It is funny how the memory of pain can be exact and yet blurred. Dave presents his story about his low back pain, which he felt had been an issue for five years when we first discussed it.

You might have heard many people describe how their pain worsens at different times of the year or relates to various weather conditions. For example, it is common for people to say how their arthritis is terrible in the winter or their pain is worse when it is cold. There are many variations of this, and for the person experiencing their symptoms, the changes are genuine.

Here is an exercise that you can use whether you are in pain or working with people experiencing pain. It gives evidence to the individual experiencing pain. It is fascinating to use in a clinical setting when you’re looking for a way to start to help people interpret the foundation of their pain and get buy-in when looking to reverse the process.

When we feel pain or have to assess patients with pain, there is a default mechanism to search out damage, injury or pathology. It is sometimes a prejudice that blights western medical practice, and it is a viewpoint that I have been guilty of over the years.

An extinction burst is a common experience when someone is starting to recover from persistent pain, but what is it? This is when there is a ‘flare’ in someone's pain without a significant noticeable trigger that the patient recognises. Often it appears when the person has a gap in their symptoms and feels like they are doing well.

Jennie tells her story and recollects decades of pain. The story has a happy ending with her description of how she learned to recognise the cues to her pain and the route of reversing it. It is liberating to hear and can inspire others on their own journey and recovery from pain.

Pain or fatigue is contextual. It affects the system overloaded through the stress response or the system neglected during the stress response. Warnings appear before pain or fatigue, but our focus is so intent on what we are stressed about that we miss, ignore, push past, or fight the earlier sensations.

Heather describes a double whammy of persistent pain with it affecting her shoulder and her wrist. She meets people along the way who inspire her to see that recovery can be possible. In this case, it was her physiotherapist and she inspired her so much that Heather now coaches others on their recovery from pain. A great story of an amazing recovery.

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.