Short excerpt from Jeff Langmaid (YouTube video) explaining fear-avoidance in pain management. He uses a 1940s fair-style "bell" metaphor to describe pain threshold: after injury the bell hangs lower (heightened sensitivity), so everyday actions trigger pain. The therapeutic goal is to "bring that bell down" or, more precisely, raise the pain threshold so patients can do more without immediate pain (desensitization).
Fear avoidance, when somebody is in discomfort is one of the primary challenges we need to overcome. Because everything. I think of it like the fair in the 1940s. You'd, like, hit the thing, and the bell goes up and hits. You want the threshold of pain. You want your little bell to not hit the top. That's. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. And when somebody's been in pain, their bell is kind of like hanging out right here. So anything that they do, they're so sensitized, it just hurts immediately. So what we do is we bring that bell down where they can do more and not feel pain. That's what they talk about when it's said that they increase the threshold level.
