Everything that's wrong with the Chronic Pain 'Warrior' Mentality - and why knowing about neuroplastic pain will make all the difference
The other day I came across one of those viral social media posts: a person with chronic illness emphasizing the harsh predicament of living with debilitating symptoms, and referring to people like her as ‘warriors’. The same post stated that chronic illness is a life sentence, and focused on the advantages of living with chronic illness; namely, that you start to appreciate what’s really important in life.
But I couldn’t help feel the usual sinking feeling as I read it. That’s not because I don’t agree that chronic symptoms can teach us some very important lessons, but because the post implied that the symptoms are there to stay and almost advocated ‘living with chronic illness’ as a lifestyle that one has to permanently adopt. That, we now know, is misinformation, which is impacting hundreds of other people negatively. And I’m going to explain why in this post.
Chronic pain and symptoms can be healed - but not if you assume them as part of your identity.
The post I’m referring to did have a good point - chronic illness does make you appreciate what really matters: connections, relationships, and maybe the simple joys in life that many people take for granted. However, where the author went wrong was that it strongly implied that there is no way out. In reality, we can choose to learn important lessons from our symptoms - and go on to reclaim our health.
Neuroscience has now proven that the information that we feed to our brains can literally shape our physical reality - and therefore impact our health. If we identify with a condition, and repeatedly tell ourselves that it is ‘ours’, then this is the only message that the brain will ever get, and it will do everything to confirm it due to a process known as predictive coding [1]. If we don’t allow ourselves to believe that we can get better, then the chances of getting better are slim. Conversely, if we entertain the possibility of getting better, we can unleash our inner healing powers. This has been shown repeatedly via the Placebo effect:
People who are given a medication and told that it will work to heal their symptoms have a greater chance of experiencing relief than those who are administered the same medication and warned that it might not work. This proves the incredible power of our brain - when it is allowed to entertain a positive possibility, it is more likely to initiate a healing process.
The opposite is also true; people who are given medication and warned about nasty side effects have way higher chances of experiencing those side effects than those who are not aware of them. This is called the Nocebo Effect [2] [3].
Unfortunately, posts like the one I mentioned perpetuate the Nocebo effect to a much more detrimental degree than any side effect mentioned on a medical leaflet. Being told that you have an illness for which there is no cure trains you to keep expecting and fearing symptoms. Identifying with these symptoms embeds them even deeper into your reality.
Knowing about Neuroplastic Symptoms will Make ALL the difference
The reason why the concept of ‘living’ with chronic symptoms is so all-over the place is due to several reasons. One of them is that Western medicine is not qualified at dealing with neuroplastic issues. Neuroplastic (or physchophysiologic) symptoms actually encompass the majority of chronic symptoms that individuals suffer from today: from the more common back pains to conditions like fibromyalgia, POTS, CFS and all those scary medical diagnoses that are given without being accompanied by any solution, much like a life sentence.
This is why so many individuals give up on making a full recovery, and I don’t blame them. Google any of the above diagnoses, and you’ll immediately be told that ‘there is no known cure’. And so you believe it. However, in reality, there are hundreds of individuals who have healed - and all because they realized that there was more to their symptoms than just a malfunctioning body.
In actual fact, chronic symptoms are a result of a more complex process. They are due to a pattern based on a myriad of factors: memories, expectations (i.e. the Nocebo effect), fears and trauma being the main ones. When injury, viral or bacterial infections are not present, symptoms are very likely neuroplastic - which means that they are being reproduced by the brain due to the way that it registers our internal and external environment.
A traumatized or chronically stressed individual is more likely to perceive the world as a threatening place. For this reason, if we are living in fear of rejection, failure of any kind, or illness, our body is constantly firing stress chemicals. These chemicals, among other factors, lead to chronic inflammation, pain and other symptoms. This is basic biology - and yet, many individuals with chronic symptoms are not made aware of it. Instead, they are encouraged to ‘live’ with chronic pain, to see the good sides of it and push through. They are encouraged to become ‘chronic illness warriors’, which actually creates more stress chemicals (because if we decide to push through or fight anything, we automatically activate the fight or flight mechanism), and enshrines illness even more into their identities.
