Why Stress Matters

Stress is a normal part of life. Although most people are very familiar with stress, they may not realize that pain can be a MAJOR source of stress, and stress can have a MAJOR impact on pain! That makes it really important to pay attention to stress, and learn how to cope with stress as you are managing your pain.

What is stress?

We can think of stress as your mind and body’s reaction to life’s challenges. You can have stress because of your physical health - like being in pain, or having cancer. You can have stress from your environment - like being stuck in traffic. You can have stress from relationships – like fighting with a friend. You can have stress from your own thoughts and emotions – like being worried about your finances, feeling frustrated or angry.

How does the body respond to stress?

In the face of stress, it’s common to feel on edge, to have muscle tension, sweatiness, an upset stomach, worrying thoughts, or trouble sleeping. These are all signs that the “fight or flight” part of the body’s nervous system (the sympathetic nervous system) is overactive. These physical symptoms of stress are known as “the stress response.”

The “stress response” can be healthy in certain situations. For example, if you saw a bear in the woods – the stress response would make your heart pump strongly, and your muscles react quickly to help you run away from danger. Unfortunately, the stress response can work against you as you try to cope with chronic pain.

The connection between stress and pain

How does pain trigger stress?

Nerves in your body are like electrical wires that send messages to your brain about all sorts of things, including pain. Messages about pain can be an important way you keep your body safe.

For example, imagine you are driving. The driver in front of you stops quickly, causing you to slam on the breaks. This happens immediately. If you have ever slammed on the breaks quickly, you probably noticed other feelings in your body like your heart pounding, shakiness, racing thoughts, or muscle tension. This is because scary experiences including slamming on the breaks or the pain itself triggers the fight or flight part of your nervous system and your body’s stress response.

When you are dealing with short-term pain (like cutting your finger while cooking), this can be a good thing. But if you are dealing with chronic pain over a longer period, this physical response to stress is NOT helpful.

How does stress impact pain?

Stress makes pain worse for a few reasons. First, let’s think about some of the physical symptoms of the “stress response:” muscle tension, shakiness, and an upset stomach. None of these are good for pain! For example, muscle tension makes many types of pain feel worse – especially back pain, neck pain, headaches and pain related to cancer around bones or muscles.

The “stress response” also tends to make people feel anxious, to have trouble sleeping, and it brings up unhelpful patterns of thinking like “this is never going to get better,” “my cancer must be growing,” or “I can’t deal with this anymore.” Anxious feelings, thoughts, and sleeping problems are known to make pain feel more severe, and they make people feel more limited by their pain. Over time these factors actually change the brain and make it more sensitive to pain signals traveling from your nerves.

The good news is that there are ways to manage stress, to get your body out of “stress mode,” and improve your pain in the process.

Tools to cope with stress and help your pain

If you have lots of stressors in your life, it is easy for your body to stay in a “stress-mode” with your body’s stress response pathway primed and ready to go. Daily stress then acts like fuel to the fire, turning on the stress response pathway and ultimately worsening pain.

Thankfully there are ways get your body out of this stress mode and onto a better path.

The importance of awareness

A basic place to start is by simply noticing the major sources of stress in your life. You may not be able to change many of these things. But being aware of what triggers stress for you may help you modify some stressful situations, and cope better with the others.

Learning relaxation

One of the most effective tools is learning how to relax our body and calm down the “fight or flight” part of our nervous system. If stress is like fuel to the fire, relaxation is a bucket of cool water. Learning relaxation isn’t just laying down to rest and closing your eyes, although that can be a start! In fact, most people have experienced trying to lay down to rest but not being able to relax.

In recent years, doctors and other scientists have found that many relaxation exercises and types of meditation are extremely effective at calming down the stress response. There are many different types of relaxation exercises, but most of them involve being quiet and helping the mind notice and let go of tension in the body.

This app has several different relaxation exercises you can try. It is good to practice them on a regular basis. They can also be helpful in the moment when you notice feeling stress and in the moment when you notice pain.

Take a moment to look through the relaxation exercises (like this one) and set a time to try some. Over time, these exercises help calm your nerves down so that they send less frequent and less intense pain messages to your brain. They can even help you sleep better, try one before bed!