explain
pain
section
5
page
106
Your relationshipwith pain
Are you a boom-buster?
B
efore we talk about themost important treatment tools,
we believe it is important for you to have an idea of how
you are ‘travelling’ and for you to understand the
relationship between your pain and your activity level. This
will not only further demystify your pain but will allow you
to establish a starting point, a baseline by which you can
evaluate your progress. You can do this yourself, although
youmay benefit from a helpful, thinking, informed, clinical
decision-making professional.
Do you recognise either of the following relationships
between activity and pain?
Avoiding pain (Graph 1)
This is the gradual decline pattern. Pain kicks in after a
certain amount of activity. This could be anything, for
example sleeping, standing, sweeping, branding (for the
farmer), having dinner, having sex, having visitors and
having deadlines.
The natural response is to stop the activitywhen pain starts.
Over time the amount of activity at which pain is experienced
slowly reduces, eventually leading to disability, disuse and
probably depression. In our experience, this pattern ismore
common in people who are afraid of pain and re-injuring
tissues and for people who are ‘passive copers’.
Trying to beat pain (Graph 2)
This is also known as the ‘boom-bust’ pattern. Pain comes
on but you persevere, you tolerate it asmuch as you can
and try to ignore it, keep going, distracting yourself
(‘boom’) until suddenly your pain is unbearable and you
‘bust’ – flooding your nervous systemwith danger chemicals
and leaving yourself completely wiped out for days, maybe
evenweeks. In our experience, this pattern ismore
common in people who are perfectionists, high achievers,
stoic, energetic or who perceive that other people or
institutions are in control of their situation.
The common feature of both graphs is that the activity limit
keeps dropping and is eventually very low. It’s low because
pain has become themaster.
Avoiding pain or trying to beat painwon’t work. We need to
respect it, not fear it, and plan a road to recovery.
