About mind-body symptoms
Recent studies show the brains of chronic pain suffers rewire themselves when patients’ repeatedly focus attention on pain and/or the anticipation of pain. This happens through what is known as neuroplasticity, which is responsible for the brain learning new tasks or memories. It is believed this faulty rewiring causes pain to linger long after the initial injury or physical/emotional trigger for the pain has ended.
Neuroscientists such as Dr. Waschulewski-Floruss of Eberhard-Karls University of Tuebingen in Germany have found that the learning of chronic pain, and re-wiring of the brain, happens through the process of classical conditioning. The human study using MRI imaging of the brains of people with chronic pain showed this group presented with an abnormal increase of synaptic connections in the brain, particularly in the areas of the brain responsible for conscious attention, in comparison to control groups. These new unhelpful connections are believed to be formed by classical conditioning.
You may be familiar with a well-publicised traditional classical conditioning experiment conducted by Pavlov. He established a conditioned response in dogs to food. By ringing a bell each time food was presented to the dogs, over time, they began to salivate when a bell was rung without food being present. A new neural connection had been made between these two stimuli. The dogs were later able to unlearn this response by the bell being rung repeatedly without food being present. This is a simplistic example of how new neural connections are formed in the brain. Sufferers of anxiety are often triggered by events and thought patterns that the brain has learnt from past experience to treat as a threat.
To give you an insight into how the brain can create pain in the body, there is no better example than the worker who was rushed to hospital with a nail through his boot. In 1995, the British Medical Journal reported that a 29-year-old construction worker had suffered an accident: after jumping onto a plank, a 7-inch nail had pierced his boot clear through to the other side (Fisher et al, 1995). The man was in agony. When the boot was removed, what do you think the doctors found? The nail had gone between his toes! It was the visual perception of the threat of the nail going through the man’s boot that made him believe that he must have sustained severe tissue damage, at the time the experience was very real to him.
What we now know is that pain is a guesstimate: your brain’s best guess as to whether your body requires protection, and how much (Moseley & Butler, 2015). Pain is never purely biological, due exclusively to issues like tissue damage and anatomical dysfunction. It is also emotional, social and cognitive, constantly influenced by thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and memories (Bushnell et al, 2013; Gatchel et al, 2007).
Unexplained chronic pain and anxiety are learnt through our experiences and unhelpful habits and reactions. Thankfully due to this neuroplasticity of the brain, you are also able to unlearn this behaviour. This is our mission. To help hundreds of thousands of people to unlearn the habits that caused their chronic pain which remains unresolved by conventional medicine.
I'm Michael, the founder of Unlearn. I experienced chronic unrelenting pain for much of my 30's. After 6 years of daily back, neck pain and headaches, spending thousands on failed treatments and finally having experienced severe panic attacks, I turned to the mind-body approach. It was the best decision I ever made. Pain is virtually non-existent and my life has turned around when at one stage it all seemed so hopeless.
I learnt about the work of mind-body medical pioneers such as Dr John E. Sarno. Dr Sarno understood that the majority of physical pain is caused by the body’s physiology. When you are stressed, your heart races, your muscles tighten, you breathe rapidly and you sweat. These natural responses are known as the fight or flight response. These are the same responses our ancestors relied upon to avoid predators and survive in the food chain. Our modern stressful lifestyles trigger these responses far too regularly which is why stress illnesses and chronic pain have risen so sharply over recent decades. Have you ever felt a stomach ache brought on by nerves? Increased heart rate and tightness in the chest brought on by stress and anxiety? Doesn’t it, therefore, make sense that emotional pain can reside within the body and present as physical pain? Sarno named this condition Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS). Another accurate way of referring to TMS could be Too Much Stress!!
To heal my pain I combined the approach of Sarno with what I learnt through gaining treatment for anxiety, which is often closely linked with pain, alongside the benefits of regular meditation and mindfulness. This app is here to support you in your recovery and speed up your healing journey. I would be delighted if you would join us in developing our supportive community-based app. Please make use of the free educational resources and meditations in the app to unlearn your chronic pain and anxiety and meditate your way to a more peaceful pain-free life.