Pain is always real

Whatever you may think about pain, and whatever you learn on active X backs, remember that pain is always real.  How you describe pain and experience it is unique to you – and that can cause a lot of misunderstanding and frustration.  But, if you’re feeling that someone doesn’t believe that you’re in real pain, then that says more about them than it does about you.  Physical pain is always real – there can be complex reasons for it, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

It can vary from day to day, be slightly inconvenient or massively upsetting.  But, it’s always real – pain is what we experience; it’s personal and at times hard to describe.  It’s up to clinicians to work out what you’re telling us, and create a recovery plan based on your personal experience of pain.

More and more leading researchers are agreeing that the degree of pain we feel at any given moment is dependent on how threatened and stressed we feel.  That’s not to deny the real physical origins of your pain, but just think – if your levels of pain were only related to the damage or wear and tear, wouldn’t the pain be constant, never varying in intensity?  And if it’s wear and tear related, did your wear and tear come on over night?  And if it’s disc related how is it that there are lots of people with disc prolapses and herniations who have no pain at all?  Answers to these questions are coming up.

Click here for Lesson 1 in the online course for lower back pain and sciatica.

Click here for Lesson 3 on the online course for lower back pain and sciatica.