I know I’ve said that your body is not a car. And it’s not. Your pain is more complex than replacing or fixing your parts. Uour pain is unique and multifaceted, the combination of factors that impact you, treatments, therapies, or tools is also going to be multifaceted and unique to you.

But today I’m talking about something a little different. I love thinking of the pain alarm system as similar to a car alarm.

It really is such a perfect analogy. Evolution naturally built and provided this alarm system to keep you out of danger. Your brain is at the center of this alarm system and goes off when it thinks (THINKS) something is wrong or that you are potentially in danger. In a system that is working well, you get a warning that something is wrong.

Alarms can be faulty though, am I right? They can misfire. Our internal mechanisms are the same.

What factors influence our alarm system’s perception of danger?

Stress.

Anxiety.

Fear.

Depression.

Poor sleep.

Overactivity.

Underactivity.

Poor nutrition.

Those are some examples. And right after they increase our alarm system’s perception of danger, they move straight toward increasing sensitivity in your body and resulting in a greater protective experience of pain.

Consider this analogy:

Your chronic pain is like a car alarm.

The intention of a car alarm is to go off to alert you that someone is trying to enter and, perhaps, eventually steal your car. We all know, however, that sometimes car alarms can be really sensitive - going off when a large truck passes by or when its gently bumped. And then other car alarms hardly go off at all. Either way, if the alarm goes off accidentally without any sign of danger, we’d consider it a false alarm. When a car has a sensitive alarm system, it sends out more false alarms.

Similar to a car, we know that there are some people with more sensitive alarm systems. The alarm systems in those people produce more false alarms (C.T. Chambers, personal communication, 2013).

When you learn about and understand the number of factors that can change the sensitivity of your body’s alarm system, then you can better understand how to calibrate that alarm system, setting it up for healing. Just because your alarm system may be sensitive, doesn’t mean that you can’t recalibrate it.

Education provides the power to take the next step in managing your pain. You want to do the things you enjoy (or even basic daily activities) without flaring up your pain. For a limited time, you can grab my free video tutorial to get you started:

3 Simple Steps to a Balanced Day... Without the Flare-Ups.

This free video tutorial is dedicated to helping women with pain begin to find confidence to return to the moments, activities, and people they love the most.