Chronic pain recovery pathway
When we have an injury our nervous system and immune system jump into action, bracing the damaged tissues, protecting the area and mobilising an immune response so that we can fight any potential infection and repair any damage.
Most tissues recover within three months, but unfortunately we regularly see people who continue to struggle with pain months and even years after the initial injury. Pain scientists have been working on this problem for decades. Their research has now shown that once a pain has been present for more than 3-6 months the pain is much less likely to be due to actual tissue damage. At this stage it is much more likely that the nervous system has become over protective and sensitised. This is also true for problems that settle but then return later, giving a similar pain to before but with less injury.
This has led to lots of new approaches for longer term pain patients , and one road to recovery can be simply to start to learn about and understand how pain works and begin to understand what things might be contributing to your pain patterns.
Our Chronic pain pathway is designed to equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need to begin to understand more about what factors can influence pain and help you to change your nervous system back into a less protective state.
We are always happy to talk to you about your specific pain or problem prior to booking an appointment, just call or email us and ask to speak to Suzanne or Anna.
Is this pathway for me?
Our chronic pain pathway is a coaching approach and is a really useful starting point for anyone who has long term pain and is eager to learn more and find tools and strategies to help themselves. This pathway is not a traditional hands on osteopathic session; it is about understanding your pain journey so far and giving you the knowledge and skills to begin to help yourself.
Persistent pain is complex as there are many factors that will influence your pain experience. The brain produces pain as a protective mechanism, a bit like an alarm system, but in chronic pain the alarm has become super sensitive and can be triggered too easily. Beginning to explore your pain journey will take time and patience, but this learning approach is empowering and can help you to regain control. It will offer you resources and strategies to enable you to work on resolving your pain.
What will I need to do?
- Reading / listening / watching videos that will help you to understand about pain and why we have it.
- Understanding the thoughts feeling and beliefs that surround your pain and learning to reframe and rewire your brain to become less sensitised.
- Learning to understand your stress levels and their relationship to your pain. Our stress hormones are hugely influential in our pain experience and understanding a little about the biology can help .
- We can share with you skills such as mindfulness, meditations, exercises and breathwork to learn how to reduce your stress levels.
- Exploring whether there are any self induced stresses that you could work on reducing.
- Looking at emotions, do you avoid them, or perhaps bottle them up ? In some cases this can influence pain levels so it may that, for you, guidance on approaches to Journalling would help.
- Exploring ways of building your fitness and tolerance levels by slowly introducing movements or exercise that may have previously been a challenge.
Pain resources
To begin your journey, take a few minutes to look at the videos below. These have been developed by world renowned pain scientists following decades of research. Beginning to understanding pain is the first step in your recovery journey.
