Fear-Tension-Pain Cycle

Have you heard of the Fear-Tension-Pain Cycle? I first learned about it during Hypnobirthing classes back in 2017 and have seen it's effects in basically every client whose healing a chronic pain pattern.

To me, chronic pain creates an expectation-of-pain, which is very very similar to fear. This expectation-of-pain triggers tension, also known as "guarding". This guarding triggers an increased likelihood of pain because the tense tissues are a bit too close together, too smushed together, and these tissues rub together creating heat/inflammation. And the fear-tension-pain cycle goes on and on...

One method I've learned to detour from this cycle is to introduce gentle (pain-free) motion in the places where there is usually pain. The technical term for this is '#neuromuscular Facilitation', but I usually just call it "fancy flopping" 🤣

After ~30 seconds of gentle, pain-free, fancy flopping the tissues that are usually expecting pain are so relaxed that they temporarily 'forget' about their expectations-of-pain. Guarding is reduced and then pain is reduced.

The bad news is that the next time pain is triggered the tissues are back to expecting more pain. The good news is that with repetition of "fancy flopping", we can soften the expectation-of-pain into a vague potential-of-pain, and then eventually to a distant-memory-of-pain. Fancy Flopping is wonderfully accumulative!

There are tons of ways to learn DIY neuromuscular therapy, some of my favorites are #feldenkrais, Traeger Method, and Alexander Technique. Check out the free videos online!

~Jared

#massage #therapy #chronicpain #selfcare #breakthecycle #feartensionpain