Healthy, strong tissues are highly resilient to damage; if they weren't, there would be no such thing as contact sports. So true injuries are, without exception, memorable physical events. If you experience a 'sudden pain' in your spine picking up a box of tissues, it is worth questioning how healthy your spine is; and whether it really qualifies as a true injury at all.
The basis of musculoskeletal pain is biomechanical. Yet, emotional trauma is the single most influential factor in determining the severity of chronic pain a population of patients will suffer. However, many chronic pain sufferers do not identify as having any significant trauma. Some because they legitimately don't. Many others because they do, but were just not aware.
The set of physical and mental conditions we refer to as trauma are caused by a failure to process our natural responses to stress. Adverse life events cause traumatisation via the mechanisms of our ancient biology.
Psychosomatic pain is real pain. Psychosomatic pain is not 'all in your head'. Psychosomatic pain is far more common than most of us realise. Psychosomatic pain is also very treatable when its underlying causes are identified and treated.
Many pain sufferers struggle to discern between what really causes their pain and what simply triggers their underlying pain issues. Triggers are always external forces and events, like bad sleep and awkward lifts. Whereas causes can be environmental, but are often internal challenges, like having a weak core, for example. The true causes of pain are always a very big and important deal. Pain triggers, on the other hand, are very helpful to know but often trivial in the grand scheme.
For most of human healthcare, we assumed that our symptoms were the problem. We have moved past that now to a large extent. For example: we know that the virus is the problem, not the green snot. Mucus is just a byproduct of healthy immune function. Prior to the microscope, we naturally assumed the redness and swelling of an infection was ‘the problem’. But since microscopes, we know our swelling is the body’s vital inflammatory response and the actual problem was an invasion of hostile microbes. Through this deepening of scientific understanding, we’ve moved past ‘symptom blaming’. Somewhat. Because we still very much do it with pain.
Emotions can have a profound effect on our physical health, especially when it comes to physical pain.
If you have stubborn pain in a muscle, joint, nerve or your soft tissues - it’s highly likely to be mechanical pain. Mechanical pain is caused by factors relating to movement. It is the body's way of alerting us when healthy movement patterns are lost within body parts for an extended period of time.
It can be a little hard to swallow, but one of the most surprising truths about the biology of pain is that pain itself doesn't happen in the body. Pain very much feels like it’s in the body, we can all agree on that, but it doesn’t mean that it is. Sensory perception and scientific truth often don’t line up too neatly.
On 10 June 1963, U.S. press based in Saigon were informed that 'something important' would happen the following morning on the road outside the Cambodian embassy in Saigon. They were unsettled times, so that in itself was certainly nothing unusual. But what followed created an emotional shock wave that was felt on a global scale.