Why Did My Physical Pain Stop When I Felt Grief?

Written By Drew Coverdale

No Persistent Pain During Grief?

Someone described how the pattern of their persistent pain changed during a period of grief. Here is a breakdown of how I explained how to interpret the variation in pain they experienced.  

I am sorry for your loss; it is difficult for you. I'll do my best to give my interpretation of what you're experiencing. I've split my reply into sections relating to different parts of your questions to make it easier to answer.

Part One…

Client: The pain persisted during this time, but about four days later, it started to ease and completely stopped about a week later. I was wholly immersed in funeral planning, but it was very stressful. I can’t understand what the brain is doing in this situation. It was probably one of the most challenging times in my life, and I became pain-free. The GP signed me off work, which may have contributed. Do you understand what is happening?

Pain Changes Even When Structures Don’t

When pain disappears as it did for you, we know that the structures where you feel it don’t change. So if you look at them with scans or X-rays, the physical elements don't change, but the neurochemicals present bring to life feelings, and sensations in those areas change dramatically.

Especially during times of extreme stress. The changes come in two ways. First, pain initially reduces or disappears for a while, then the pain returns, and it may also be associated with other discomfort or symptoms as it returns.

Neurochemical Surges

Firstly, there is a surge of cortisol and adrenaline to deal with the circumstances in front of you. Just like being chased by a lion, the nervous system is mobilised in the presence of those chemicals and time almost stands still. So, you are focused on dealing with the present moment, and the heightened neurophysiological state means you may not ‘feel’ much at all.

Just like a soldier who loses an arm on the battlefield or someone else who loses a loved one.

Many people suffer horrific physical and emotional trauma yet feel numb to the pain of that event the moment it happens.

The adrenalin and cortisol create tunnel vision, which means you focus on getting out of or surviving the physical or emotional trauma during the moments it occurs. 

Important Priorities

Your brain and nervous system prioritise what is important at that moment and decide that worrying and being focused on neck pain or back pain is less of a priority than dealing with the grief of your loved one dying and all the dynamics happening around that.

It quickly shuts down because it follows where your focus is at the time. Funeral planning, dealing with family, focusing on the intensity of what's happening and shutting down on your feelings whilst you do it come quickly.

That much adrenaline and cortisol mean there is no pain, so at the most stressful time of your life, and at the very peak where people expect to feel pain, the body feels none at the moment the adrenaline and cortisol surge.

Payback Time

Now, the second stage involving payback comes once the body has had the time to metabolise the chase from the lion, and in your case, the human has a chance to process it.

After the survival of the chase, a zebra needs some moments to breathe and shiver to shake off the survival chemicals before returning to everyday zebra life or rest, digest, repair, and renew. 

Humans need the same period to metabolise the same chemicals. This may be five minutes, five hours, five days, or more, depending on how long the body takes to process whatever heightened traumatic state it has endured. 

The First Time For Everyone

Remember that if you have never experienced the grief from your mother’s death before, and all of us will only experience that once, it is an intense learning period. Learning to cope, process, react, and behave are new behaviours.

It doesn't matter whether you have experienced grief from pets, friends or other close family members because the child and the parental connection is like nothing else we will experience in life, and losing that connection is unique.

No matter whether the relationship was good, bad or ugly, you will find the child feels a sense of loss, as well as many other emotions based on the quality of that relationship, the moment they become aware of their parent’s death.

The neurochemicals are laying down molecules of learning through these hyper-focused mechanisms felt during highlighted states to teach the organism the characteristics of that environment.

Understanding Patterns

This means the person can understand what patterns may appear with this kind of experience so they can choose to avoid or promote similar experiences again in the future.

It works the same for fear or excitement.

In this situation, your brain wants to encode as much as possible so that you never feel distressed in these circumstances again; if possible, you want to recognise the cues for this to create opportunities to divert from it happening again.

