What Types Of Pain Are There?
Chronic Pain
Is considered pain that has lasted for longer than 3 months. This type of pain can be a result of illnesses like fibromyalgia, chronic migraine or arthritis but it can also be caused by physical trauma where the pain persists after the injury has healed, mental conditions like anxiety & emotional trauma. There are many types of emotional trauma that can lead to chronic pain, especially if the trauma isn’t dealt with. The trauma then creates a feeling of not being safe physically leading to stress reactions & pain over time.
Knowing what caused the chronic pain can sometimes be hard to decipher. Sometimes it’s not just one thing that’s led to it, but multiple events, physical, mental &/or emotional, that build up & over time result in a nervous system that’s over worked, constantly on high alert, never able to rest, which creates pain.
Chronic pain can alternate in intensity & type of pain sharp, throbbing, dull etc. In illnesses like fibromyalgia the pain can also migrate. Meaning that one day it’s your back that hurts, & the next it’s your head, all the while every fiber of your body is hurting in the background. The pain signals jumping around your body, like House of Pain, Cypress Hill & Kris Kross in the early 90s, going from low to high are, according to britishpainsociety.org, called “Wind-up”, & it’s the reason why it’s hard to get rid of chronic pain.
The pain signal jumps around the system by releasing small amounts of chemicals, Neurotransmitters. There are good & bad Neurotransmitters, the good ones help block the pain that the bad ones intensify. You can, to some extent, affect which neurotransmitters are released by how you feel & what you do. If you feel depressed & like everything is hopeless, very common emotions when you have chronic pain, the likelihood of the negative neurotransmitters getting stronger & causing more pain can increase. If instead you do something you like doing, fun activities or exercise the likelihood of the good ones being strengthened & easing your pain increases.
How you feel, living with chronic pain, on a given day can be dependent on many things, such as the quality & quantity of sleep the previous night, how your body reacts to what you eat & drink, too much or too little physical activity, stress, ability & opportunity to wind down & rest during the day, mood, warm vs cold temperatures, windy weather, light, sounds, smells etc can all affect how you feel.
Nociceptive pain
Is caused by tissue damage from an injury or an illness. Like a burn, cut, or Crohn’s or Arthritis.
When nociceptive pain develops in your skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones & joints it’s known as Somatic pain. When it develops in your internal organs it’s known as Visceral pain.
Depending on the cause, Nociceptive pain can be both acute & chronic. It can feel like a throbbing, achy or sharp pain.
Neuropathic pain
Is caused by nerve damage from an injury or an illness. Like a herniated disc putting pressure on a nerve in your spine, or illnesses like MS, shingles & cancer.
Neuropathic pain tends to be chronic, but it can also be acute. According to healthline a study shows that 10% of North Americans suffer from pain that’s likely Neuropathic.
Neuropathic pain can feel like a stabbing, prickling, shooting, or burning pain. And you can also be hypersensitive to touch, cold vs hot temperatures & movement.
The Autonomic Nervous System
The Autonomic nervous system regulates the bodily functions; like how much you should be sleeping, breathing, sweating, eating, drinking etc. It makes sure that your body is activated to face dangers through the “fight or flight” (sympathetic nervous) system, & when you’re done being chased by a lion, it makes sure that you recharge via the “rest & digest” (parasympathetic nervous) system.
The Autonomic nervous system automatically does these things without you thinking about them, but when you suffer from long term pain & stress the warning signals in your body might be affected & become out of whack or dysregulated. Which means that it can start going off in situations it shouldn’t typically go off. Making things that aren’t actually a threat seem dangerous, activating our defense system.
This in turn can affect many of our bodily functions, like hormones, digestion, elimination, sexual drive, the immune system breathing, blood pressure & the heart.
According to bragee.se, the activity in the autonomic nervous system can be likened to a wave that alternates between activation & deactivation, it flows up & down. As long as it works as it should, the waves undulate regularly, it’s in balance. Which means that you’re able to handle the things that happen in your life without any massive impact on the balance. You’re ok even if you have setbacks.
