It’s no fun to be in physical pain. Pain doesn’t just steal your physical energy — it also steals your mental and emotional bandwidth, increasing the difficulty of focus and concentration you need to get important things done.
Throughout my life, I’ve had injuries and issues where the pain was acute, as well as periods of intense chronic pain. I also have fibromyalgia, a condition in which my body lights up with pain all over. These episodes can be debilitating, keeping me from doing even the most simple tasks.
An Apparent Solution
When you seek help from a doctor or wellness professional, they often ask about when the pain started, what triggers it, and what makes it worse or better. Awareness of these factors can help you get to the root cause and find a solution.
So I created a ritual of taking inventory of my pain. Every morning, I’d record where I felt “sensation” and what was happening in my body.
I thought this would be a good solution, but it turns out to be counter-productive, for a few reasons:
(1) Where focus goes, energy flows.
Focusing on the pain pulled me into a reinforcing thought loop and pain cycle:
As reported in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, when we focus on pain we increase its perceived intensity by amplifying neural activity in brain regions associated with pain processing. This creates a feedback loop that intensifies the pain experience.
This thought cycle depletes energy needed to focus on anything other than the pain.
(2) Focus on pain shuts down the body.
“Pain” is a sensation in the brain that triggers the nervous system to be on high alert. In turn, the nervous system shuts down range of motion to protect itself.
This is the nervous system’s sympathetic response, known as “fight/flight/freeze.”
The sympathetic nervous system is triggered by stress and pain, which can increase muscle tension, restrict movement, and put the body in protective mode.
Focusing on pain can create ongoing muscle tension or literally cause your body to freeze in place.
This has consequences: when the body shuts down range of motion in some joints, other places must compensate. This leads to injury and — you guessed it — more pain.
(3) Focus on pain detracts from what’s not in pain
This may sound hard to believe, but even chronic pain isn’t always on.
Every so often, I’d have moment where I’d realize the pain wasn’t so strong, or a place where I felt pain in the past wasn’t lit up.
I’m not in pain in my knee. My lower back feels ok. My shoulder doesn’t hurt.
But when I’m focused on the pain I can’t recognize these good places.
The brain’s attentional resources are limited: we only have so much bandwidth. The choice to focus on one thing can “block out” our ability to focus on another thing. So when we bring more attention to pain, we reduce our awareness of other sensory inputs, including what feels good.
A Practice to Help You Heal Pain
The more I notice and focus on the places in my body that feel good — or at least don’t feel bad — the less I experience the type of pain that interferes with life.
Focusing on the parts that feel good reinforces to the nervous system that my body is safe. That opens up the pathways to breathe and move with greater ease.
That awareness led me to create a new practice: focus on what feels good — or at least what doesn’t feel bad.
Studies show that techniques like mindfulness and body scanning redirect attention away from pain and increase awareness of areas that feel neutral or good, which can down-regulate pain perception.
It’s still helpful to track triggers for pain, so you can address the cause of dysfunctions. But within that tracking, I also acknowledge what feels good, what isn’t giving me sensation, and what’s feeling better than usual.
This is especially helpful when fibromyalgia flares up.
If you experience chronic pain and find yourself stuck in a pain loop, try bringing awareness to what feels good.
Don’t just think about it: actually write it down so you can track it.
What you focus on expands. Expand the good and you might find you’re in less pain.
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