Check out the image to get a sense of what moves your “Indicator” up and down. If you have chronic pain, you know this is true. Sometimes you don’t feel too bad. You’re able to move around and do most of what you need to do. Other times, you feel terrible and you’re in a lot of pain. It’s hard to make sense of why that happens. Here’s an explanation. Where there is more evidence of “Danger in Me” than there is evidence of “Safety in Me”, you’ll experience pain. Conversely, if you have much more evidence of “Safety in Me” than “Danger in Me”, you won’t have pain, or have much less pain.

In the next blog and video, we’re going to expand on the notion of DIMs and SIMs (Dangers in Me and Safety in Me), because the more you know how to increase the SIMs and decrease the DIMs, the more control you’ll have over your pain!

The pain you’re experiencing is 1000% of the time in your brain, and REALLY relies on CONTEXT.

If you’re someone that’s been following our content recently you know that we’ve been covering chronic pain, and have focused heavily on helping you understand what pain is and what’s going on. This is ultra important because we know from the research that one of the core components in overcoming it is to know more about pain and how it uniquely pertains to your situation.

BUT, today is going to be different. I want to give you some action oriented tips you can take to overcome your pain.

It’s so common to feel hopeless when you’ve had pain for 6 months. Or 6 years! This is totally understandable. But, if you’re going to have some hope, you’re going to need to see some progress. You need to know you’re taking the right steps in doing something about it. The following 3 things will help you know you’re heading in the right direction:

1. 
   

   CONSISTENCY

   
   
2. 
   

   TRACKING

   
   
3. 
   

   MODEST INCREMENTAL PROGRESSION

   
   

Let’s say right now you know you can only walk for 5 minutes before your back or your knee flare up and you can’t do any more.

I have three challenges for you. First, walk 5 minutes EVERY DAY. Second, resolve to doing just 10% more each week. Third, WRITE IT DOWN!

Here’s the math – That would mean that you walk 5:30 seconds the following week. And the third week you would be walking about 6 minutes.

I’m hoping that this seems do-able for you, because it really should be.

If you can stay consistent, and track it by writing it down, you’ll gain some momentum and begin forming a HABIT. This is HUGE!

So, set yourself a modest goal, write it down, and hold yourself accountable.

When you’ve been experiencing pain for a long time, your adrenaline, muscles, GI, and other systems can be acting as though there is a lion in your house! 

What’s happening is that your stress response (which is totally normal and goes up and down throughout the day), stays elevated. Over time, this leads to a bunch of problems. 

Watch the video to learn more, because knowledge is power when it comes to overcoming long term pain! 

You got this! ????????

YOUR bullseye is the thing(s) that your pain has affected you from doing. Low back causing you to avoid playing with the grandkids? Well, your bullseye is being able to play with your grandkids without fear of having to worry about what your low back is going to feel like the next day.

Having a very clear bullseye can give you the motivation to have the endurance to overcoming that pain that won’t go away. Yes, you do need a PLAN. You need to know what to do. But, you will also need to put in a ton of hard work. And you may need to do that for 6 months. Maybe a year!

This is incredibly difficult, and it’s so easy to quit. It’s easy to get frustrated. To feel hopeless.

Knowing what your bullseye looks like, and what life can be like on the other side, can give you the endurance to keep with it!

A physical pain in your body doesn’t just affect how you feel physically. It could be affecting your family, your job, your friendships, etc. Listen to this story (some details altered for privacy, of course!) about how pain had been affecting one of our patients.

But, more importantly, understand how important it is to truly uncover all of the ways in which your life has changed from pain. By doing this, you’ll know what your motivations are to overcome the pain, because YOU CAN!

In the last video, I equated our Nerves to an Alarm System in your house.

Well, in chronic pain something’s happened to where anytime a leaf blows by in the wrong direction, the whistles begin and the sirens blare.

Here’s what I mean – your nerves over time have gotten so sensitive to any little movement, or increase in your stress levels, or a change in temperature (or any number of other things), that even small changes in your baseline send you into pain.

The longer the pain persists, the more likely those nerves will remain really close to the line that ignites the sirens!

Those of you having persistent pain will now be asking “well, how the heck do I get my nerves to calm down and lower their levels?”

Great question! Here are the 4 things that will get them to calm down.

1. 
   

   Education

   
   
2. 
   

   Blood Flow

   
   
3. 
   

   Oxygen

   
   
4. 
   

   Medication

   
   

The primary purpose of me doing all of these videos about chronic pain is to help you understand what’s going on, because the more you’re educated about what’s going on the less pain you’ll experience. They’ve actually done studies and have shown that healthcare workers that have similar injuries as non-healthcare workers are WAY less likely to have chronic pain! This makes sense because the alarm will stay on when there are more questions than answers.

Nerves Are Like an Alarm System for Your Body.

Nerves always have a little bit of electricity traveling through them, which is normal and means you’re alive! Sometimes the electrical signals can go up or down, based on things like stress, temperature, movements, pressure in your skin, etc.

Nerves also have thresholds, and when they get ‘excited’ enough to reach the threshold, the alarm goes off. A signal gets sent to your brain, so your brain can make sense of what’s going on and take the appropriate action. If you stepped on a rusted nail, you’d want to know about it! You’d want to know, so that you can get a tetanus shot, make sure the nail is out, and walk funny to take the pressure off of the injured part of your foot.

Once you get things addressed, the alarm system shuts off.

That’s what SHOULD happen. HOWEVER, in chronic pain, this is not the case.

In the next video you’ll understand how these nerve levels can go haywire in chronic pain. Stay tuned, cause the more you know about chronic pain the easier it is to overcome it.