Once this is all done, the old pathways, sensitive to the presence of stress chemicals, light up like a Christmas tree. The regulatory system, which monitors the intensity of what you are focusing on and for how long, now takes the opportunity to remind you of how hard that has just been in survival terms concerning the energy it has taken out of the organism.

No School Report

You don’t get a school report outlining how many hours you spent sitting by your loved one's bedside. Neither does it give you grades on how emotionally charged you felt whilst many of your family members ran for cover while you sat by the bedside.

The physical education teacher doesn't write on that report stating how pleased they were with the physical overload you placed on yourself then, and the biology teacher doesn't chastise you for charging your system with more toxic neurochemicals that would potentially kill a live elephant.

The report comes in the form of an overall grade, and in this case, that is pain.

No Conscious Justification

Pain which appears without physical justification makes no sense in terms of physical overload or injury alone. However, that doesn't mean the pain isn't physical or tangible in your described areas.

Neither does it mean it doesn't hurt to move those parts of the body, but as you recall, these pains came at other stressful times in your life, so rather than being quickly detached from the stress response, in those with the intuitive mechanisms to do that, they were slightly differently.

Those who push through situations, put the emotional needs of others before themselves, have a great game face, and please everyone but themselves predispose themselves to persistent pain.

They unconsciously maintain a connection between physical pain and heightened emotions because they may have never learned to express themselves emotionally in a healthy way. 

Painful Default

Their default behaviour in physical, emotional, and psychological pain is to push through. No discernment other than go through first and see what happens afterwards. Yes, this can be rewarded in adulthood, but it fails when the perfect storm appears.
After that, you have a mechanism of firing real physical pain in a particular part of your body, which is so sensitive to triggering that it only needs a slight physical movement, minor emotional surge, or situational context, and the pain eventually reappears.

It gives the inconsistent pattern of persistent pain and explains your pains.

Part Two…

Client: The pain I have had on and off for the last year at the top of my right leg has come back. I was told this is hip bursitis, now called greater trochanteric syndrome. I was told I get this pain because my glutes are very weak, and I was told I must strengthen them. When I did exercises for this, it made it worse.

Seeing Pain Differently

Unfortunately, the people who have told you this do not see the pain or your situation as I do. 

They believe in the same association you may have come to think, and if they have authority over you on medical terms, they implant their suggestion on you. That doesn't mean that you’re not intelligent enough to make up your mind, but they are telling you things about your pain when you are in pain, feeling vulnerable and wanting the fastest way out of it.

They are suggesting that you have a problem when you don’t. Yes, you have pain, but it is not due to a physical deficit within you.

You are not the problem.

Amplified Instinctual Reactions

Your instinctual reactions to pain have been amplified and habitually sensitised by your past experiences. Telling a child that a cut finger will go green and fall off will generally distress them more.

Telling them there’s a way to survive it with calm thoughts, understanding why it happened, breathing gently and expressing any emotions of that moment works perfectly, and the pain fades, even if the physical elements haven't changed.

So, with physical trauma, it takes six weeks for the tissue to heal if there was any momentary trauma to cause it, and if not, there may have been a period causing physical overload.

So it's the nervous system regulating the person's reactions throughout this period that determines whether further unconscious protection needs installing, above and beyond, what the conscious aspect of that person is initiating.

Six-Weeks Tissue Healing

After six weeks, the tissue has healed, but it takes another six weeks to condition the body to return to the life identified by the person living that life. Here is where it goes wrong for so many. We often attempt to return to high-flying, speed barrier-smashing behaviours inconsistent with the required repair, renewal and conditioning time.

So whether pain appears from physical or emotional trauma or overload, it's the same three-month window a human being requires to regain a sense of balance in their life again for what they have been through.

You are pushing through with exercises because you’re told you are too weak, which means both you and the person telling you that are misinterpreting your pain as only physical and only related to the associated findings at that moment.

They take no account of what you have been through and are neither compassionate to that person nor their nervous system.

