“Society needs to understand pain ~ what is pain?
Last week I attended the SIP 2017 Conference in Malta where a meeting of stakeholders deeply considered the issue of pain in society. Pain is a societal problem and the way forward will emerge from considering pain in this light. Significant and exciting steps were taken, which will be covered in a forthcoming article on this site and the UP | understand pain site.
Chronic pain is the number one global health burden. The approaches used for pain are not working. We are seeing the figures increasing over the years as more and more people suffer ~ 100 million people in Europe. Why? The main reason is the misunderstanding of pain that results in unnecessary investigations, treatments that don’t work and low expectations. The predominant thinking remains ‘biomedical’ both in terms of healthcare delivered and society’s expectations. Pain is not a medical problem. It is a public health, or societal issue. We are in it together, all of us. Even clinicians are patients!
Where do we start?
The UP enterprise has a purpose, and that is to change the way that society thinks about pain, hence Understand Pain. From the point of understanding comes new belief and commitment to reach one’s potential. The vision is a world where people understand pain so that the focus is upon the practices that foster a healthy, meaningful existence within the context of the person’s unique life. This emerges from co-operation between the person and the care-giver, working together to achieve results. This is the essence of Pain Coach, grounded in pain sciences, modern philosophy and strengths based coaching, delivering results based on what works.
Pain Coach not only gives individuals unique knowledge and skills according to their needs, but also the all-important know how. I may have the best drill in the world, but without the know-how I will still make big holes in the wall as I try to hang a picture. The Pain Coach coaches the person to coach themselves to overcome pain. Conversely, interventions and medicines are ways to circumnavigate the problem. This is not to say that they do not have a role, however, the person learns nothing about facing it and transforming the experience and therefore will continue the loop of suffering. Only by learning about one’s existing patterns and creating new patterns in line with a vision of success, can the person overcome their pain.
“What do you focus on?
What do you focus on? What language do you use to yourself over and over? What story do you tell yourself? You can make the decision to change your story. What can you control? Your attitudes, your thoughts, your day to day decisions are all yours. What do you do consistently? What do you think and embody consistently? That becomes the story of you. You can choose another script. That is the role of a coach, to help you realise and actualise your choices. To help you make decisions but ultimately you make them and commit to doing positive work to move in a desired direction. You decide the direction.
What is pain?
Pain is part of the whole person state of protect. Pain is poorly related to any stage of injury, tissue damage or indeed tissue state. This is the common misunderstanding, that somehow pain and injury are the same or related. This is not the case and indeed Pat Wall, the father of pain science and medicine, stated this in his 1979 paper. Why then, is this not practiced as mainstream? This is one of the key messages for all.
What are we protecting against? Initially there may be some kind of actual threat such as an injury or disease state, which is rightly interpreted by body systems as dangerous or potentially dangerous. That’s the whole point of pain in a sense, to be so unpleasant that it compels us to take action. It is a vital survival mechanism without which we have no way to detect actual or potential danger. But, the pain itself remains part of a protect state in light of a perceived threat.
“Pain is a feature of a state of protection
When pain persists, aka chronic pain (not everyone likes this term or wishes to be labelled as such), it means that a state of protect is persistently emerging as the prediction of threat frequents each day. The range of cues or patterns interpreted as potentially dangerous seems to widen and widen so that normally innocuous situations are deemed to be dangerous. This does not mean it has always to be at a conscious level as most of our biology operates in the dark, ie/ there are hidden causes. However, expectation does play a role in as much as when we expect something to hurt it does and often more as we prime, raise the threat level, predict to ourselves that it will hurt and guess what?
Pain is not a constant state. There is no constant state, instead we are continuously ‘updating’, dynamically exploring the environment with the aim of meeting our predicted needs. When a person suffers chronic pain, they will experience a number of episodes in a given day, with a more challenging day featuring more frequent or longer episodes, and a better day featuring less or shorter episodes.
We are changing by design. No moment is the same. Like a foot placed in a river, it is never the same water that passes by. So change is not the question, rather which direction will you go? Which direction will you choose? To coach yourself towards a vision of success? To decide to commit to the practices of well-being? When people realise that they do have a choice it is empowering, inspiring and enabling. We can decide to reach our potential.
Who suffers chronic pain?
Work is being done to discover more about who would be vulnerable to a chronic state of protect. Players include genetics, past experience (e.g. prior pain, early life events) and gender. One way to think about this is that we are on a timeline, so nothing happens in isolation. When I stub my toe, my existing health and sense of well-being will influence how I react both ‘myself’ and my biology. In other words, if I am very tired and stressed, my experience will be very different to if I were relaxed and happy. Getting the person’s story is key to understanding the context.
You can think of life’s events as priming. From day dot we are shaping ourselves and being shaped, right up until this moment. Every experience and everything learned sculpts us, our body manifest of the sum of all the things we have done and felt. The body systems that protect us evolve and become highly efficient, predicting that the causes of the sensory information mean that danger exists. Actively changing the sensory information with new practices, new habits and patterns of thought and action take us on different path. A path onward in a chosen direction. Our attitude to change and belief in our own abilities are both key factors — and both can change in themselves!
“Pain is whole person — it’s not my back in pain, I am in pain. Me
The perception or experience of pain is coloured by many factors in that person’s life, including past experience, beliefs, context, environment, actions (current and predicted), emotional state, attentional bias (what I am focusing upon), other people and more. Pain undoubtedly emerges in the person. In other words, it is the person who suffers pain, not the body region where it is felt. Much like it is the person who is thirsty, not their mouth.
In summary
- It is the whole person who feels pain
- Pain is part of the way we protect ourselves in the light of a perceived threat
- Pain can and does change
- Understand pain to change pain
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