How to prevent chronic pain through emotional awareness

It’s been proven that what happens physiologically in the body also creates sensory changes in the brain and vice versa. In our previous blog, we explained how emotions impact your body. Now we’ll take a step further and teach you how to identify these emotions in the body and relieve the associated musculoskeletal tension. Why? Because when we become consciously aware of our emotions and responses, we can break the negative feedback loops that lead to pain. Read on.

Chronic Pain

How does pain from an injury become chronic? Through negative thoughts and feelings. When we don’t feel safe, our brains activate pain. Both physical and/or emotional.

Most injuries have a healing time of between 2-3 months. Beyond this window, the original pain signal has now become a learned response of the brain and nervous system. The part of the brain that activates this learned pain response is also connected to fear, memory and emotion.

Once learned, this pain signal can be activated by different triggers. Some are physical activity-based triggers, like fear of certain movements. Whereas others are psychosocial, such as a stressful situation or a challenging emotion. These signals can be out of proportion to the actual threat or event and trigger off a cascade of toxic overthinking which further amplifies pain.

However, there is some good news. This learned response is reversible, and we can learn how to switch off a pain signal.

Heat map of emotions

(Nummenmaa, Glerean, Hari, Hietanen, 2014)

The heat map of emotions shown above highlights how each emotion can activate or deactivate a distinct set of body parts. “Say you see a snake and you feel fear,” says the study leader, Lauri Nummenmaa. “Your Nervous System increases oxygen to your muscle and raises your heart rate so you can deal with the threat. It’s an automated system. We don’t have to think about it.”

Now imagine what can happen when we start taking control of our automatic responses. The following steps will help you do so through conscious thought and awareness.

How to do a body scan and develop body awareness

STEP 1: Be still, slow down and allow feelings to come up. If we’re rushing around or stressed, it will be too difficult to access emotion. Either meditate or take 5-10minutes to look inward.

STEP 2: Notice the body sensations and ask yourself questions. Every emotion has a chemical component/biological response, so it’s important to identify which emotions cause which symptoms.

• Where is the sensation? Do a body scan from head to toe. Does it correlate with the area of pain?
• What’s the temperature? Hot vs cold vs warm to determine intensity. This can help differentiate between anxiety and excitement which feel similar but we’re more afraid of anxiety.
• Is the sensation moving? Anger can be a short intense hot flush, but so can embarrassment or humiliation. Or is something stuck in your throat as can happen with sadness?
• What kind of sensation are you experiencing? Rapid heart rate, sweaty palms, pulsating or throbbing in your temples, a knot or butterflies in the stomach, tightness or tension in your shoulders?

This is what it means to feel our feelings. Bring conscious awareness and focus to the physical felt sensation in our body.

STEP 3: Identify if the feeling is one of the most commonly experienced emotions. Look at the activation patterns on the diagram.

Common emotions and corresponding sensations

I’ll also highlight some of the symptoms you may experience below.

ANGER BASED

• Heat in the chest, upper torso and hands
• Clenched fists and jaw
• Increased heart rate
• Tense shoulders and arms, ready to fight

FEAR OR SHAME-BASED

• Increased heart rate to attack or run away (fight or flight)
• Activation in the head, chest and stomach – energy moving away from the digestive system so we can run or fight
• Anxiety and excitement/surprise are the same, but we can interpret each differently

JOY BASED

• An all-over feeling of warmth
• Activation in face and eyes from smiling and eyes crinkling up
• Openness and expansiveness

SADNESS BASED

• Behind eyes and sinuses with an urge to cry or lump in the throat
• Heaviness in the chest
• Lethargic and low energy so deactivation in arms and legs
• Depression is neutral/numb in the torso/abdomen whereas sadness shows activation in the head and chest

Again, do these sensations correlate with the area of pain?

If we’ve been unable to let go of certain emotions, these activated areas will also be amplified in our brains making our bodies more rigid and stiff. Or we may have disconnected ourselves from the deactivated areas, creating low tone and strength. The key is to practise this body scanning over and over to develop the skill of body awareness and develop accurate structures in the brain again.

Controlling toxic thought cycles

Emotions can be perceived as “dangerous” if we think they are bad or want to avoid feeling them. The more fear you feel, or suppress, the more pain you will feel. To reduce pain, try reducing the emotions or negative thought cycles surrounding it.

We have to learn to control our thoughts and reactions before they trigger toxic chain reactions and become ingrained neural networks, a.k.a. bad habits. The ability of the brain to change is called neuroplasticity, and any brain at any age can be made to function at a higher level due to this ability. YOU have the power to rewire neural pathways and reduce uncomfortable symptoms.

The role of physiotherapy

If you believe you are suffering from a chronic injury (of 3 months or more), physiotherapy can not only help you with pain management but also build awareness of compensatory movement patterns and enhance your mind-body connection. We can also help you identify the negative mental or physical loops your body may be stuck in. And provide you with the correct strategies to unlearn these painful habits.

The study was published online Dec. 30. 2013 in the journal Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.


Image Credit: Megapixl