How Unwanted Thoughts Drive the Experience of Pain

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Holding your hand over a hot burner triggers an immediate threat response and prompts action to address that threat. The sequence is part of the protective pain response known as the nociceptive pain system.

Numerous cues of danger activate the same response. As your nervous system memorizes dangerous situations, it guides you to avoid the threats. The goal of the nociceptive system is to reduce pain, and it quickly becomes an automatic mechanism. How often must you get close to a hot stove before learning to avoid it?

Some of the most intense pain arises from obstructions in internal organs. Kidney stones, gall stones, blocked coronary arteries, and bowel obstructions produce some of the worst pains imaginable. The pains indicate that you have exceeded the structural limits of your tissue or organ system.

Unpleasant, threatening thoughts also send danger signals through your nervous system and are processed similarly to threatening physical stimuli. However, options for coping with them¹ are limited. Strategies include using substances to make the pain they generate more bearable; suppressing thoughts, feelings, and emotions; and developing mental rigidity as a protective barrier.² Our responses and mechanisms may be effective for a time, but the relentless onslaught wears you down.

Your goal in addressing physical pain is to distance yourself from the source of discomfort. You wouldn’t keep your hand over a hot burner. It makes no sense to undergo counseling suggesting that the heat isn't so bad, or to prescribe medications to dull the pain, or to promote self-medication with alcohol or opioids, or to advise you to toughen up and stop complaining, or to immerse yourself in addictions or obsessive activities to distract you from the pain. Positive thinking is another method of suppressing pain, but it isn’t effective. None of these strategies makes any sense if your hand is still close to a hot burner. Yet that is often exactly how we manage mental pain.

We have little to no conscious control over repetitive unwanted thoughts (RUTs), or rumination. There is no escape from them. RUTs are driven by the physiology of threat, and RUTs stimulate physiology. In this state, neurotransmitters shift from calming acetylcholine to excitatory glutamate. Immune response cells within the brain, the microglia, lead to inflammation. Among other effects, the speed of nerve conduction doubles. Pain increases.

Your nervous system is hyper-reactive, and it takes less stress to trigger unpleasant danger signals. This is a bidirectional problem.

What can you do?

Turn down the heat!

How do you turn down the heat? Calm your nervous system and then redirect your attention. While this isn't difficult, it's impossible without learning the necessary skills.

The focus should be on gaining expertise in such skills rather than dwelling on pain. The concepts and strategies are accessible. A growing number of practitioners present these concepts. A key factor in healing is taking full responsibility for your pain, and learning the healing principles. You can create your own toolkit to move your body from the physiology of threat to the physiology of safety, which underlies healing, calm, and connection.

Dynamic Healing

I refer to such an approach as “dynamic healing.” You learn to manage adversity, more quickly, reducing its impact on your body, and to foster joy, developing new brain circuits. They are distinct, yet interconnected skill sets. The term "dynamic" is important because there isn't a fixed point at which pain permanently resolves. Some days will be great, while others may feel overwhelming, where you’ll enter a state of stress physiology regardless of your skills. You don’t have to stay in that state.

How long does it take to escape pain? That is the wrong question. Rather, how willing am I to commit to a long-term daily practice? How long does it take to become a professional athlete or musician?

Staying alive involves navigating threats every second. The complexity of threats is infinite. All you can do is navigate your day with the skills you possess. Being free from pain or adversity is not a human possibility. Yet somehow, we intuitively feel that we shouldn’t experience pain. Pain only worsens when you get angry about facing adversity – especially with RUTs. Getting angry turns up the heat.

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Consider the consequences of lacking the tools to reduce the heat generated by RUTs and other threats. Your hand is truly stuck over the stove. This is one reason pain intensifies over time even without additional trauma. It's not that you've undergone more structural damage—you are wearing down.

The dynamic healing model I apply addresses:

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• Input: circumstances
• The nervous system
• Output: physiology.

These three portals are continually engaged to reduce exposure to threat physiology and enhance safety. At a specific tipping point, when immersed in abundant safety physiology, the body regenerates and heals. This is truly miraculous; life itself, including the ability to heal, is a miracle. The potential reaches far beyond any self-help methods.

You can lower the heat.