Pain is a topic that I discuss with people regularly in the practice. It is something that many people experience and is not often a welcome companion within the body. It is also a subject that is often misunderstood, so I want to share an analogy that I recently came across which explains why we can experience pain.
Imagine that you have a large thorn stuck in your arm which is touching a nerve. It’s incredibly painful when it gets knocked, so activities such as sleeping, exercising, getting dressed, working etc. are almost impossible to do without it hurting.
In this situation you have 2 choices:
1. Make adaptations to your life so the thorn doesn’t hurt anymore (i.e. use a pain-relieving ointment around the thorn, put a protective guard around the thorn so it never gets touched, take regular painkillers, sleep with your arm elevated so you don’t roll over onto it)
2. Remove the thorn
Choice 1 deals only with the symptom of the cause: the pain, whilst choice 2 deals with the cause: the thorn.
Out of these choices, which one seems like the better option in the long term?
When it comes to various issues in our health, it is not uncommon for people to opt for choice 1 and deal only with the symptom of pain. Sometimes, it may be our only option to temporarily minimise pain to be able to continue with our day.
There could be many and multiple causes of our aches and pains but here are a few examples to further explain the analogy:
· Digestive pain: could be caused by consistently eating a food that doesn’t agree with you
Addressing the symptom of pain could be to use a hot water bottle on your tummy
Addressing the cause could be to eliminate from your diet that food that doesn’t agree with you.
· Lower back pain: could be caused by sitting in a chair for long periods of time without moving
Addressing the symptom of pain could be to use a muscle rub
Addressing the cause could be to not sit in a chair for long periods of time without moving.
· Headache pain: could be caused by too much time spent looking at a computer screen
Addressing the symptom of pain could be to take a painkiller
Addressing the cause could be to reduce the amount of time spent looking at a computer screen.
If we begin to change our perspective on pain to see it as the body’s clever and innate alarm system which is warning us about underlying problems, we can start to make empowered choices to remove the thorns causing pain in our lives and discover truly long-term solutions to our problems.
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