It can be tricky to even see a way past the experience of persistent pain. That hawk-like analysis of why it is impossible is natural. It represents our neurological wiring to look for danger to remain safe, and the pain keeps us safe. When you notice the mechanism behind breaking the cycle of persistent pain, it can feel liberating.

Here’s a technique used for anxiety by motivational speaker Mel Robbins that can help flip that sensation and situation and can be used with pain.

What do you do when you wake up, or you're not doing anything, in particular, your pain just comes on suddenly without you understanding why that is happening?

After 20 years of thoracic pain which eventually lead to surgery, Karen felt that she would have to live with her pain for the rest of her life. This video explains her path to recovery and the steps she took to do it. Take inspiration from the changes demonstrated in Karen and hold on to the smallest amount of belief you can muster that it can be possible for you.

A patient started to talk about the situation in her life, and the more she described, the sadder she got. The unfortunate details included close family members with health conditions that she felt responsible for as their last remaining carer.

Recovery is possible when sometimes it is thought to be impossible. Margaret describes how what was a minor injury, turned into a nightmare that physical and psychologically limited her far more than she could ever imagine. It took her on a journey of discovery that although incredibly painful, was one that became enlightening.

See if you can work out why someone would have pain on the way somewhere but not on the way back. I’ll describe this patients situation and see if you can see why this phenomenon may occur. When we understand this in others, it can sometimes help us see similar situations in ourselves and our own experience of pain.

It can be strange to think that one word can change your pain, but it can. What is the word that has such power? The word is ‘No.’ It is short and simple but powerful that we often don’t realise how much it could help us with our pain.

When you listen to patient stories, you often find uncertainty as a driver of someone’s stress. Uncertainty means that wherever they focus on that situation, they find it difficult to resolve. Placing your focus on anything results in you attempting to bring meaning to it so that you understand it and feel comfortable with it.

Recovery is possible when sometimes it is thought to be impossible. Margaret describes how what was a minor injury, turned into a nightmare that physical and psychologically limited her far more than she could ever imagine. It took her on a journey of discovery that although incredibly painful, was one that became enlightening.

This Is A Common Question I Get Asked. Firstly, let's look at the activity causing the pain, and in your case, it's a 'small run'. You know this can't damage you, and we can be confident that what you are doing is not traumatising any physical tissue.

Here are three examples of how responses relating to pain can become conditioned. The effects of this can arise before, during or after a situation.

These responses are designed to warn you from what is being recognised by your brain and your body at that moment. It may be picking up cues that you haven’t even seen, acknowledged or noticed, and when the brain and body let you know, it can come as a real shock as it hits your conscious reality.

Does your pain get better when you have some sort of physical therapy? Some kind of treatment on it? Quite often, it does, but quite often, the pain comes back.

It's fascinating to hear stories of patients who describe massive pain without any physical injury or event. The pain is real, and it's as painful as if something traumatic has happened, but they should be telling you a different story for this much pain to come from nothing.

This post is going to highlight another piece of evidence to show how your brain can trigger pain. You feel it in your body. It’s a real pain, but the pain is driven by your brain's perception of something that's happening.

This is a short post that relates to Dr. Howard Schubiner's little tests that you can use clinically with a patient suffering from persistent or chronic pain. If you are a patient, then you can do this test yourself.

Here is the first of a series of posts about tips to show people that their brains influence their pain. Having more evidence to illustrate this to the patients and therapists can help change their beliefs about the origin of their pain.

This is a case study of a patient who had two years of biceps tendonitis, and this came on from overtraining in the gym. The physical overload of activity came through training six or seven times a week.

In this post, I’ll present a case study and explain how the patient was helped by understanding the basis of their pain and how they could reverse it.

Today I’m just going to explain how something good can cause pain. We assume that pain comes from doing something bad. We associate pain with something not good for us, which can be true in many cases.

The post gives you an example of how it's relatively easy to condition yourself to feel less pain. These things happen naturally without us even thinking about it, but sometimes you make a conscious effort to prepare yourself to do something that you might enjoy.