Does your pain stop you from doing things? Do you feel like pain is controlling your life?
I know what that’s like. My pain stopped me all the time. If I tried to do something and it caused pain, the answer seemed obvious: I can’t do that either. I spent hours and hours lying down on the couch. I couldn’t sit, so I had to lie down. If any movement hurt, the conclusion my brain reached was that I just had to lie down all day.
Today I want to talk about the chronic pain cycle, the one I got caught in for years, and explain how we get trapped in it. Because here’s the important part: each step of this cycle makes sense to your brain. It’s trying to protect you.
What the Chronic Pain Cycle Looks Like
The cycle goes like this. You have pain, so you become afraid to move. Because you’re afraid to move, you rest a lot and avoid anything that might cause more pain. But when you keep resting, your muscles get weak and your body gets stiff, which makes movement even more painful. So you move even less, which brings more pain. And wrapped around all of it is the frustration and discouragement of feeling like you can’t help yourself.
The cycle seems to make sense. Pain feels threatening. Fear is protecting you. You don’t want to harm yourself, and avoidance seems to reduce the risk of more pain.
That cycle reinforces itself, not because you’re doing something wrong, but because your nervous system is learning from experience. Your brain is a short-term thinker. It doesn’t understand the long-term impact of this cycle on your health and your pain.
The Brain vs. the Mind
This is a distinction worth pausing on. There’s the brain, the short-term thinker, focused on immediate safety and getting you out of discomfort right now. And there’s the mind, the longer-term thinker that stays in sync with your values, your dreams, and your purpose. The mind is more aware of the consequences that the short-term-thinking brain tends to miss.
Your brain keeps nudging you through this cycle because it genuinely thinks it’s helping. And that’s important to understand: avoidance is not laziness. It’s logical from the perspective of a short-term-thinking brain. If something hurts, the brain says, “Don’t do that again.”
So the problem isn’t avoidance itself. The problem is long-term avoidance without ever reevaluating what’s actually happening in your body and brain. Over time, avoidance weakens you and increases your sensitivity to pain.
Removing Shame From the Equation
This matters a lot: we need to take shame out of this.
Shame increases your sense of threat, and threat increases your pain. You might feel ashamed for being caught in this cycle, but remember, this cycle has been your brain’s way of coping in the short term. It is not your fault. This was me for over 20 years, and it was the only way I knew how to cope.
A word for the friends and family too. You might not be the one in the pain cycle. You might be a spouse, a family member, a helper, or an encourager. If so, be careful not to pile on more guilt or shame by assuming you know best about how the person should manage their pain. As Jim experienced through my journey, the role of a caretaker is to support and encourage, not to instruct, manage, or even educate. Let the person own their journey while you stand beside them.
Rest Is Important, Until It Becomes the Only Strategy
Rest matters. But when rest becomes your only strategy, your system can become more sensitive, not less, because it’s easier to stay still than to risk bringing on more pain.
For years my tendency was to lie down for days at a time. The more I lay down, the weaker my muscles got, the stiffer my movements became, and the more tired I felt. All of it was a result of being caught in the cycle.
So what do we do about it? There are a few entry points where you can start interrupting the cycle. Let’s start with the fear of movement.
Discomfort vs. Harm
Here’s a key question. Is the discomfort you feel simply expected because you haven’t moved in a while, the same way someone feels a little sore after going back to the gym? Or is it actually causing harm?
That’s genuinely hard to know on your own, which is why it’s so important to check with your medical providers and make sure an activity isn’t harmful for your specific condition.
Once your providers have cleared you for an activity, you can work on carefully telling the difference between discomfort and harm. If the activity isn’t likely to be harmful, then often what you’re feeling is simply a system that has become hypersensitive, which is completely normal. I had to remind myself that the activity I was doing was not dangerous, that I needed to go very slowly and gently, and that I could gradually reintroduce it. I had to remind my brain: this movement is safe. It might cause a little discomfort, but I’m not harming myself.
The Answer Isn’t Pushing Through Either
So do we just push through the pain? No. But the answer isn’t avoiding everything either.
The goal is safe, gentle, gradual movement. Start small and increase very slowly. You can do this by adjusting the frequency (how often you do something), the timeframe (how long you do it), or the intensity.
Jim has a good example from his own health. He’s a runner. After a surgery and some recovery, he started walking, then ran a little, then ran twice as much, and overdid it. So he scaled way back. He started short, didn’t run fast or long, and refused to increase by more than a tenth of a mile at a time. It took months to get back to his regular distance at that slow, steady, gentle pace, but the results were worth it precisely because he built it gradually.
Not everyone relates to running, but most of us can relate to slowly getting started again. You’ll probably feel like the amount you can do is silly compared to others, or even pointless. If that’s you, you’re actually on the right track, because the important thing is that you’re slowly getting moving again.
Small Wins Matter
One of the benefits of starting small is that you get to have a win. And wins are important. They remind us that we can still do things. But if we don’t try, or if we do too much, we miss those wins. You don’t need to change everything. One small change is enough to get started.
So if you recognize yourself in this cycle, hear this. The cycle is normal. Your brain is trying to protect you. You’re not broken, and you’re not weak. You’re responding exactly the way your nervous system is designed to, the same way mine did for years.
Let’s just become more aware that the brain might be interpreting all movement as harmful, when discomfort is not the same as hurting yourself. So be gentle with yourself, but determined, and with your medical provider’s guidance, work toward moving more and fearing less.
