Pain sucks. No one really likes it. Why do we feel it then? Well, pain is helpful in keeping us alive. Evolutionarily, it’s been advantageous to not do things that hurt. Cutting your foot on a rock, breaking a bone, or burning your hand in a fire are all actions that, if we kept doing, would eventually kill us. Pain is a warning system of potential danger, injury, and/or disease. In that way, it’s much like the alarm system on a house. However, just like with any alarm, problems happen. In the body, these problems occur when our pain alarm goes off again and again when there is not actually any injury.
Just like when you hurt your back, knee, shoulder, or ankle and you feel pain, when a rock breaks through a house window, the alarm blares. Something breaks so the alarm system lets us know. Normally the tissues in our back heal (we hire someone to fix our window) so the alarm system eventually turns off. However, sometimes the repair process takes a bit longer than normal and the alarm system consistently rings, rings, rings, and rings again. We develop a more chronic type of pain. The alarm rings so much that it gets used to ringing and becomes sensitized, even as the window is being fixed.
When the window, and our back, is eventually entirely healed, the alarm system isn’t what it used to be. Because the alarm is now so sensitized, it will blare at even the slightest of touches. All you have to do is rattle the window, tap on the frame, or toss a pebble for the alarm to sound. The window hasn’t actually been damaged, in fact it’s perfectly fine, but the alarm is triggered nonetheless. In our body, movements we have previously and constantly associated with pain (standing on our ankle, bending over, or reaching overhead) may continue to cause pain despite no longer having an injury.
This often happens when we have chronic, long lasting pain, especially during stressful times when all of our senses are on high alert. The pain system in our body can become sensitized to the point that we still feel pain long after our tissues have healed. So what can we do about it?
First, you should visit a physical therapist to ensure this is indeed your situation and nothing else is going on. Then you will be prescribed progressive and specific movements that will increase your mobility and strength while calming down your pain system. What you can do yourself, and what you will be educated on, is reducing your stress and changing your relationship with movement and pain. Added stress in your life continues to sensitize your pain system, keeping it blaring with just a tap on the window. Reducing stress will desensitize and reset the alarm to normal.
It’s also important to see and believe that your body (the window) is actually strong and healthy and not simply take our word on it. If you believe that the window is fixed, the next time the alarm goes off with a little tap, you’ll know it’s nothing to worry about. To do this, a physical therapist will “show” you, through various movements and activities, that your body is indeed healthy. However, this is not usually an easy task. For so long your alarm system has worked fantastically, so it’s hard believe it’s wrong. It’s extremely difficult to solve this issue without guidance and assurance. So if you’ve had pain for a long time, have had an increase in stress, and/or have pain that doesn’t seem to be getting better, you should get it checked with Physical Therapy and then use the house and alarm experts over at Renegade Rehab.