronic pain is so pernicious, impacting so much of our quality of life and leading to so much suffering. It is extremely distressing and becomes an endless spiral in which pain becomes all encompassing.
And this is not even taking into account the context in which pain occurs, and the stigma and disbelief that some people living with chronic pain have to face in our society - being as it often is, an invisible condition
Pain is always real and serves a purpose
It always makes me internally cringe when clients with chronic pain tell me they’re not being heard by their family and friends and even sometimes, their medical practitioners. There is nothing more unhelpful than doubting or judging how a person feels. If someone told you they were hungry you would believe them, right?
If you live with chronic pain you may have heard someone telling you ‘it’s in your head'. This is technically true of all pain so they are not wrong; however, unfair and objective judgement does not help!
I don’t want to go down the biological mechanisms of pain because they’re very complex. But let’s review the basics.
1- Pain sensations always originate in the brain
When you burn your hand, a signal is transmitted from your hand to the brain, which then processes and interprets that signal, and decides how best to deal with it. It’s only when the brain has interpreted that the integrity of the body has been compromised (i.e. it has recognised the signal as a burn) that it sends a pain sensation to the site where it “thinks” the signal is coming from; in this case, the hand.
How much pain you experience depends on many factors: the cause, origin, and nature of the damage itself - as well as your own history of pain - all play a part. Importantly, however, it also comes down to the context in which the pain occurs.
What does ‘context’ mean? Well, if I burn my hand in the moment I discover I’ve won the lottery, my pain experience will be very different to that if I burn my hand in exactly the same way at moment I discover I’ve been made redundant.
In the first case my mind is going to rationalise the pain and emotions of joy are going to overcome emotions of fear, therefore the pain experience will be dampened. In the other case, the emotion of fear from the pain will be reinforced by the emotion of fear from losing my job.
In short, positive emotions can reduce feelings of pain, whilst negative emotions can amplify them.
So pain is not linearly correlated to the intensity of the damage, and indeed, there are other factors at play; as discussed above, pain can occur even without tissue damage.
2- Pain is an alarm signal designed to protect us
When we experience pain, our brain is raising the alarm because it perceives that there is a threat to the integrity of our body. That’s why the first emotion is usually that of fear, because our stress response (fight of flight) is also activated. Sometimes there is a tissue or a nerve that is damaged; sometimes there isn’t. It doesn’t mean that the pain is not real. If our brain generates pain sensations, it is really interpreting signals that there is something wrong in our body.
Sometimes those signals might not even “make sense” to us. A striking example of this is a panic attack. Although we may not know where it has come from, our brain has perceived a threat, and tries to help us to survive by generating the panic attack.
So let’s keep this in mind pain is ALWAYS real because it originates in the brain and its PURPOSE is TO PROTECT our bodies.
How can sophrology help with chronic pain?
Complementary therapies play an important role in pain management, especially for chronic pain and when medications are not recommended, or have negative secondary effects in the long-term.
A body-mind practice like sophrology does not make the pain go away, but it reduces the tensions generated by the pain. We all have the capacity to modulate our pain experience, i.e. turning the volume down, by restoring balance between our body and mind.
When I work with people who suffer from chronic pain I always start with reducing stress and anxiety. By teaching them techniques that are going to help them feel calmer, they will be better able to release tensions. We start with exercises that bring the focus away from the pain and later on, we move on techniques that focus on the pain itself.
The aim is to reverse the negative cycle of body-mind-emotions and to help people make the exercises their own so they feel again that they are in control of their body and wellbeing.
As the number of people living with chronic pain continues to increase, we are finding that more and more people are recognising the potential that sophrology has to be an effective - and accessible - method for chronic pain management. Studies are also increasingly emerging with fascinating findings that show just how effective Sophrology can be for a wide range of conditions - not just for pain, but also for stress, anxiety, asthma, burnout, sleep disorders and many others. This is because sophrology recognises the critical connection between mind and body in maintaining our mental and physical wellbeing.
Find a way through chronic pain with Sophrology
I’ve carried an 8-week pain management intervention for a pilot study investigating the impact of sophrology in people living with chronic pain. One of the most striking results was how much participants had reduced their pain medication. The experience was pretty transformational for certain participants as they learned to change their perception and relationship with their pain, helping them to regain their quality of life. One of them kindly shared her success story.
I’m currently running a 12-week Ultimate Wellbeing Programme for women living with a chronic illness, pain and fatigue. Having completed the pain management session a couple of weeks ago, it’s been amazing to see how quickly participants are integrating those exercises. Here is some of the feedback I was delighted to receive:
“I have been able to use the “objectify-modify" session to move leg pain which was at least 2 years old out of my body and it hasn't come back. I've also reduce my IBS swollen digestion with it today!l” - Alison
"I had difficulties breathing today - it was really bad. I used the treat and heal session and it was amazing how much better I felt afterwards. The breathing was much easier, so much so that I could go gardening afterwards. I was really pleased." Tracy
“I really enjoy the objectify-modify practice. I was focusing on a hard red spiky ball. It was moving around, up and down and then I fired it away. The pain reduced from 7 to 4.” Kate
I could write loads about sophrology and its benefits but sophrology remains something that is best experienced.
If you’d like to learn how to tap into the power of your mind-body connection to support your health and wellbeing download my essential guide for FREE
Photos credit: Pixabay