Have you ever wondered why pain can linger long after an injury has healed? It might feel like your body is still hurt, but in many cases, the issue isn’t in your body—it’s in your brain.
Let’s explore how pain works and, more importantly, what you can do about it.
Pain Signals: When the Brain Gets Stuck
Pain is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. But sometimes, pain signals can get “trapped” in the brain even when the physical injury has healed. These signals keep bouncing around, creating the sensation of pain even when there’s no actual injury or when the amount of pain you are experiencing is disproportionate to the severity and extent of the injury.
These trapped pain signals can set off a chain reaction:
Thoughts: You may start worrying that your pain means something is seriously wrong.
Emotions: Feelings of anxiety or depression can creep in, making you feel stuck.
Behaviours: You might avoid moving or exercising, fearing you’ll make things worse.
Over time, this can make your brain super sensitised to pain, even triggering discomfort in other areas of your body without any physical damage.
Breaking the Cycle of Pain
The good news? You’re not stuck with these pain signals forever. Understanding how pain works is the first step to taking back control. When you realise that lingering pain doesn’t always mean further injury, it can help ease your fear and anxiety.
Here’s how physiotherapy can help:
Manual Therapy: Hands-on techniques can help relax the muscles and joints, sending calming signals to the brain. These signals can also help reorganise the brain so that it can better distinguish between different types of sensation, such as touch, pressure and pain.
Medical Acupuncture: This approach can also disrupt the trapped pain signals and help restore normal functional connections within the so-called 'pain matrix', strongly influencing how we perceive and experience pain.
Targeted Exercises: Movement is medicine. Carefully designed exercises can help retrain your brain to stop overreacting to pain.
Boost Your Recovery with Brain Retraining Techniques
Modern pain science also offers powerful tools for retraining the brain, a process called neuroplasticity. Evidence supports techniques such as:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): Helps shift negative thought patterns that can exacerbate pain in the brain.
Mindfulness and Acceptance: Teaches you to observe pain without judgment, reducing its emotional grip.
Graded Exposure Therapy: Slowly reintroduce movements you’ve avoided, rebuilding confidence as the brain realises movement does not always trigger pain.
Graded Motor Imagery: A technique that uses visualisation to retrain the brain’s pain pathways.
Want to Learn More?
Sometimes, a little extra understanding can make a big difference. These short animated videos do a great job of explaining pain and how to manage it:
Let Us Help You Find Relief
If pain has been holding you back, we’re here to help. At Physiotherapy with LorraineCarroll & SimonCoghlan, we use a combination of hands-on treatment, medical acupuncture, and tailored exercises to break the cycle of pain and get you moving again.
📞 Call us today at 0735328605📍 Visit us at Suite 2, 24-26 Gloucester Road, Buderim, 4556💻 Book online: lcscphysiotherapy.com.au
By Simon
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