Stop Looking For Convenient Excuses for Your Pain
Mar 11, 2021
We tend to look for very convenient excuses for our pain.
"My knee hurts today, but it is probably because I was wearing heels all day yesterday."
"My back hurts, but I must have just slept weird."
"My shoulder hurts but it is because my doctor told me I had a torn rotator cuff 20 years ago."
Rarely are we able to determine the actual cause of our pain. However, people tend to blame the most recent activity prior to feeling pain.
If your arm hurts after throwing a baseball, was it the throw that "hurt" your arm or was the throw just the final straw?
If your back hurts after deadlifting, was it the deadlift that "hurt" your back, or were there other reasons that lead to that deadlift putting excessive stress on your back.
If we start to look for convenient answers for our pain, we are planting a seed in our brain that we need to be cautious the next time we try that particular activity. We fall victim to a "fear-avoidance" pattern, where we are afraid to perform an activity for fear that it will lead to injury.
It also potentially prevents us from seeking help in trying to address our pain.
Typically, injury is more than just bad luck. It tends to arise from the accumulation of stresses your put through your body over a long period of time. Then, depending on your activity level, there comes an instance where your body can no longer overcome the accumulation of stresses and a tissue fails.
Not all pain necessitates a trip to the physical therapist. Often times it is transient and goes away very easily with non-specific movement.
However, if you have chronic, recurring pain, and you continuously conveniently blame an old injury or an arbitrary webMD diagnosis, you run the risk of allowing a small, relative easy to address limitation become a larger problem.
Want to learn more about what your symptoms could potentially mean? Comment below or contact me directly at [email protected].