Now here’s the thing: our Ego doesn’t like to let go of an identity. Even if that identity involves pain and suffering. And this is what I’m getting at. This is why these labels and identifications are so harmful. Because for as long as you identify as a person who has to live with chronic illness, you’re reducing your chances of getting better. An unconscious part of you prioritizes holding on to this identity more than it prioritizes being symptom free (this won’t make sense to your conscious brain, and you may automatically try to reject it - but hang on a bit). This unconscious part (which you have no control over, as yet) will latch on to all the misinformation that confirms that your symptoms are incurable, selectively ignoring other facts and possibilities.
Symptoms are messengers, not the original ‘cause’ of your distress!
Knowing how neuroplastic symptoms originate and why they persist can totally change the way you understand and perceive your symptoms - no matter what they are. Because emotional distress is at the heart of these symptoms, the question you start asking changes from “What’s wrong with my body?” to “What could by body be trying to tell me?”
In this way, you stop fighting symptoms. Healing is not a fight, but a process of understanding and relating to yourself, and to your body, differently. Healing involves taking your power back, which means that you need to stop identifying with an incurable condition and allow your brain to envision a different scenario. This in itself, will trigger the brain and body’s natural healing capabilities.
Start your journey to symptom-free
My MindBody Healing Exploration course will help you identify what’s really driving your chronic symptoms, and get you introduced to the most effective tools and concepts.
And, in the process, you’ll start to uncover some truths. You’ll realize how your behaviours, and your own personality, may be keeping you stuck in fight or flight physiology (which is a state of chronic stress). You’ll get insights into why your symptoms may have come up in the first place. And that gives you your power back.
In was the case with me and thousands of others. I’ve overcome dozens of symptoms in my life, including fibromyalgia, neuropathic pain, sciatica, piriformis symptoms, and even insomnia and a couple of autoimmune issues. Despite the apparent dissimilarity between these issues, the approach I took was more or less the same: I looked inward, stopped fighting symptoms, and prioritized my needs and values. Most importantly, I stopped buying into the fear and into the culture of glorifying suffering and promoting helplessness.
Yes, you can recover from most chronic symptoms. But you need to stop fighting or blaming your body!
So if you are new to the concept of neuroplastic symptoms (previously known as TMS - Tension Myoneural Syndrome, or the MindBody Syndrome), take some time to learn about it first, before you condemn yourself to a limited life that has to be spent suffering from or managing symptoms.
Leave any groups that promote a victim or ‘warrior’ mentality, and where people are using illness and desperation as a means to gain connection. Harsh as it sounds, disseminating your pain story over the internet or venting about suffering will not help you recover. It might get you some sympathetic comments, and you might feel more understood - but it will ultimately perpetuate the idea that you are a helpless victim.
What will help is to take your power back. To stop blaming destiny, genetics or your own body’s ‘weaknesses’, and listen to your body instead. If you were born without these symptoms, you can also reverse them. It all starts by being open to the possibility, open enough to actually learn what Science is now proving: that the majority of chronic conditions have a mindbody component, and that they can be reversed thanks to the power of neuroplasticity.
References
[1] Jorge Castejón, Feifan Chen, Anusha Yasoda-Mohan, Colum Ó Sé, Sven Vanneste, Chronic pain – A maladaptive compensation to unbalanced hierarchical predictive processing. NeuroImage, Vol. 297, 2024, 120711,(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811924002052)
[2] Yiqi Pan, Timm Kinitz, Marin Stapic, Yvonne, Nestoriuc, Minimizing Drug Adverse Events by Informing About the Nocebo Effect—An Experimental Study, Psychiatry, 25 July 2019. Vol. 10 - 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00504
[3] Blasini M, Corsi N, Klinger R, Colloca L. Nocebo and pain: An overview of the psychoneurobiological mechanisms. Pain Rep. 2017 Mar-Apr;2(2):e585. doi: 10.1097/PR9.0000000000000585. PMID: 28971165; PMCID: PMC5621640.