What if your body isn't making a mistake?
I was listening to a fascinating conversation recently between neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and psychiatrist Anna Lembke.
They were discussing dopamine, addiction and the way our nervous system adapts to repeated experiences.
Lembke described how the brain continually adjusts its activity in response to what we experience. Something pleasurable happens, the system responds, and other processes begin working to restore a kind of balance.
Repeat an experience often enough and the system may adapt further.
Eventually, what once felt pleasurable might simply become familiar. And the absence of it might feel uncomfortable.
Nothing particularly mysterious about that.
But something caught my attention.
The nervous system isn't making a judgement about whether these adaptations are good or bad.
It's simply responding.
And I began thinking about persistent pain.
What if nothing has gone wrong with the process?
When someone experiences pain that continues long after an injury has healed, it's understandable to wonder why.
Why is this still happening?
Why hasn't my body switched it off?
Why does something that once seemed useful now feel so unhelpful?
We naturally look for an explanation.
Perhaps the nervous system has become sensitised. Perhaps certain responses have become learnt or familiar. Perhaps there are ongoing biological changes, or several processes interacting.
There are many possibilities, and persistent pain doesn't have one universal explanation.
But here's something worth considering.
We often describe these processes as though the body has made a mistake.
It's overreacting.
It's malfunctioning.
It's stuck in a protective pattern.
But what if that's our judgement of the outcome rather than a description of what the body is actually doing?
A different way of looking
Our nervous system is continually responding to experience.
Sensations, expectations, memories, movement, relationships, uncertainty, safety, danger.
Much of this happens without our awareness.
We don't consciously instruct our hearts to beat faster when we're startled.
We don't decide to blush when we're embarrassed.
We don't deliberately produce every sensation that arises in our bodies.
These things happen.
And sometimes they continue happening in ways we would rather they didn't.
But that doesn't necessarily mean the underlying process is broken.
That's an important distinction.
And it doesn't mean we should ignore pain, dismiss physical illness or assume that every symptom is simply a learnt response.
It means we can remain curious about what the body is doing without immediately deciding that it's doing something wrong.
It's just doing what it's being
As I reflected on this, a rather curious phrase came to mind.
It's just doing what it's being.
Not what it's supposed to be.
Not what we wish it would be.
Not necessarily what it was yesterday.
Just what it's being, right now.
I rather like that.
Because it removes something from the conversation.
Judgement.
The idea that our bodies are failing us, fighting us or somehow refusing to cooperate.
It also leaves room for change.
After all, if our nervous systems continually adapt through experience, then new experiences may create opportunities for different responses.
Not always. Not predictably. And not necessarily on a timetable of our choosing.
But possibilities remain.
And then there's another thought...
Our urge to understand what's happening is itself part of being human.
So is our desire to fix it.
To find an answer.
To make an uncomfortable experience stop.
And perhaps even those responses are simply more examples of an organism doing what it's being.
There's something rather wonderful about that.
We can observe the body.
We can observe our responses to the body.
And sometimes we can even notice ourselves trying to change those responses.
Without needing to decide that any of it is wrong.
Perhaps there's an opportunity here to relate differently to an experience, even before the experience itself changes.
Or perhaps not.
We don't have to turn every observation into an intervention.
Sometimes it's enough to notice something we hadn't previously considered.
That's interesting.
And perhaps we can leave it there for a moment.
Where this thought began
This reflection was sparked by a fascinating conversation between Dr Anna Lembke and Dr Andrew Huberman about dopamine, addiction and the ways our nervous systems adapt to experience.
Their discussion explores something rather different from persistent pain, but it prompted a question I hadn't previously considered.
Watch the conversation that inspired this reflection
Drew Coverdale | The Pain Habit
Persistent pain is real and can have multiple contributing causes. The connections explored here are reflections, not claims that addiction and persistent pain share one mechanism. New, changing or unexplained symptoms deserve appropriate clinical assessment.
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