Pain, A Match For Us All?

Written By Drew Coverdale

Small Event Big reaction

Here’s is an illustration of how one small event can trigger a considerable reaction. For example, seventy thousand fans watch a football match in a stadium. The game has ended in a draw after ninety minutes of normal time and another half hour of extra time, so they are playing out a penalty shootout.

The winner takes all.

Watch what happens after the following penalty. Pain or pleasure?

Ten thousand fans scream and jump around uncontrollably; sixty thousand respond differently.

What Does This Have To Do With Pain?

Well, pain works in a very similar way, but read on with this analogy, and it may make a little more sense.

This video illustrates a pleasure response, whereby there is a trigger for a cascade of automatic physiological reactions through learning and instinct.

The fans are reacting with an expression of how they feel in the moment.

Those who have had similar past experiences will have certainly anticipated the potential joy from the win because they’d felt it before.

The emotional intensity experienced previously makes it very easy for the brain to encode the cues related to joy and how to react should the same situation appear in life again.

If those cues appear, the brain and body start to prepare for it, and the sensation of joy feels as if it is within touching distance.

The party starts when the switch flips, the threshold is reached, or the ducks line up.

One-Trial Learning

Those people experiencing this for the first time, and my son is one of them, are likely to remember it forever.

Some experiences do not need repeating to remember forever.

Harrowing and pleasurable experiences are encoded similarly in the brain to be able to avoid or repeat them quickly.

Events like this only need to happen once, and this is an example of one of them. In neuroscientific terms, it is called ‘one-trial learning’.

The intensity of the emotional charge present with the behaviour dictates how easy the behaviour will be to recall and recreate in the future.

Some events need repeating for learning to occur, but there’s usually a lower emotional charge inherent for repetition to be required.

Too Much Fight, Flight, Freeze or Fawn

So persistent pain can develop through a single highly intense emotional event or repeated events with lower emotional feelings, all based on the fight, flight, freeze or fawn reactions.

That neural circuitry and its output become linked to many cues which are now invisible to the person who experiences that pain.

The conscious or unconscious triggers appear, and the cascade of physiological responses defining the pain experience plays out. Unfortunately, rather than the uncontrollable pleasure in the video, it's one of seemingly intractable pain.

Many subsequent conscious and unconscious pain reactions, such as beliefs, behaviours, thoughts, and emotions, ironically become the invisible drivers for the pain itself.

What To Do When Stuck?

So what can be done about this when people believe they are stuck?

Remember, most of our learning is unconscious with pain, so if we’ve ended up in persistent pain, it's never our fault, and it can be reversed.

Change comes in many forms and can be channelled through beliefs, behaviours, emotions and thoughts, but changes are possible.

You only have to realise that sixty thousand fans in the stadium respond differently in that moment of your reaction. They recognise an instinctual urge, but they've learned to deal with that stimulus in specific ways and now choose a different response.

It may have taken them practice, and they may have had to observe and copy others, but it is possible because we see it in reality.

They have different beliefs that dictate the reaction to a stimulus should it appear and that controls what power it has over them.

Two Groups With Different Reactions

So in one group, we have ten thousand fans going crazy following a stimulus based on their beliefs. They demonstrate automatic, emotionally charged behaviours based on those beliefs that are pretty much unconscious. Arms and legs wave around randomly whilst jumping, screaming with delight and hugging others.

The other sixty thousand fans did the opposite, yet the stimulus was the same for all seventy thousand people.

Imagine this was a pain response to a stimulus, and the fans represented the body's cells.

Once the trigger is recognised, then the anticipation appears that could represent pain. The brain and body are primed based on past experiences and instinctual awareness.

But the chosen output is entirely dependent on partially conscious but mostly unconscious beliefs, behaviours, thoughts and emotions.

Those in the ten thousand celebrating fans could have chosen to stand still in the moment of victory if they wanted to and could consciously control the compulsion not to.

That, however, isn't easy, and in this context of celebration, there’s no reason not to and no problem with joining in with a pleasurable event.

Pain Is A Challenge

But with a painful episode, that’s the challenge we face.

For someone in persistent pain who, rather than having nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine fans around them celebrating pleasure, it can feel like they have nine hundred and ninety-nine fans screaming at them to join in with the pain.

It doesn't seem possible to that person that they could not just go with the flow. But, amongst the crowd of the other fans, they can’t see the sixty thousand other people standing silently and not reacting the same.

But even though they cannot see it, it doesn't mean that it is impossible.

Tricky Unconscious Amygdala Reflex

What complicates the situation a little more is that many and most of the reactions are unconscious. Controlled by the flip of a switch in our amygdala, which has a reflex that, once triggered, sets off a plethora of physiological reactions creating a painful experience.

The cascade of sensations creates noise, like the celebrating fans, which is hard to ignore.

Knowing that you can use your mind, body and breathing to control the reactions after being triggered and preferably before at least provides the opportunity to consider learning how.

Impossible Is Possible

Then it appears possible that you could stand amongst those free from persistent pain. Yes, you can still experience instinctual pain responses, but no longer be an unconscious pawn dragged into a reality of constant ongoing pain, which feels beyond your control.

It can sometimes feel like an unwinnable game, and to be honest, when I started watching this match, I thought it was. But I stayed until the end, and so did my son. We both experienced a moment in time and change that connected us forever.

Your moment of change may not be far away, but you've got to enjoy the tension that appears throughout. You must stay calm when you feel like giving in and hang on until the end to experience the result.

What’s next?
Take Your First Step to Recovery.

Drew Coverdale
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