The Cycle of Chronic Back Pain

A 'triggering event' leads to an initial experience of back pain. For most people this pain resolves itself within a few days to a few weeks, regardless of what they do. However, for others it continues. This is called chronic back pain. When back pain does not quickly resolve, negative thoughts start to emerge, thoughts like, I'm damaged, I won't/can't do the things that I enjoy, I'll never get better, or This must be serious!

They may then decide that it would be best to "protect" themselves from further "damage" by restricting activities, an approach that works well for injuries such as broken bones and damaged soft tissue but not so well for muscular back pain. So, they stop exercising and doing other things that they enjoy.

However, because an estimated 99.5% of back pain is due to muscular tightness arising from three primary contributing factors, the pain continues to worsen due to the increasing stress from the thoughts along with a drop in activity, leading to more muscle tightness and more pain, further reinforcing the belief that something is damaged because the pain they are experiencing is increasing.

The increase in pain then leads to negative emotions such as sadness, discouragement, and frustration, with these emotions becoming an additional stressor, leading to more muscle tightness - and more pain! The cycle continues, with more negative thoughts, more self-imposed restrictions, plummeting emotional outlook, more pain, and on and on.

This is how something seemingly simple such as bending over to pick up a sock (you've all heard these stories - "I bent over to pick up a sock, and my back went out!"), can eventually lead to chronic back pain.

It's important to understand how the Cycle of Pain evolves and to understand whether you may be caught in this cycle. It's a tough, dark place, one that can be difficult to climb out of without knowledge of what is going on and how to redirect out of this pattern.

It's also critical to note that being caught in a Cycle of Pain is a choice. The other option is move to a Cycle of Recovery.