Pain and Your Fears

I have been treating patients with pain for decades.  Nearly every patient with chronic pain (more than six months of pain) has associated fears. Often, the fear relates to the uncertain future.  Will the pain be resolved?  Will I get worse?   Fear fuels the pain.

In the extreme, it becomes “Will I end up in a wheelchair?” I ask about and listen to these fears. I believe they are crucial in unraveling the pain cycle and moving out of the pain circuit in the nervous system. Too often, these fears relate to prior statements by the health profession. 

Sometimes, doctors and other practitioners feed these fears.  Unknowingly and insensitively, they blurt out “your back looks awful” (on an MRI scan) or “You’ll need surgery on that knee in five years”.  Many of these statements are inappropriate.  Most are inaccurate, and some are downright false.  Why does this happen?  Many “healers” don’t speak to their patients in a healing manner.  We might have to dig deeper into the selection and training processes to understand that further.

It is normal for you to have fears.  But calming down or eliminating them is a key part of my job.  Sometimes, a review of your images reveals “normal abnormalities”.  These are changes found commonly in your age group, equally present in people with symptoms!  Sometimes, an analysis of the statement shows it to be unscientific.  Doctors cannot predict the future with great accuracy.  Medicine is not prophecy!

So, let’s face our fears and understand them. Usually, they are a great exaggeration of the reality of our situation. Learning this can be a key step in recovering from pain.

David Schechter, M.D., is Board-Certified in Family and sports Medicine and specializes in Mind-Body approaches to healing pain and injuries. His website is www.mindbodymedicine.com. He has also written several books.