Learning from painful experiences: What goes on in a (your) nutshell

Pain is a very effective teacher.

When you were tiny, in the kitchen in your home, your parents will have said, “don’t touch that hot pan”.
Yet you will have touched that hot pan because you did not know what heat was when you were a toddler.

From that moment, your brain and nervous system reacted to a sensory experience and reorganised your behaviour forever.

You won’t touch a hot pan now (unless you didn’t know it was hot)

Your brain has the ability to rapidly adapt and reorganize in response to all of life’s experiences and the minor and major injuries that you will have picked up along the way.

This functional ability is known as neuroplasticity

It is an essential and continuous event that is critical for your survival and existence.

If you are reading this, it would suggest that you successfully completed a developmental process from gestation through to childhood, developing a functional and neuroplastic nervous system that allows you to thrive as an adult.
You are the sum total of all your experiences leading up to this moment. And tomorrow you will change again.

Think about everything that you see, read, hear, taste, smell or feel on a daily basis. If something is ‘new’, that knowledge, that sensory experience, that information, that ‘whatever’ did not exist before.

Discovering something new is how you learn

The process of learning is how you initiate neuroplastic change and find a better way. And by definition, if something is new, it is not what you are currently doing.

Which when you are in pain, can only be a good thing.

Understanding why it is important to get rid of your pain will help you learn how to get rid of your pain.

As a physiotherapist that enjoys exploring movement and neuroscience, I can help you get rid of your  pain and guide you back to what you love to do.

My clinic is in Blackwell (DL3 8QF) in Darlington, click on the contact form below to arrange a discovery call, to discuss how I can help you.