You don’t ALWAYS get pain relief… but you can feel better?
The thing with our treatment style is that are realistic. We MUST be true to you and not blow smoke in mirrors. Life happens, every single person responds differently, how can one guarantee that they will have maximum improvement after walking in their doors? Most people come to us because they are experiencing pain. Can we guarantee pain-free living? NO WAY. Many people DO continue to have pain after completing a course of physical therapy.
Quit searching for a fix and do not let anyone tell you that they will take your pain away, because it is just downright false.
Can your pain improve with the help of a pain-treatment professional? Absolutely.
Does everyone have different pain experiences? Yes.
The biggest question is… what defines “getting better”? The definition is extensive in our world and for the purposes of this email, I will be giving examples in the paragraphs to come.
Are we trying to say that some of you would not experience complete pain-relief but still improve? Yes. This getting better thought process is all about a mindset shift and understanding pain a little bit more.
Here are the top 5 things that you need to know:
#1 Pain is complex and not likely caused by one single factor…
It is extremely rare that pain is caused by one event. Nine times out of 10 people can not pinpoint what they did to initiate their symptoms. There are many factors that relate to pain including sleep, stress, nutrition, hydration, activity volume over time, a change in routine… All of these can collectively cause a pain experience.
#2 Recovery process is up and down…
You WILL continue to experience pain within the rehabilitation process. The fluctuation in symptom severity is completely normal and anticipated. If you can anticipate that you will actually have good and bad days throughout the program, you will not be surprised when the surface.
#3 It takes time…
In most cases, we likely estimate a good 12 weeks before we should be seeing signs of any significant changes. You will see improvements along the way, but not necessarily with substantial pain relief.
#4 Flare ups can be managed in the future…
I can not tell you how many people either ask, “will I have to do these exercises forever?”, OR, “I know this pain came on because I stopped doing my exercises.” OR, “I have kept up with my exercises, but this just came back again and worse than ever.” Teaching you how to manage your own symptoms is our bread and butter. We try and teach each and every client how to manage pain when it comes on day one vs waiting until day 21 to address it. Being able to grab your pain by the horns and steer it in the other direction when it resurfaces is remarkably empowering.
#5 Complete pain relief is unnatural…
The goal of complete pain relief is not realistic and we want you to understand that achieving success with PT is not always about complete relief. It is about knowing how to handle pain when it is happening, what is going on inside (or what is NOT going on inside), how to manage it, and feeling confident to continue to move. Do we want you to feel more comfortable and do we think that is realistic? Of course.
Do me a favor, if you learned something from this or if it reinforced how you feel about PT or pain let us know by shooting us an email.
Thank you for reading!