So you’ve been diagnosed with chronic pain or fibromyalgia, and just when you think it couldn’t possibly get any worse, another term pops up, or is suggested as a likely possibility for you: Chronic Pain Syndrome. What is this ‘syndrome’, and what makes it different to the ‘usual’ chronic pain? In my opinion: hardly anything changes. In fact, it can also mean good news! Let me explain.
According to the definition on WebMD, chronic pain syndrome develops “when people have symptoms beyond pain alone, like depression and anxiety, which interfere with their daily lives.”
In other words, chronic pain syndrome is a case of persistent pain being accompanied by mental issues, which are induced by the pain.
But in this blog, I’m going to offer a slightly different explanation and introduce you to an alternative chronic pain syndrome treatment.
Most cases of chronic pain are due to anxiety, depression or negative emotions
The fact that you may have been diagnosed with chronic pain syndrome means that a link has been established between your pain and other mental health issues like depression and anxiety.
But in reality, the majority of chronic pain cases are also fuelled by depression and anxiety. Only, these may manifest in subtler forms which we don’t always recognize. Sometimes, anxiety is masked by rationalized fear (i.e. we think that it is only logical and ‘healthy’ to be fearful, especially with regard to our symptoms), or by other seemingly reasonable forms of anticipatory anxiety.
According to Dr Sarno’s TMS theory, all cases of unexplained chronic pain and chronic pain syndromes that last longer than 6 months are due to repressed emotions. These repressed emotions may have to do with trauma, certain life challenges and negative experiences. When we don’t recognize the full impact of these experiences, or we don’t realize how scared we really are in the face of an impending change or potential outcome, our body can manifest those emotions as real, physical pain.
And yet, more often than not, we don’t make that connection between our fears, our anxiety, and the physical pain. We think that there’s something else, maybe an injury or a condition, that is causing our pain.
To make matters worse, we develop certain ways of behaving towards the pain that increase our anxiety levels. We develop a fear of pain, and a mistrust towards our body, which is simply aggravated when conventional treatments don’t work.
And the reason why they don’t work is because we are often treating simply the symptoms, and not the root cause of pain (i.e. those repressed or semi-repressed emotions!)
Chronic Pain Syndrome as confirmation of the mindbody connection
In a person diagnosed with chronic pain syndrome, it has become evident that there are additional factors involved besides physical pain. However, we often blame the pain itself for causing the mental issues: we think that we’ve become depressed because of long-term pain.
But although chronic pain can definitely make your anxiety or depression worse, it often works the other way round: it is initially our anxiety or depression levels that have caused the pain in the first place, and that have kept it alive.
This concept is crucial to understand if you’re seeking complete recovery from chronic pain syndrome.
This is because in order to recovery, we need to address the root causes of pain, and these root causes lie within our emotional state. If we wake up feeling negative, helpless, anxious or fearful every day, then we cannot expect the pain to disappear. Our emotional state has to change first, before we can experience a decrease in pain levels.
Chronic Pain Syndrome and Pain-related fear conditioning
Another factor at play in the majority of chronic pain cases is pain-related fear conditioning. As we start to associate movements or activities with pain, we adopt avoidance behaviours as part of our defensive mechanism to avoid more pain:
”Such defensive responses are highly adaptive in the case of an acute injury allowing time for healing, but when pain persists after healing time and no longer signals bodily harm, persistent fear and avoidance behavior may lead to disability (Vlaeyen, Crombez, & Linton, 2016; Vlaeyen & Linton, 2000, 2012).”
What this means is that our own responses to pain - mainly our behaviour of avoiding movements or activities that might lead to increased pain - can actually start to work against us by conditioning us to re-experience pain whenever we do engage in these movements or activities.
In other words, our expectations that a specific movement or activity will cause pain leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a learnt process that is hard to break, because deep down we believe that we are behaving in this way for our own good!
However, research is showing that breaking these pain-avoidance habits is what will eventually lead to the elimination of pain (Science Direct). This is because when pain persists long after an injury has healed - or when there is no significant damage or injury present - we have built a false belief that movement or activity is threatening to our body. And it is that belief that has led to the Pavlovian process of conditioning (which is really a learnt response, and nothing else).
In other words, to heal from chronic pain syndrome and other chronic pain conditions, we need to lower the ‘threat level’ that we associate with various activities or movements. We need to learn how to behave and react differently to our everyday experience in order to break the cycle that we’ve unknowingly got ourselves into.
TMS & Pain Reprocessing: the best Chronic Pain Syndrome treatment?
Knowledge about TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) and Neuroplastic Pain has been at the root of thousands of successful recoveries. This is because this kind of knowledge - and its application - makes it clear to you why your pain has persisted, and how your emotions, particularly your anxiety towards pain and your fear of movement, is making it worse.
The approach consists of two components. The first involves working with other sources of anxiety and depression which are unrelated to your pain (i.e. exploring other stressors that may have led to the symptoms). In this way, you’ll gain deeper self-awareness into other significant issues that have led you to the painful situation that you’re in today.
The second component involves working on fear-avoidance and on reprocessing the way you currently interpret pain and pain-related activities. As part of this component, you’ll be working with your brain’s neuroplasticity in order to forge new connections and eliminate those conditioned associations between pain, movement or other activities.
It’s essentially a learning process whereby you replace your anxiety towards pain with safer, and more positive feelings. Typically, individuals who go all-in with the approach experience a significant decrease in pain levels or even complete recovery within a few weeks or months.
Learn more about chronic pain recovery!
If the above has sparked your interest, I encourage you to navigate to the resources section of my website to learn more about how to overcome chronic pain.
I also invite you to check out our ebook, Path to Pain Free, for a comprehensive educational tool that will help you thoroughly understand your pain - and yourself!
My dedicated Facebook Group is also the place to be for inspiration, chronic pain education and support.