How did learning about the science of pain actually help me overcome more than 20 years of chronic pain?
It starts with one idea: all pain is influenced by the brain. You might be thinking, “But I have real, physical pain. My doctors told me I have a condition. It’s not psychological.” I understand that reaction completely.
For a long time, the medical field gave us the impression that pain is one or the other. Either a test shows something is wrong, or it’s all in your head. We all hate that framing, and when it comes to pain, it isn’t accurate. A purely biomedical lens works great for something like strep throat or a broken bone. But what researchers understand now is that pain is never only a physical issue. And all pain is real, whether or not a scan shows something.
You Don’t Have to Understand Every Detail
If you’re the kind of person who says, “I don’t care how something works as long as it works,” I’m right there with you. My husband Jim is the one who takes apart toasters to see how they work. That’s important to him. But with pain science, you don’t have to learn every intricate detail. Just understanding the basics of how pain works in the brain and body can give you power over this mysterious, scary thing called pain.
That doesn’t mean understanding will remove all your pain. But it can be the key that starts to unlock your progress.
Think about it this way. Before people understood that germs existed, they only treated the symptoms of their colds rather than understanding how they got sick in the first place. Once we knew about germs, simple tools like washing our hands and covering our mouths when we cough became ways to take care of ourselves.
The same is true with pain. Once you understand how something works, you have more control over managing it. It equips you to be an active participant in your own care. You stop being only a patient who is treated, and you become an active member of your medical team.
Understanding Pain Reduces Fear
Another benefit of understanding how pain works is that it begins to reduce fear. And dealing with fear is a very important piece of pain management.
Does your pain scare you? Mine sure did. I lived in fear a lot. Fear of not finding answers for what was causing my pain to continue. Fear of not being able to cope. Fear of what my future might hold. The list went on and on.
But when I started to learn how pain works, it took away some of those fears. Just like Jim with his toaster, when you have a better understanding of what’s going on, you carry less fear and anxiety.
There’s a quote from Dr. Adriaan Louw, a pain neuroscience educator, that stuck with me. He has noted that the nervous system tends to start calming down as a person’s understanding of the root of their pain increases. In other words, understanding itself can be part of the calming.
Acute Pain vs Chronic Pain: What’s the Difference?
When we talk about pain, two words come up a lot: acute and chronic. The difference matters.
Acute pain usually has a known cause, and it’s part of the body’s natural alarm system. If you sprain your ankle, you actually want pain to warn you to stop putting pressure on it so it can heal. Acute pain usually resolves within three to six months, once full healing occurs.
It might surprise you to hear that pain is actually helpful. It warns us of danger and signals us to take care of a problem before damage is done or things get worse. If you touch a hot stove, you want pain to tell you to move your hand immediately. In fact, there are people who can’t feel pain, and while that might sound great, it’s a serious problem. They have to monitor their bodies constantly to make sure something isn’t happening that they’re completely unaware of.
Chronic pain is different. It’s generally considered pain that lasts longer than three to six months. It can be pain that continues as part of a chronic disease, or pain that continues for reasons that aren’t fully clear. This is the kind of pain so many of us have struggled with, the kind that doesn’t simply go away when healing should be complete.
Why This Changed Everything for Me
I actually have a biomedical condition that was treated with only biomedical approaches for more than 20 years, and I got just short-term results. Understanding pain science set me on a path to much less pain, and more importantly, much more life, even though I still have a medical condition.
That’s the part I most want you to hear. Understanding how pain works didn’t erase my diagnosis. It changed my relationship with the pain, and it opened the door to real, lasting progress that two decades of treatments alone never did.
We’ve only scratched the surface of how pain works here, and there’s much more to learn. But even this much knowledge gives you insight into proven ways to manage your pain more successfully. You are not just a patient waiting to be fixed. You’re an active, capable part of your own care.
