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How does STRESS impact persistent pain?

As it is Stress awareness week (First week of November), I wanted to highlight the importance of stress on our pain. So how does stress lead to persistent pain?

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Persistent pain, especially in areas like the back, neck and shoulders, can often feel like a purely physical issue.  Often doctors and physiotherapists cannot explain the causes of these types of pain and look for structural abnormalities to help diagnose.  Have you ever noticed that periods of pain flare ups, coincide with stressful events? For me, the more I understood about pain, the more I could understand what the causes were.  Funnily enough my pain would flare up during stressful times such as moving to Saudi Arabia, becoming a mother for the first time whilst husband served abroad in Afghanistan, and having stressful events that felt they were beyond my control.

Dr John Sarno is a pioneer for understanding the relationship between the mind and the body and coined the term TMS – Tension Myoneural Syndrome.  His research and clinical experience suggested that persistent pain is sometimes not simply a result of injury or physical wear and tear, but can actually be a manifestation of stress, repressed emotions and unresolved psychological conflicts.  When a person is under stress or represses difficult emotions such as anger, fear, guilt, and resentment, the autonomic nervous system, (which is subconscious) creates tension in the muscles somewhere in the body (often lower back and neck) to distract from feeling those emotions.  This muscle tension restricts blood flow to and from the muscles which creates a build up of lactic acid and thus causes pain.

For me, my back pain started when I had recently had my first child and my husband was serving abroad in Afghanistan.  I was struggling to solo parent, but my identity was one of a strong fit young woman.  I was also, deep down, a little angry and resentful that my husband got to carry on with his career and serve abroad (I was a serving RAF Officer at the time).  However, society dictates that I should be gushingly happy with my new child and bursting with pride for my husband, which I was of course, but I also had these other feelings too.  I was told that my back pain was due to degenerative disc disease and was a result of wear and tear (maybe all those assault courses and climbing mountains- or so I thought).  It wasn’t until I started to learn that my discs had nothing to do with my pain that I started to heal.

Stress is important though, and has been valuable in the survival of our species.  We are designed to seek out danger and therefore have a negative bias on most situations in order to be prepared to fight / flight or freeze.  Our body reacts to danger / stressors by heightening our alert state, increasing the readiness of our muscles (tension) and preparing our bodies physiologically to fight/ flight or freeze.  This is designed to be a short term response.  However, in our current society we are frequently exposed to stressors leading to a chronic stress response which is not healthy.  This in turn leads to a heightened, more sensitive nervous system and muscle tension causing pain. Stressors don’t have to be physical either, they can include:

• ruminating over a deadline,
• worrying about a meeting with a boss,
• thinking about our finances,

but all result in a physiological response.  Have you ever felt stomach pains when nervous, tense when angry, shaking when scared? These are all examples of how our mind and body are so connected.  This is why mind-body work can be so effective in managing pain.

Pain’s purpose along with inflammation is to protect us from danger.  If we didn’t have pain we would hurt ourselves and damage our bodies frequently.  In fact studies have been done on individuals who don’t suffer pain and sadly they haven’t lived long, so pain is in fact a gift – one that can be debilitating if chronic. When we are stressed, our mind senses danger, so creates pain to protect us.  One must therefore ask “What is pain trying to tell me?” It is often trying to tell us:

• to slow down,
• listen to our bodies more,
• take time for self care,
• put ourselves first etc.

What do you think your pain is trying to tell you?  Join my BEAT Pain program as this is one of the areas we look at in order to help you overcome your pain.

Watch my FREE training video here