explain
pain
section
1
page
8
Introduction
No-one really wants pain. Once you have it youwant to rid
yourself of it. This is understandable because pain is
unpleasant. But the unpleasantness of pain is the very thing
that makes it so effective and an essential part of life. Pain
protects you, it alerts you to danger, often before you are
injured or injured badly. It makes youmove differently, think
differently and behave differently, which alsomakes it vital for
healing.
Occasionally the pain system appears to act oddly – like the
nail in your toe that may not even hurt until you notice blood
at the injury site. Other times, the pain system actually fails –
some life-threatening cancers aren’t painful, which is the very
reason they can go undetected and be so nasty.
We believe that all pain experiences are normal and are an
excellent, though unpleasant, response towhat your brain
judges to be a threatening situation. We believe that even if
problems do exist in your joints, muscles, ligaments, nerves,
immune system or anywhere else, it won’t hurt if your brain
thinks you are not in danger.
In exactly the same way, even if no problems whatsoever exist
in your body tissues, nerves or immune system, it will still hurt
if your brain thinks you are in danger. It is as simple and as
difficult as that. This bookwill try to explain this for you.
