Is the pain just in my head?

When you have been in pain for a long time (chronic pain) you may have asked yourself if the pain is real, or if it is just in your head. Suffering from pain that won’t go away is frustrating and can be very difficult to explain to other people, especially loved ones who just want to see you get better.

Image: Pain is like a desert when you walk it alone.

I am here to share with you that lots of scientific research out there says that your pain is real. It can be caused in various ways, for example by an injury, inflammation, nerve damage or disease. Pain is our brain’s interpretation of the physical, and sometimes psychological information available to it. If your brain did not understand the signals it was receiving from your body, you would not feel pain. Pain is not objective, it is not a simple equation that always makes sense, it is personal and it is your brain’s way of telling you something is wrong. It doesn’t matter what is causing your pain, all pain is real pain.

When you get a cut, stub your toe, or burn yourself, tiny sensors in your skin and tissue send signals to your brain, through your nerves, telling your brain there is tissue damage. The brain understands this and then you feel pain. 

The signal coming from your injured area can be modified along the way, either by competing signals coming from other areas of the body, or coming from the brain itself. Ever wondered why you can “power through” some pain? That is because your brain is sending signals down a nerve that blocks pain.

Ever wondered why rubbing a painful spot makes it hurt less? It is because competing stimuli from the touch receptors outcompete the pain signals, and the end result is your brain receives  less pain stimuli, and you can feel less intense pain.

Most people understand the pain of an injury, but few understand other kinds of pain, such as in the case of fibromyalgia, persistent (chronic) pain, or phantom limb pain, to name a few, although there is a lot of ongoing scientific research into these types of pain.

Our brains are doing the best they can to give us clear, useful signals, but sometimes things go wrong, and we feel pain when we don’t really have an immediate reason to feel pain. Even though this pain is not based on an immediate injury, it is still pain, and what you feel is still as real and valid as any other pain! Although some types of pain can be reduced by medications, researchers increasingly find that long-term pain management can be more easily achieved through the use of non-medication-based treatments. In fact, research indicates that pain can be reduced through the use of touch therapies such as Massage Therapy.