Cortisol & Stress
Would you put lemon juice on a paper cut? No! Because you know it stings like crazy. ⠀
It doesn’t make the paper cut worse, but it makes it feel worse.
The Side Effects
Our nervous system responds the same way to cortisol , the hormone our bodies release during stressful situations. When our bodies are flooded with cortisol, any injury or slight discomfort that we’re currently experiencing will feel much, much more painful. ⠀
Crucially, stress is often not considered during injury rehab. So if you visit your physio for some treatment and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better, you could consider whether that’s related to your current stress levels.
At this stage it’s helpful to understand that pain is processed in our brains, not our tissues. Any time we perceive a situation as a threat, our cortisol levels raise and our brains log the information, gradually building up a library of known stressors to help us recognise and avoid future dangers. Regardless of whether these stressors are pain related or not, they all end up lumped together in the same part of our internal filing system – the one that helps us avoid future dangers. ⠀
Each time we experience a stressor, cortisol is released. If this new stressor just happens to be an injury (say you’ve stubbed your toe) then you’ll feel it much more acutely, because your body is telling you it’s falling into the same category as those other, previous threats. So our internal messaging system (that voice saying “Get me out of here!”) ultimately makes us more sensitive to pain. ⠀
It’s a survival mechanism – if we feel pain, we’re more motivated to make changes, moving ourselves away from the perceived cause of the threat. ⠀
The good news, however, is that yoga and meditation are powerful tools, helping us to develop coping strategies to aid cognitive reappraisal or confrontation of stressors, through which we may minimize cortisol secretion and prevent chronic, recurrent pain.
Practical Suggestions
Here are a few simple techniques we can use to help us change our relationship to pain and downregulate our nervous system to help us live more comfortably:
Change the way you speak to yourself about your pain. Words like “pain” are hardwired into our nervous system. Each word we use produces a mental image and these images can reinforce our sensations and play a part in the way we recognise threats. To remove the sting, give your pain a comedy name, something that makes you laugh. Apparently words with “K” in them are intrinsically funny (go figure!), but here are a couple of suggestions: “banana” “custard” or even “fartlek”.
You can also consciously refer to your sensation with a positive message. Rather than saying “I feel a shooting sensation” try turning it round to say “What I’m feeling today isn’t as soothing as I’d like”. Rather than “stabbing” you could use the word “calming”; replace “burning” with “cooling”, and so on. Changing the words you use to describe your feelings changes the images in your mind, which will help your brain to focus on comfort, ease and stability, downregulating your nervous system.
When we’re in pain, we often try to run away from it. Rather than avoiding it, try a short somatic tracking meditation. Find a comfortable position, where you can be alone and undisturbed for a few minutes. Travel into your body and locate the main sensation you have right now. Travel into it and explore it. Familiarise yourself with it. Notice whether it feels pleasant or unpleasant, widespread or localised. Be as curious about it as you can – see how much information you can gather about it, without judgement. By listening to the sensation, you are teaching your brain to be interested in this specific feeling and to experience it as safe. Breathe into the sensation and notice what happens. Everything you experience is information. See if you can cultivate pleasure in the process of tracking your experience. Take a few more breaths, following whatever you feel before carrying on with the rest of your day.
Take time to learn about how pain is processed in your brain (see the links below for a couple of places to begin). Knowledge is power, and understanding that pain is not necessarily linked to your physical tissues but is more closely related to the state of your nervous system and the level of stress you’re experiencing, can be a powerful tool in learning how to modify your relationship with sensation.
Full disclosure: I’ve been working with my own sciatica for a number of years and have recently made significant shifts in my experience by adopting these techniques. Modern pain science is making radical steps towards helping us understand what pain is, how it develops and how it’s possible to hack the brain to desensitise pain which we may experience even without tissue damage.
Enjoy exploring with these ideas and let me know how they work for you.
References:
Getting a grip on pain by Lorimer Moseley
PainScience.com
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