Pain Factors

When it comes to lower back pain (and pain in general) it’s important to understand that there are factors that can influence your pain that you may not realise.

The way you think about pain can impact your recovery. This can include having a lot of negative thoughts about your pain (or fixating on it), which then doesn’t allow you to take on new information about your condition and can hinder your progress.

Memories from traumatic events, or past episodes of pain, can heighten your response to something you believe will cause pain and may influence your behaviour & ability to move in certain ways (e.g. bending over). If you think something is going to hurt, it is more likely going to hurt. 

Your emotions such as stress, depression & anxiety can also play a role in your pain levels. It’s important to understand that these feelings can be caused by pain, but they can also feed into the pain, creating a vicious cycle which can then be hard to snap out of.

A useful tool you can use to help determine if these factors may be contributing to your pain is www.mindspot.org.au. It’s a free service that provides an assessment on the above and resources to help manage pain.

Pain is a complex topic and EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT. My main advice is to keep an open mind about what’s contributing to your pain and about the best ways to address it.

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