Part Three

Client: How do I know if this is just part of my TMS/pain habit or is a physical cause and I need to strengthen my body? This confuses me.

Nothing To Strengthen

You need to strengthen nothing.

Pain is a signal to attend to yourself, and if the default behaviour you fall into is the old one of pushing through, with a physio or chiropractor cheering you on whilst you do, then you’ll find, if you are not already aware of it by now, it won’t work.

Suppose a fly desperately tried to smash through a window and got so exhausted with its failures that it had a momentary rest on the window sill. Then another fly suggests that when it has enough energy to have another go, it attempts another smash through the window; you've got two flies now whose fate is predictable.

However, if they could be shown in some way to step back from the window and their instinctual attempts to get through it, they may notice a small gap in another window above them. It takes less effort to move through that window than they could have ever thought if flies could think.

Ability To Think And Choose

The beauty we humans have is that we have been given the ability to think and choose what behaviours are the best for the context in which we find ourselves.

Suppose you can see that the pain is driven and occasionally diminished by the stressful surge of adrenaline and cortisol. Although you may have unconsciously become addicted to these drugs in the past with parental praise, social acceptance or survival and financial reward, you now have the opportunity to change those behaviours.

This is more challenging than the fly analogy, but for some people, it isn’t. So, if you can access a sense of safety through serotonergic mechanisms, you’ll be amazed at the changes possible. 

Strange Feelings

So, what does that look and feel like?

It's the feeling of having a dog come over and put its head on your lap for a stroke.

It's walking by the river with someone you love.

It’s gently caressing the head of a child you care for as they fall asleep on you.

It's laughing with your friends until you cry or watching a bee move around the petals of a plant whilst finding yourself mesmerised by it.

These are external cues that trigger that sense of safety within us. They don’t require effort, pushing hard, or doing specific tasks for reward; the others involved in those moments are simply happy for us to be present there. They don't care how we perform, how much money we bring back to them or whether we are the best at something.

Using external places, things, and people is helpful, but learning how to trigger those feelings from within is vital. It doesn't matter if you're learning this now. 

Could you Let go?

Do you want to keep your fast mechanisms of adrenalised protection and your unconscious addiction to them?

Letting them go does not mean you can never be busy, do for others, or push yourself hard, but you must commit to softening your focus on these defaults if you want to change your pain. It takes courage, for in the face of your triggers for overload and overperformance, whilst shutting yourself down in the process, is a challenge.

Letting go unlocks the energy currently tied up in the fight, flight, freeze or fawn reactions.

So, you start to practice a sense of calmness outside of those environments.

Tiny Safe Starting Steps

A few breaths, some kind words to yourself.

A break when you’d typically not anticipate one.

A movement of part of your body feels safe when you focus on the sense of safety which comes with no effort.

An awareness of your thoughts and a reflection on what may have contributed to them.

And then a conscious choice to instil that sense of loving, caring and compassionate calmness that you found elusive. 

Part Four

Client: This leg pain keeps me awake at night, which causes me anxiety/fear, etc. I still don’t understand how to work with this fear.

The recipe for helping with this is outlined in the last paragraph. You describe the leg pain as causing anxiety and fear, but what is happening, in reality, is that it is the anxiety and fear which is causing the pain.

It should be more apparent to you now to see why this is so.

It is your responsibility, and I’ll help you if you feel I can, to instil these new and strange behaviours of safety that seem so odd to a nervous system wired for so long into survival mode.

Reversing that mode is possible and comes with boundary setting in many places.

The First Boundary Is With You

The first boundary to establish is one with yourself in creating a routine explicitly and consciously focused on calmness through thought, breath, movement and emotion. Once that’s established, it is much easier to apply in the setting of your life when more challenge appears. 

And if you then expose yourself to the usual ups and downs of life, with these calm foundations, you no longer become a puppet to other people’s and your own emotions and start to see your true authentic self emerge.

It's a lovely journey, and I wish you well if you take those first steps.

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

Drew Coverdale
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