Pain & the Brain!
Did you know our brain can turn pain up or down!
It’s true - and it’s absolutely not because pain is imaginary or ‘all in your head’. Pain is a very real experience. It’s created by our nervous system from lots of information, including signals from the body about things like injuries and illnesses, it gets information about what we pay attention to and info from our previous experience, our emotions (emotional pain is also very real). Pain is influenced as a result of context and our expectations too.
One of the most amazing things about our brain is the placebo and nocebo effect. What this means is if our brain expects something will help the pain subside it actually will. The reverse of that is if our expectation is something will make it worse, it can sometimes increase our pain.
Researchers can see associated changes in brain systems involved in pain modulation, attention and expectation, so this really isn’t an ‘it’s all in the mind’ suggestion or just someone's subjective experience of pain levels.
It’s a lovely reminder that our brains don’t just passively report what is happening in the body, our brains interpret the incoming information,
It’s so important to say that we're not suggesting we can just ‘think pain away’. You’ll find us hypnotherapists to be compassionate listeners who believe your pain experience. Pain is far more complicated than ‘it’s all in the mind’.
However ,it shows us just how powerful context, learning and expectation can be in shaping our pain experience.
If you’re in pain, talk with your doctor first, then feel free to get in touch.
A little brain hack
Next time you accidentally hurt a finger try crossing your arms straightaway.
Yes, it sounds weird however the fabulous Neuroscientists at University College London found that crossing your arms over the centre of your body actually significantly reduces how much brief pain hurts us.
Think of it as a glitch in our body’s GPS. Our magnificent brain’s mapping system has one ‘route’ for our hand and another mapping route for the space we’re in (maybe we burn our left forefinger on a hot plate, first map, and we’re standing in the kitchen, by the oven, second map info)
Now usually these ‘maps’ work very well together - except for this glitch: when we cross our arms, our left hand is now in the ‘map’ belonging to the ‘right-hand space’. This is a ‘spatial mismatch’ and our brain has a little glitch as it tries to work out where our hand is, so it can’t process the pain signal at full strength.
Our brain has distracted itself from the pain by this little confusion.
Now, I’m not saying our distraction hypnosis techniques that we teach people who are living with chronic pain work in the same way, this post is just to highlight some fun brain facts.
If you do have chronic pain issues, please do get in touch, we’re happy to explain our evidence led self-hypnosis techniques.
NB:
This brain ‘glitch’ only works for your hands and forearms (since they are the parts crossing your body's midline).
The pain relief is modest, but every little bit helps when you're hurting!
Check out the link below for an interesting look in how the brain can misinterpret a pain signal
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