Real danger or false alarm?
Have you ever heard of neuroplastic pain? It is also known as chronic pain and is generally a pain that persists for more than 3 months. It is pain that does not come from structural problems but it’s felt when the brain misinterprets safe signals from the body and interprets them as danger. It is real pain but it is a false alarm because is not of anatomical origin but is caused by learned pathways in the brain.
The felt sensations are aggravated by our fear and emotional distress arising from thinking that we cannot achieve our daily tasks because of the pain. The feelings associated with the sensations increase the pain and increase the neural pathways associated with it, causing us to get stuck in a painful loop...
The brain needs to be trained to reinterpret these signals. To reinterpret them as safe. We also need to truly believe that the pain is not structural, meaning that does not come from damage in the body.
You can ask yourself a few questions: is my pain consistent with a physical problem? (e.g. Do you feel it every day? In the same place? Every time you are sitting or standing or during a particular activity? Has it the same triggers each time?); does your pain spread and move around in different areas of your body?; does the pain have emotional and psychological triggers?; has your pain first appeared after a particular time in your life?; does stress make your pain worse?
Somatic tracking is a technique designed to interpret signals from the body properly and eventually when familiar with the practice, to turn off the pain. It is similar to meditation and I would like to show you a short video presenting the technique. Find 10 minutes in your day, tune in and follow the instructions from home!
If you find this exercise challenging in any way, please ask for further guidance or come back to it at a different time. You can always come back to focus on your breathing as it enters and leaves the nostrils, to ground yourself.
If you have questions and/or wish to integrate this practice into your treatment sessions, just let me know.
Follow this link to sign up and receive a downloadable video.