National Pain Week 21-27 July 2025 Day 2

Soothing the Over-Protective Pain System

 

Sometimes it is like someone has taken the volume knob and turned it up on our pain experience so that it is much worse than it should be. How can we turn the volume back down? Some of these links may give you some clues.

 

Is My Pain System Overprotective? | MoreGoodDays Pain-management Program

MoreGoodDays has some paid content, but its unpaid content is really extensive and very reliable, from world-leading researchers and clinicians. This is a good overview of the protective pain system.  

 

Understanding your pain — Tame the Beast

TameTheBeast is from Lorimer Mosely’s group in Adelaide. They have some really good and straight-forward tips on understanding and soothing the pain system.

 

Neuroplasticity - Pain Management - painHEALTH

This one helps to understand the way the nervous system learns and changes, and how that can be helpful or unhelpful. Also, how we can get it to change in the ways we want it to.

 

How to breathe | Belisa Vranich | TEDxManhattanBeach

Breathing is a classic way to soothe our systems, practiced by cultures all over the world for millenia. Here is a video about it.

 

Visible - Activity tracking for illness, not fitness.

This is helpful to know if you’re doing too much or too little, what kinds of activities help, and giving you control over how you live your life.

 

Relaxation and mindfulness - Live Well with Pain

How does relaxation help pain? How can I relax? This is a useful page for these questions.