As physical therapists the main complaint we deal with daily is pain. It may be as straightforward as a patient reporting isolated ankle pain due to an ankle sprain 3 days ago sustained playing soccer or as complicated as a patient reporting widespread pain throughout their body for over 10 years that has progressively worsened over time. Interestingly, even though almost everyone will deal with some sort of pain condition in their lifetime, our collective understanding of pain seems to be hugely lacking…For instance, if I were to ask you “what is pain?” do you think you would be able to answer? My guess is probably not, and the reason why is that pain is surprisingly and wonderfully complex! As a result, it can be very difficult to understand and manage. So…the question is, what exactly is pain?
Well, pain is an amazing gift that helps us protect ourselves by alerting us to real or potential dangers. The intention is that by alerting us to these real or potential dangers we will make a change to address the danger, and the best way that our body can alert us to these dangers is through the unpleasant experience known as pain! Just think about it, if you were walking and had a nail go through your shoe and stick into your foot it would be important to feel pain to get the nail out of your foot. The unpleasant sensation of pain that occurs is a fantastic signal to get us to do something about the nail! On the other hand, if you were unaware of the nail in your foot, or if the sensation was not an unpleasant one, you would be far less likely to address the problem and it could cause more tissue injury if left unattended to.
This example perfectly highlights the purpose of pain! Pain is your body’s attempt to tell you “protect yourself” or “change something”. Unfortunately, we often misunderstand the intention of pain! We view it as the villain because of the unpleasant experience that is associated with it. However, if we can instead view pain is a helpful warning sign or signal for change, it can help us better understand that we should not necessarily fear pain. Instead, when we feel pain, it means we should investigate why it is occurring. We must ask, “why does my body feel it needs protecting?” and address the real or potential dangers to make the body feel protected!
However, the complex part is that there are so many factors that feed into your body’s decision that you need protecting that the driver behind the resulting pain experience can be a very difficult thing to understand. These factors can include actual tissue injury and include life stressors, previous experiences with pain and injury, other underlying health conditions, and more. It is our hope that through this series on pain we can better inform you about pain so that you can understand what it means and what you can do about it.