Symptoms As Messengers And Pain As Protection
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Disclaimer: None of the information in this blog or video is designed to replace medical advice, these are my personal perspectives that I have developed over 25+ years in clinical practice.
If you are interested in watching my YouTube video of the same name, please click the link below.:
In the work I do some of my patients don’t seem to respond to normal treatment protocols. When this happens, I will deepen the conversation if they are open to it that their symptoms may have a message for them. I was introduced to the idea of metaphysical symptoms through the likes of Caroline Myss and Louise Hay with her You Can Heal Your Life book. Other authors have since entered this space such as Evette Rose with her Metaphysical Anatomy and Inna Segal with her Secret Language of Your Body which have further enhanced my understanding of the mind body connection and the spiritual sense of our symptoms. I acknowledge that some people will never believe this and only believe that pain and symptoms are purely physical in nature. The interesting thing is that science also shows that pain is multi-factorial with the introduction of the Biopsychosocial pain model.
The Three Elements of the Biopsychosocial Model of Pain:
Biological
The biological component such as disc bulges, torn muscles and so forth. The second element is the psychological aspect as it is well researched that those who experience chronic pain also often have the co-morbidity of depression.
Psychological
The psychological aspect also touches on fear as a driver for restricting movement because of a fear of further harm, this often creates a cycle of restricted movement which leads to more dysfunction which leads to more pain not less.
Social
The third part of the model is the social aspect, this touches on how much chronic pain can impact your relationships. What can happen with some people’s pain experience is that when put in social situations with people who don’t understand chronic pain, they can feel uncomfortable accepting social invitations to things such as dinners, celebrations for fear of not being able to enjoy the invitation. If you are unaware that someone might have chronic pain you might not realise that those chairs they have to sit on may cause so much discomfort that they cannot enjoy themselves. Some might even leave events early because they are in so much pain or not even accept the invitation because of the effort to socialise. This then also can cause an impact on the psychological component of the model and as such they often all lead into each other.
As you can see this is multi-layered and multi-factorial as someone’s social aspect might be a bigger part of their pain experience than their biological. The truth around the biological is that two people could have the same condition and one experiences little pain while the other person experiences an enormous amount of pain hence the development of the biopsychosocial model to explain pain. Other factors are most likely contributing to their pain experience beyond the physical.
For me this helps with introducing the concept that my client’s pain may be more than a physical experience. Then I might even open the door to a deeper conversation that suggest that certain body parts have message for us.
For example:
The Lower back: Sometimes the lower back might be telling us that we are worried about money, or support from those close to us or even work colleagues.
The Shoulders: They might tell us that we are carrying a lot of pressure on our “shoulders”, or feel like we are “carrying the weight of world” on our shoulders. This pressure might be self-inflicted or placed on us by others.
The Neck: If your neck is stiff sometimes this can highlight a lack of flexibility around thinking and considering differing points of view.
Hips, knees and feet: Issues in these areas may indicate issues with moving forward. This could be around job, family or health changes.
Right side of the body: The right side of the body is typically indicative of a more physical, masculine issue such as with a male family member or person in your life. It is also more related to a lack of action taking if there are issues on this side of the body.
Left side of the body: The left side of the body is more the emotional side of the body. It is also typically seen as the more feminine receptive side of the body and therefore issues around mothers or female people in your life.
From the list above you can see how there could be many factors that could be behind your symptoms.
There are other possibilities when we look at organs as messengers such as the liver being related to anger, frustration, heat and inflammation in the body. The lungs can be seen as the seat of grief and the kidneys are a place worry can be stored. We could see problems with digestion as problems assimilating to what’s going on with life or what are we struggling to let go of. Eye problems could be what don’t we want to see or what are we having trouble seeing. The ears could be who do we not want to hear or what don’t we want to hear.
When we consider pain as protection it can help us soften to its message. When we are in an acute flare up of pain it is telling us to stop and listen. It’s very hard to ignore pains protective message and this is where it can become dysregulated and over stimulated and switched on when it shouldn’t be. That too though is a message, we need to listen first before we can downregulate the message.
Often when the nervous system is over stimulated it will hyper respond to messages that it should be able to switch off. Part of retraining the nervous system is when it comes to pain is to work with it and not against it. This is often when I will instruct my clients to work with a pain free range of motion of exercise duration or intensity. At this early stage of recovery from an injury or chronic pain it is important to do as much as possible without pain. This initially may mean reducing activity all together, or reduced the intensity and duration. So, your recovery may only be to walk to the end of the drive and back instead of a walk around the block if that results in pain but the end of the drive and back feels good. Then over time when the nervous system has learnt to become more regulated adjusting the duration and intensity still needs to involve as much pain free movement as possible but you may become more comfortable with some discomfort and recognise that it is not harming you. Over time the idea is to return to normal levels of activity ideally with as minimal pain as possible. The truth is most people will experience flare-ups over time but they should become less frequent and less intense over time.
This process of re-regulating the nervous system takes time and hence why if you work with your pain instead of against it you will find the journey less frustrating. You will learn to see pain as a messenger for you to listen to and ask “what do you have to tell me?” and you might just be surprised with the answer that you get.
Part of your health journey involves learning to listen to what the body has to say. When we learn to work with the body and not against it, I believe the journey will be more harmonious and easier to travel when it does have something to tell us.