Pain is a Funny Thing!

Pain is a funny thing.

Not funny as in HAHA ... but interesting funny.

I am referring to chronic pain, not acute pain.

When you drop a hammer on your foot or get stepped on by a horse, you feel immediate intense pain but once the injury heals the pain is gone.

Chronic musculoskeletal pain is different. “Chronic” is usually referred to as having had pain for 6 weeks or longer.

Chronic pain is sneaky ... because we

A.   Get used to it and ‘tune’ part of it out ...

B.   Use our bodies around it ... which allows us to not always feel the full brunt of it

Mind you: we don’t do this intentionally or consciously. Our brain is just good at trying to protect us.

It allows us to ‘keep going’ ...

The problem is: that is a slippery slope because pain usually gets worse and in addition the body compensates and starts having pain in other areas. It is a bit like a domino effect.

We usually put up with it, until we hit a breaking point.

Particularly if we are riders: we ride thru the pain ... until we literally cannot OR we start to feel that our horses are struggling to understand what we are trying to say (with our bodies).

It is like that old saying: We get what we tolerate!

And since riders are tough and determined to ride at any cost ... it usually takes us a while to reach the point where we not longer tolerate living with pain.

Our fabulous client Anne Carter was in that predicament. She hit her tipping point – the point where she was no longer willing to tolerate living in pain.

This week she sat down with me for a short interview to share her story and I wanted to share it with you today. WATCH HERE