The Four Myths of Pain

The Four Big Myths About Pain

  There are many ideas about pain that are exaggerated, bizarre or just plain wrong. You cannot expect to be free of pain if you don’t even understand what can and cannot cause it! Knowing how pain operates allows you to better work with pain, and get out from under its often brutally disabling hold.

  The four myths are:

·      Pain is a part of life.

·      Pain is just part of getting old.

·      Pain is caused by the weather.

·      Pain is for “just dealing with”.

Let’s look at each of these myths, and separate the myth from the kernel of truth they are each grounded in.

Pain is a part of life.

Depending on how you look at this myth, it is true or false. The fact is, pain is a very normal part of life, because pain is a signal. Pain is a message from your bodymind that attention needs to be paid, either to a physical, emotional or mental problem at hand. This powerful messaging system was designed to alert us to dangers in our environment or ourselves. Stepping on a nail causes pain. The pain alerts us to the need for checking out if any damage has been done. Has the nail broken our skin? If it has, was the nail rusty? We may need to clean the wound, place a band-aid on it, and get a tetanus shot. If there had been no pain, we would have simply ignored what might become a serious infection. If a hot stove burner caused no pain at all, a child whose hand touched that burner might leave it there until his hand was burned to the point of serious nerve damage. Pain is a signal and a message of incredible value to our bodies. 

In fact, in situations where we have deadened pain, we may leave ourselves open to making a physical ailment worse. If an athlete is playing football with an injured knee, able to continue playing because he has had a shot of cortisone, he may well tear a meniscus or ligament, because he is not getting the pain signals he needs to tell him when to play or not, and how to move. The lack of pain causes much greater problems. 

This same point is true for emotional and mental pain. Just ask any alcoholic or drug addict. They are attempting to use alcohol and substances to dull the pain of their emotional and mental conditions, which are trying to tell them they need to make changes in their lives. The pain they feel is a warning system. When it is turned off through drugs, the addiction just gets stronger, while the source of the pain is not inspected and taken care of. This is especially prevalent in our society, in which we are told from our infancy to take a pill for every pain we experience. That message tells us that pain is bad, rather than telling us that pain is a friendly warning system. Pain is to be avoided, rather than listened to. Not listening to your pain, however, is almost a guarantee of greater pain to come. 

There is a larger part of this myth, having to do with the difference between pain and suffering. Pain really is a natural part of life. Our body gives us a message that something inside of ourselves needs attention. Suffering, on the other hand, is not a signal or natural part of life. Suffering is how we relate to our pain. While we all experience pain of varied sorts, suffering is cause by how we respond to pain. When we deny pain, run away, try to cover pain over or “get rid” of it, we cause ourselves greater suffering. We may take on the stance of a victim, or define ourselves by our pain. Someone who has cancer likely has pain. But a patient with breast cancer who says “I’m Sally, and I have cancer” is suffering much less than the breast cancer patient who says “I’m Sally, and I am cancer”. The second Sally has so defined herself by her disease that she is losing sight of her personhood, and cancer is now taking over her sense of herself. She suffers greatly, and can’t see a way out. Cancer is now her whole life. The first Sally has cancer, and is in pain, but she is also continues to see herself as having a life, an identity separate from cancer. It is not who she is, but something she has. 

When we relate to pain, listen to it, and ask it what it needs; when we make friends with our pain, we minimize our suffering, and also usually find that our health outcomes improve tremendously. We keep the altitude on our problems to see some answers, and not sink into the depression and limited vision of becoming a victim. 

Pain is just part of getting old.

             If only I were paid a small sum every single time a patient, friend or stranger told me this! “I’m just getting old, doc”. Perhaps the most common complaint I have heard in all of my many years of practice. “Getting old” as a diagnosis. Pain as the primary symptom of “getting old” syndrome. If there is a diagnosis in there, it might be “getting old syndrome” as a set of preconceived ideas about aging, and a too-common tendency to embrace them. Pain is “just getting old”. “Having a senior moment”. “My eyes (hearing, memory, mind; place your favorite here) are going. I’m just getting old.” 

