Pain Physiotherapy
Firstly, and foremost, I need to make sure you understand that pain is a protector, and pain is normal. If we don’t have pain we don’t have an alert system to warn us of potential dangers and harm.
Think of a hot stove that you happen to touch, a quick jolt of pain helps you pull your hand away quickly and prevent damage. If your hand brushes a hot surface and you do feel pain, you don’t always burn yourself, put simply, pain does not always equate to actual tissue damage. This rounds back to the first point- that pain is a protector. It wouldn’t be a very useful protective system if it only alerted us AFTER damage.
Unfortunately for 1 in 5 Australian’s, this acute pain can become chronic, or persistent - we become more protective! This occurs when this alert system becomes more sensitive- think of a home security system that starts to malfunction and alarms without cause. In this scenario, when pain persists beyond the normal timeframes for healing, we LEARN pain. Just like anything we practice - like when I learned to play the recorder when I was 9 (I got pretty good at hot cross buns). This can prevent recovery, and it can be extremely debilitating. When we feel pain without a relevant cause, it encourages fear, frustration, it can make us avoid physical activity, hobbies and work, it affects our sleep and impacts our relationships. This only entrenches our pain, and can make it more severe. The intimate and individual context of our lives impacts the improvement, maintenance or the worsening of pain…
This is where pain management physiotherapy can help.
I listen to your history and concerns, assess your capacity, and help you determine the context of what is helping your pain to persist.
In understanding there is empowerment.
Together, we work out a plan for recovery. This may include:
Having an honest look at your life, your thoughts and behaviours that are shaped by pain
Taking up some healthy habits, which may include exercising more (or less), pacing your daily activities, getting better sleep
Determining safe pain levels
Working out how to better manage stress
Engaging with other health professions - like dietetics, psychology or medical pain interventions - developing a pain management TEAM
Make no mistake, recovering or managing a chronic pain condition is challenging and requires time and patience. But importantly, just as we can learn pain, we can also UNLEARN pain. Think of a time you learnt a specific skill, and maybe excelled at it, but also remember when you put that skill aside, and forgot it. So too can you forget chronic pain.
Just like I forgot how to play hot cross buns on the recorder.
