You keep hearing people talk about nervous system sensitivity, but what does that actually mean? We will dive into that today because I know you want to find out the real root of your pain so that you can break free.

Are you tired of struggling with a multitude of unexplained (or maybe even explained) symptoms all over your body? I’m talking pain in one or multiple areas, spreading, irritable bowel issues, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and the list goes on. Symptoms develop as a result of a combination of many factors that are unique to the individual experiencing them.

Maybe for you, you started having physical symptoms after an injury and they just haven’t gone away. Maybe you dove head first into all of the things: physical therapy, medication, procedures, acupuncture, psychotherapy, yoga, and nothing ever seemed to be the fix you were looking for.

Maybe there’s a sprinkle of personality traits in there too.

I know a lot of women who are really hard on themselves. That no matter how hard they work, perform, or achieve, that it never seems to be enough. Perhaps this begins to approach perfectionist territory. People pleasing runs rampant here.

I also know a lot of women who would say that they’ve always been an anxious person, they tend to worry a lot about a lot of things. Maybe they’d go so far as to say that they’ve felt unsafe.

Some described feeling unloved.

Rage is something that comes up sometimes too - whether that is rage and anger that you saw come out as an explosion in your early family life, or never expressed at all (but clearly there).

I’ve often seen people with chronic pain suffering in other areas in their life as well. For example, maybe money is a major concern and a cause of constant stress. Perhaps family dynamics are a chronic source of worry and discomfort. Maybe your roles, as a parent, partner, employee, are extremely demanding and challenging, stretching you beyond your perceived ability to cope.

Past stressors and adverse experiences can prime the body for something like chronic symptoms, including pain. These adverse experiences include (but are not limited to) past physical traumas, accidents, health conditions, health/medical experiences, traumas within the medical system. It can also include emotional trauma, difficult family dynamics in childhood, unresolved painful memories, periods of social isolation and rejection, and discrimination.

The nervous system can only be turned on for so long, before the body experiences burnout, and this is when we can see chronic symptoms such as pain start to take center stage.

How do all of these factors and experiences impact pain?

The brain and the body communicate when stressed. Blood flow moves away from the frontal lobes of the brain which are in charge of conscious thinking, toward the limbic system which is responsible for emotions, reacting, fight or flight. Your body gets the signal that it needs to be in fight or flight mode and here’s what happens:

Physical symptoms are set off because muscles, blood flow, heart, GI system, urinary system, so many areas of the body received this signal. Physiological changes can be seen anywhere in the body and you might have experiences such as increased heart rate, headaches, migraines, IBS, bladder issues, pain (anywhere), numbness, tingling, burning, and so much more.

Emotional symptoms are also set off, including fear and worry.

When all of this is activated, the area of your brain that helps to decrease pain turns OFF. It isn’t really working. Your body is too busy in fight or flight mode.

As this cycle repeats itself, your brain and nervous system can learn to feel these sensations. When symptoms are repeated, they can transition to something we call a “learned response” - something the brain has learned to do easily and habitually, because of repeated activation in the brain and the body. This means that your brain and central nervous system become wired in a way that the body is experiencing pain that is continuous and persistent, even when there is no longer (or maybe never was) structural or tissue damage.

This response, the more it is repeated, becomes stronger and stronger and symptoms are triggered more easily. Eventually, it doesn’t take much to set off pain.

An approach to recalibrating your sensitive nervous system may look and feel different from previous approaches or ideologies you’ve tried for your chronic pain. For example, when we are working on recalibrating the nervous system, we are talking about actually reducing or eliminating certain symptoms… not just accepting or managing them. Instead of learning to live with your pain and sensitivity, recalibrating the nervous system means helping your brain reinterpret signals as safe. Instead of just finding tools to help you cope, working with your nervous system will give you tools to prevent - to reduce flare-ups happening at all, or at least lessening the intensity.

Most people ask me for “tools” and “skills”, which I have and do share. But the first step is understanding this process and how it works. Only THEN can you benefit from tools that deactivate the fight or flight response, reset your nervous system, and create the new neural pathways needed to overcome or reduce pain completely. To learn more, head over to my free Facebook group where I provide a ton of resources and weekly live trainings.

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