“I just need to push through the pain”

“I can handle it.” “I just need to be tougher.” “Keep going, push through.”
This was my mindset for a long time. I told myself that acknowledging pain was giving in to it. I told myself that if I just stayed busy enough, focused enough, strong enough, I could override what my body was telling me. I had work to do, children to care for, a life to live. Pain felt like an inconvenience I didn’t have time for.

It took going through two hip replacements and then managing those health related challenges to understand that “pushing through” wasn’t the badge of courage I had thought it was. My body was sending me important signals, and I was working so hard to ignore them that I wasn’t dealing with what was happening. The pain was there but I had also exhausted myself fighting it.

What is going on?

Chronic pain is different to acute pain, and it is complex. Unlike acute pain that warns us of an immediate injury, chronic pain often persists long after the initial cause has healed or sometimes exists without a clear physical cause at all. What many people don’t realise is how much our brain influences our pain experience.

When we’re stressed or anxious our pain often intensifies. This isn’t imaginary or all in your head but a real physiological response. A full stress bucket amplifies pain signals, making everything hurt more. Your brain becomes hypersensitive, constantly scanning for pain and, in doing so, ‘creating’ more of it.

The “push through it” mentality often makes things worse. When we’re constantly fighting pain, tensing against it, worrying about it, we’re adding more stress to an already overwhelmed system. We end up in a cycle where pain creates stress, stress amplifies pain and we exhaust ourselves trying to battle both.

What can we do about it?

Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can’t promise to make the pain disappear, but it can change your relationship with it. When you understand how your brain processes pain signals and how stress affects your pain levels, you can start to work with your body rather than against it.

The sessions help you reduce the overall stress in your system which naturally turns down the volume on pain signals. You learn to break the anxiety-pain cycle that has kept you trapped. The trance work is particularly powerful for pain management because it helps retrain how your brain in how to relax and control the pain signals a little bit better.

Clients often tell me they’re surprised by how much more manageable their pain becomes when they’re not in a constant state of stress and resistance. They find they can do more, enjoy more and feel more like themselves again. This is not because the pain has vanished, but because they’re no longer focused on the battle against it.

Is it the right time to change?

Living with chronic pain can feel isolating. People might tell you to stay positive or suggest you ignore it, when the truth is you’ve been trying so hard to do that for so long that you’re exhausted. Understanding the pain-stress connection isn’t about giving up but about finding a more sustainable way forward.

Are you nodding to yourself right now? Is it the right time for you now?

Do you want to stop spending all your energy fighting pain?

Do you want to reclaim some of those activities and moments that you’ve been missing out on?

Do you want to feel more in control of your body and your life?

If any of these feel true for you, that’s your answer.