Joanne Smith explains how the brain links stress to physical pain. When you perceive a threat, like her father's cancer diagnosis, your nervous system can trigger migraines or back pain even without actual tissue damage. The pain is real, but it's learned neural associations, not a hidden medical problem.
about external stresses or triggers, some people call it triggers, then I just want to reassure you that that isn't the problem. It's just what we have learned, what our brain, our nervous system has connected together. Okay, so what can happen is, like, the issue itself is not necessarily the problem, but it's what's happening inside of our brain that is connecting that. So it may have made the decision that, um, let me think of an example. So my dad, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, um, then that's the stress, that's the trigger. My brain could perceive that as a danger, and then that equals— What? Woo! Increase in symptoms. Migraine, migraine, migraine, back pain, back pain, back pain, whatever that might be. So it's connected that with the sensation of the pain, for example. So when it gets challenging, when life gets challenging, and our brain responds as if it's got to warn us that there is a real legitimate danger and threat, but that doesn't mean That it's the— that, that's causing the issue, the stress that's causing the issue. It doesn't mean that there's something physically wrong with you.
