When you get hurt, you expect pain. But once it subsides, you expect everything to get back to normal, except there’s a wound or bruise that needs to heal. But that’s it.

Well, sometimes, that ‘it’s just a sprain’ moment turns into a lingering and constant pain that’s continuously distracting you and affecting your focus, your behaviour, your stress levels, and so much more. It basically changes how your body works. And what’s worse, that constant pain then turns into something even worse after a few weeks of suffering.

How can such a small and seemingly insignificant injury completely consume and dictate your life from then on?

And then you go to a doctor or a physician, they do all their scans and testing, and tell you it’s fine and that you should rest.

But again, a month later, the pain’s still there.

Why Pain Sometimes Persists Long After Injury

When you get hurt, what happens is that your nerves pick up on the damage and they proceed to send a message to your brain. Your brain then decides on what’s going on and decides on what to do next.

Over time, the injury heals, and those signals settle down. Sometimes, however, they don’t. The nerves stay on alert and react to things that normally wouldn’t hurt at all. This is the result of the nervous system being sensitized after trauma.

It can happen after a fracture, a sprain, a burn, a surgery, or even something that’s minor.

The area that’s been injured turns into a hypervigilant zone where even a light touch or a tiny stretch feels way more intense than it should. Part of this comes from the inflammation that’s left over because your body releases the chemicals to help with healing, and, if they stick around for longer than they need to, they irritate the nerve endings.

At the same time, the spinal cord can start to amplify these messages, which makes a normal sensation into a painful one. Stress or the instinct to protect the area can also keep the body in danger mode and make the pain feel stronger.

If this kind of pain drags on for months and it’s the result of an accident, and you’ve already filed a claim, it’s a good idea to get in touch with a complex regional pain syndrome lawyer to see whether these long-term symptoms could be used to build a case (depending on how and where they happened). The CRPS could be due to someone’s negligence, or perhaps it was on another person’s premises. Let your lawyer figure this out and advise you, because laws could be different in each state.

Just don’t think too long, because there could be a limit on how long you’re allowed to sue.

Naturally, recovery is always your priority, so once you’ve got all the legal things covered, it’s time to commit to healing fully.

Your Nervous System and the ‘False Alarms’ it Creates

If you don’t yet know, here’s why it’s possible to feel pain even though you think you’re healed, and your check-up confirms you’re healed.

Central Sensitization

‘Central sensitization’ means that your spinal cord and your brain have become very sensitive to pain after experiencing trauma.

And, instead of calming down, your system reboots itself in a way where your pain tolerance threshold gets lowered. So even if you experience a sensation or stimulus that isn’t harmful/dangerous for you, your brain will still interpret it as dangerous, resulting in you feeling pain.

Your brain basically makes an assumption, reacting before it has all the information.

This creates a cycle – the more the signal fires, the stronger the habit becomes.

Nerve Fibers Misfiring

Irritated or damaged nerves don’t necessarily heal in a neat, predictable way.

They can fire off signals that don’t match what’s actually happening in the area during recovery, so you feel more pain. The changes in the nerve endings make them more reactive than they should be, so every touch and every movement feels more intense.

Scar tissue and swelling that’s nearby can also make them more irritated.

As long as there’s something poking them or stressing them out, they keep sending messages to the spinal cord.

The Sympathetic Nervous System

Your sympathetic nervous system is activated whenever you’re stressed/scared.

But once your body experiences trauma, what can happen is that the sympathetic nervous system starts interacting with pain pathways, which results in pain feeling sharper, sometimes even unpredictable.

If you ever found yourself sometimes feeling changes in temperature, color changes, or even swelling (as in inflammation)  around the injured area, this could be the reason.

The Brain’s Memory of Pain

Your brain remembers all the intense experiences you had throughout your life – pain included.

If you’ve ever gone through a strong or long-lasting pain, your brain builds a shortcut of sorts in order to respond faster next time.

Those pathways get stronger with repetition, like learning a skill.

The problem is that, once this pattern is set, your brain can act as if the injury is still fresh even when it’s not. In other words, your nervous system learns a pattern and keeps repeating it, which is why pain hangs around.

Conclusion

When you experience prolonged pain – even though everything is already supposedly healed and there should be no pain at all in the first place – you might be under the impression that your body is working against you, but that’s not it. It’s actually your body, more precisely, your nervous system (paired with your brain), trying to protect you.

Unfortunately, sometimes it tries too hard, so hard in fact that it keeps on going long after the job’s already done.

It’s nothing frightening, it’s nothing worrying, and it’s going to pass.

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