Vacation Pain

I had an amazing experience the other night that reminded me that pain is definitely biopsychosocial: that my biology, my mind, and my relationship to those around me has a huge effect on my perception of pain.   I was on vacation with my family and was just falling asleep, after a very relaxing day, when there was a noise outside our hotel and a knock on our door.   We were far away from home and not expecting anyone.  My internal alarms went off full blast!  As my muscles stiffened up to get ready to fight or flee, my neck began to hurt. As my mind went to the worst-case scenario about who may be on the other side of the door and what they may want, my neck started hurting worse.  As I worried about my family in the other room and how I would try to protect them and started to dwell on the fact that any other of my support network was far away, my neck hurt even worse.

Now, I can say this experience was amazing because I quickly learned that the knock was from a well-intentioned maintenance person just trying to fix a problem in the next room. I was able to go into curiosity mode and explore what was going on with this pain.  I was quickly able to tell myself that we were in no danger.  I lay back down and did a muscle relaxation exercise; the neck pain decreased SOME.  My mind was still racing, still thinking about all the terrible things that could possibly happen if I don’t keep the alarms sounding.  I settled into a mindful meditation; the neck pain decreased even more but was still there.  Not until we were home the next day, in my comfortable and familiar surroundings, did the pain go completely away.  Wow! Bio-psycho-social.  I know most chronic pain is not that easy to unwind and those alarm wires can be quite tangled and maybe frayed in many locations, but every little awareness moves the process of healing along.