Putting aside for the moment that chronological age and biological age are not the same thing (you can age biologically much slower than chronologically, given good lifestyle choices), pain is not an automatic part of getting old. Not only are there a large number of disease which hit only the young, but most of the pain people associate with aging is musculoskeletal pain. Arthritis, old injuries and the like. Fortunately, these are some of the most avoidable pains of all! This aspect of “getting old” has much more to do with a lack of exercise and stretching, an acidic diet and a sedentary lifestyle than it does with simply aging. Sure, if you played college football, or ran tons of marathons, your body will present some distinct challenges, especially if you were injured along the way. But pain is still not inevitable in these cases. A good, daily regime of proper diet, exercise and supplements can reduce age-related pain immensely. The mind-set of “aging = pain and decline, followed by death or (worse) Alzheimer’s Disease”, you’ll have to work on from another angle, namely, paying attention to your “getting old syndrome”, in terms of attitudes towards aging, most of which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have had many patients in their 70’s and above, with plenty of old injuries and arthritic changes, who have used a combination of bodywork, diet, exercise and attitude to reduce their biological age, and live with a minimum of pain, to boot. 

Pain is caused by the weather.

This pain myth grows out of a kernel of truth. Pain can be increased in some patients when the barometric pressure rises. This is the classic case of someone who says that they can tell when it is going to rain. They are usually post-surgical patients, and the reason they can “tell” when rain is imminent is that rising barometric pressure- a common weather pattern before a rainstorm- causes all of the joints of the body to swell microscopically. This is true for everyone, but for most people, the change is so infinitesimal it is never noticed. Someone with a history of arthritis, recent traumatic injury or orthopedic surgery, on the other hand, may become very sensitive to these changes, because some of their joints are already inflamed or irritated. That small change in joint capsule size will be felt, and often relieved after it does rain, when the barometric pressure goes down again. 

             On the other hand, this kind of myth is often just another part of a poorly adapted patient’s relationship to pain. If a victim status is taken on unconsciously, then almost any reason for pain will do: the weather, bad news, poor sleep, stress, household chores or a poor marriage. In such a case, it is better to check the patient’s internal “weather”: mood, sleep and energy patterns and character signals, to see what is keeping the patient from adapting to their pain more effectively. 

Pain is for “just dealing with”.

             This myth grows out of a stoic acceptance of one’s pain. Or does it? The patient in this case says that they accept the pain they experience, and see no point in playing the victim, or being childish. The pain is there, it is real, and it is better to accept that and move on than to get stuck brooding about it. There is, indeed, much truth and courage in this attitude. In fact, the patients who get the best results over time tend to be driven, compliant and persistent, not prone to depression or “playing the victim”. On the other hand, there is a difference between stoically accepting one’s fate and playing the martyr, and the line is a thin one. In my experience, many patients who say they “just deal with it” do not actually seek out all of the possible solutions to their pain, nor are they always careful how they use their bodies. They may put their head down and just keep doing everything they used to do, at work, on the golf course and at home, without considering how they might alter their routines for a better health outcome. 

             This all comes down to self-care, and the huge payoff it has on one’s health in the long term. Accepting one’s pain while working to minimize its footprint in one’s life is a good balance. If you do not deal with your pain, it will deal with you.  That much I can guarantee you. I advocate accepting one’s pain, especially in chronic conditions, where many modalities to healing have been tried. In such cases, the ideal scene is good pain management, and always seeking out more avenues: diet, supplements, new modalities, while focusing on getting the best outcome one can, which is not likely to be “cured”. 

             The important point here is not to “bull your way through”. While the courage and stoicism is admirable, it can lead to more pain and more problems, because you may not be sensible in what you choose to do, or how you choose to do it. You may even try to “prove” you can do certain activities, in spite of your pain. That lack of balance in one’s approach can lead to more unnecessary suffering.