How might IKEA help you understand more about pain?
An overview of the problem facing you from a therapists viewpoint using our friendly Swedish furniture makers to help you out!
IKEA furniture?!
If you bought a piece of IKEA furniture and it didn't come with the instruction manual or a picture of what the finished piece looked like, how successful do you think your be in putting that piece of furniture together without any problems along the way?
My guess - you'd be very frustrated and would need some help and do whatever you could to get your hands on that manual! (And even then, it can be a nightmare😅).
Without the manual, it's gonna be pretty hard to understand where to start, which screws to use where and whether the piece of wood you are holding is the front or the back….
The manual brings clarity, understanding and a process to follow.
At the end of a few hours of work, you've got your nice new piece of furniture assembled.
Without the clarity and understanding the chances of assembling the furniture are a lot lot lower.
When it comes to pain, why don't we approach it a little more like this?
Granted, there is no manual (if only it were that easy!) for getting out of pain. But there is definitely a lot more that can be done to help you understand the problem you are facing.
Just like the IKEA furniture where you had no manual and maybe no picture to know what the finished piece should look like, when you are regularly in pain for no reason - it's really hard to know where to start to help it calm down again.
So in the spirit of all things IKEA furniture, let's get into this blog.
What about this thing called pain?
We know what pain feels like, but do we understand enough about it?
We know when it’s there and we know when it’s not there.
None of us want to have pain, and yet, many of us do.
In clinic, I hear all of the unique paths that people have taken in life that have ended up with them experiencing pain.
After listening, I almost always ask my clients:
“What do you understand about how pain is created in your body?
The answers that I get range from the genuine “I haven’t got a clue” to a wide variety of themes and explanations.
More often than not, the client will say - “no one has ever really asked me about this before”.
And in the absence of a decent understanding about the creation of pain itself, they will usually give me the reasons why they believe they are in pain, not their explanation of how pain is created.
I ask this because it helps me to understand what my client understands and believes.
The vast majority of clients do not have a very comprehensive understanding of pain and what is likely to be happening in their body. (Which is not surprising as pain is complex!)
Their understanding is a patchwork cloth of ideas that has been developed from everything that previous therapists, Dr. Google and friends or family have told them is likely to be happening.
A mish-mash of contradictory understandings and inherited ways of thinking about pain and their body.
This is far from ideal.
How can we expect to make progress with our symptoms if we do not understand a bit more about how they are created in the first place?
What do clients say?
When we strap on the goggles and dive into it, clients will usually end up saying something like:
“Pain is telling me something is wrong with me”
“Pain means I’ve injured something”
“Pain means my back has gone out again”
Most of the time this is structural based thinking. What I mean by structural based thinking is as follows:
Assuming that all pain is because of a structural change, defect with or injury to the bodies tissues.
This of course can sometimes be a part of the problem. But what about when the scans and images find nothing of note? Or there is no known mechanism of injury that the client can remember? When the therapist you see assesses you and can't find any signs of injury?
What then, is the reason that the brain decides to create pain?
Is it as the Irish say - for the craic?! ☘️(Clearly not, I just couldn't resist poking a bit of fun at myself!)
Is it some riled up demonic part of the brain that gets its kicks out of watching you suffer (clearly not - although it may feel like that!)
What then?
If you do not know why, perhaps that could be important? Without some introspection here, we are at the mercy of our default assumptions.
It is my opinion that:
We must expand our understanding of pain so that we can accurately assess the problem we are facing and build a plan to address what is necessary to make progress.
Without doing this, we will miss out on understanding what can influence our symptoms, potentially leaving important stones unturned in the work towards progress.
That doesn't mean we need to go super geek and build a deep understanding of the biology of pain, just a bit more understanding to help build some context for what you're facing.
The problem we face without some understanding about pain is that the flashlight may be shining completely in the wrong direction when searching in the dark for progress.
That often leads to “failed treatments”, more frustration and more worry for the future.
Wrapping up…
Instead of rushing to try the next shiny treatment it may be worth while gaining a bit more understanding about what pain is, what it means and how it is created.
Ask a few more questions from your therapist, search for experts or people with credible experience in helping people with pain, books that simplify the topic for you etc.
Gaining more understanding of the problem you are attempting to solve never leaves you further away from solving it.
My hope is that over the next few weeks and months, that I can help you with this via this blog.
If you found this blog useful or know someone who would benefit from reading, please share this with them.
David