Here’s a little scenario about the experience of learning pain in a two-year-old child. I just want to give you the description or observation of something I noticed in the clinic whilst they observed someone else receiving treatment.

When you have persistent pain, work can feel harder than ever. Not only do you have work to deal with, but you also have to deal with it in pain. It can feel a never-ending cycle of pain - work - more pain.

Irrespective of what you believe to be the underlying cause of your pain, your behaviours can contribute to the persistence of it, without you even realising it.

There's a disparity between the number of people who suffer pain when you compare women and men. When you look at persistent and chronic pain this varies across different conditions but on the whole, women suffer more chronic pain than men.

The part of your brain where pain sits in the unconscious part of your mind.

It’s something that is triggered by unconscious mechanisms as a protective measure, to provide feedback so that we become consciously aware of the sensation in order to attend to it.

Many of the approaches to persistent pain are barking up the wrong tree. They’re well-intentioned and well-meaning and partially well targeted. The fact that the sights of the treatment are not correctly set means that whatever that treatment is, it can never be truly effective if it isn’t focusing and the main aspect which is driving someone’s pain.

There’s something very powerful that happens when people join a group. Especially if it’s a group that is offering change. So joining a group where change is possible is only worthwhile if you believe in the possibility of change.

Pain comes before damage and after damage, but it is not an indicator of how much damage you have sustained. It is not an indicator that you have a actually sustained any damage and it is not proof that you still have any physical damage. You can have pain with damage. You can have pain without damage.

In this post, I’ll describe a common pathway into persistent pain when the focus on a physical cause of the pain ends up creating more problems than it set out to solve. It's a story repeated many times and in many physical areas of pain. The more you understand from this case study, the more you’ll recognise your own and others’ beliefs about their pain.

Whoa, whoa there!!! Let's start with an apology. I am so sorry you thought your pain is in your head because someone even suggested something to you that left you with that impression. Let me reassure you that your pain is not in your head. Here's why…

There's a common misconception about pain that many people suffering from persistent pain, and many others in general, hold. They mistakenly think that pain equates to damage and there must be damage when pain is present.

The Pain Habit ‘Painbites’ blog provides information in simple, bite-sized pieces about a complicated subject that makes it easily understandable for both patients and therapists.