But when something happens that throws it out of balance, with demands that are higher than you can handle & your body can no longer regulate itself, for example when you have experienced stress or pain for long periods of time, the reactions for the nervous system become louder & more frequent. These signals can have consequences on your physical, mental & emotional health. It gets harder & harder to regulate, in other words relax & recharge our batteries. Eventually it’s as if your entire body’s screaming & you have no idea where it’s coming from.
The protection system
According to bragee.se, the protection system is activated within milliseconds when you experience a threat. A protective reflex happens 14 milliseconds after a threat occurs, & 5-10 seconds later safety reactions occur.
Protective reflexes are for example muscles contracting in your neck, jaws, eyes, your toes curl, you make fists, your abs are tense.
Safety reactions are when the body goes into fight or flight mode. Increased stress either leads to the body charging for battle/fight, or together with a feeling of helplessness it makes the body shut down, & either makes you want to flee, running away from danger, or freeze, ending up paralyzed/playing dead to avoid danger.
Sometimes you can feel your protection system being activated, like when you hear a loud bang & you feel your entire body tense up. But with smaller dangers you might not feel when it happens, this depends on how well connected you are to your body & its signals or interception. The interception helps you feel muscle tension & breathing for example.
A threat can be:
- A current threat
- The thought of a
- threat in the past
- Anxious thoughts
- Pain
Pain can occur regardless of if there’s been physical damage to the body or not.
When the nervous system has been on high alert for a long time due to stress or pain, it can have a hard time coming back to the status quo, it becomes dysregulated. The effects of the treat linger & are hard to get rid of. Every time something new happens the effects become exponentially stronger, & things that aren’t a treat can still create protective reflexes & safety reactions. Reactivating the already overworked system, that eventually doesn’t go down at all but stays on high alert.
Self-regulation
Basically when your nervous system is dysregulated your tolerance to stressful events/threats decreases. This leads to you becoming out of touch with your own body. To break the vicious cycle you need to find your way back, by connecting with your body again.
Tools to regain contact with your body
1-doing daily cardio or strengthening exercises, this decreases the effect of stress hormones & helps regenerate brain cells. But start at your level, don’t go running a Marathon if you can barely walk around the block. Take a walk around your apartment or house. Do a few squats over your chair, maybe lift a bottle a few times to work on your arms, sit on a chair & lift your feet off the ground to activate your abs. Remember any exercise you do is better than the one you don’t do.
2-doing daily exercises that help you better connect with & regulate your body’s internal signals. Exercises in mindfulness, meditation, breathing pacing, yoga, dance & self-compassion are amazing to help you connect with yourself & your body.
An examples of a self-regulating exercise can be to:
- Stop & notice what’s happening in your body right now.
- Feel the contact your feet have with the floor.
- Feel how your body feels after that walk you took.
- Feel how your body feels when you’re relaxing. Keep your attention there for a minute.
Bodily self-regulation happens when you’re able to stop & start listening to what your body’s telling you.
So What Is Pain?
Pain is a Warning System that tells you when it’s time to rest. It can be that you shouldn’t put any weight on that foot you just sprained, that you’re doing too much & need a break, or that your stomach is telling you that you ate something that’s gone bad.
The pain signals travel via the nerves, through the spinal cord to the brain. These nerves also interpret the pain.
Pain’s an alarm that goes off to tell you that you need to listen. Which is great for acute pain.
When you live with chronic illness your alarm system may go haywire & either go off at all times & absolutely everywhere, making it hard to know what it’s trying to tell you.
According to britishpainsociety.org pain is never “just in the head” or “just in the body”, but it’s a collaboration between the two. Depending on how the pain makes you feel, for example anxious, angry or depressed the pain can intensify. The reverse is also true that if you don’t feel those things & are able to stay positive, your pain can be less intense.
Depending on if you live with more or less constant pain due to different chronic illnesses, or if you only experience pain when you have an accident, your experience of the same type of pain can be very different. Pain is always a personal & subjective experience.
If you live with pain conditions your normal level is not the same as people who don’t have them. Which is why it’s very hard when a doctor asks a person with chronic illness how much pain they’re in on a scale 1-10. Their 3 might be a 10 for someone unused to pain, but that doesn’t mean that 3 affects them less physically, mentally or emotionally.
