Some simple truths about pain​

• All pain is real.
• The better we understand pain, the better equipped we are to manage it and change it.
• Pain is an unpleasant physical and emotional biopsychosocial experience with biological, psychological, and social contributors - not just a number on the pain scale or a physical sensation.
• Pain is meant to protect us.
• The brain determines and modulates the pain experience, not just the body part where the pain is felt.​
• Sometimes, we can be in pain even when there is no actual threat to the body. Likewise, it's possible to have signs of injury but no pain. We aren't our x-ray. ​
• There is a difference between short-term acute pain and long-term chronic pain.
• Acute pain is the body's normal response to tissue damage or injury. It is a symptom. The pain matches the damage, and treatment works - generally lasting less than three months. 
• Chronic pain is an abnormal response that can become its own condition and can occur long after an injury or illness heals. ​​
• The longer we have pain, the less likely it is related to tissue damage or injury, and more about an overprotective nervous system as we become over-sensitized to pain. 
  
• The longer we have pain, the better our bodies can learn it and create it - turning up the pain volume. 
• Hurt doesn't always mean harm. Just because a person hurts doesn't mean structural or tissue damage is happening in their body or causing the pain.
• What we think and feel about pain and how we behave in relation to pain affects the pain experience.
• Constant focus on the pain – including dwelling on the cause of the pain, the sensations, the intensity, what the pain means, and when the next flare might happen – can be unhelpful and factor in both the development and maintenance of chronic pain.
• Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Pain is what we feel - it happens to us. Suffering is what we do with pain - we have a choice.
• There is no single magical cure for chronic pain.
• Expectations need to change from being pain-free to living well despite pain. It's essential to accept, adjust, and adapt to the pain.​ Focusing solely on pain reduction, especially elimination, can make it difficult to recover.
• Just treating the pain or a specific body part is not enough. We need to treat the whole person, body and mind, involving an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approach.
• Pain can be modified and controlled by retraining an overprotective nervous system.​
• People living with pain can change the pain experience by taking active responsibility to self-manage the pain with support from healthcare professionals.
• Just as we can learn pain, we can unlearn pain. 
• Recovery is possible. The pain experience can change, even go away. If it doesn't, we can live well despite the pain.

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