That post about triggers reminded me also of this seminar I went to a few years ago at a dysautonomia conference which was about chronic pain. The doctor giving the talk explained that a big problem in treating chronic pain is doctors not understanding or accepting that the brain is really good at making shortcuts. We accept this for things like "practicing the tuba" or "playing a sport" or other things where repetition forms a pathway in your brain which then becomes automatic -- we all have stuff we do so much that our bodies seem to simply do them without our conscious input, right? Because it is generally beneficial for the brain to go "oh, it looks like we do this thing a lot. I am just gonna go ahead and put this shortcut in, so next time doing it is easier"
The problem is, THIS APPLIES for things like pain. This is why lingering pain after a major injury or surgery etc, even after the physical injury has healed and there is no PHYSICAL reason at the pain site for there to be pain anymore, is common. Unfortunately your brain is not immune from applying the microsoft clippy technique of "hey there, it looks like we are doing this thing an awful lot! I am going to install a shortcut for you!" with stuff like pain. And once those shortcuts are established, you can't really get rid of them easily if at all (think of something you used to do all the time but stopped doing for several years and your body just automatically remembered exactly how to do it right away when you picked it up again!)
This is depressing. Because it does mean that "there is no physical cause of pain" is meaningless when dealing with chronic neurologic pain (and therefore the approach of "let's find the cause and treat that" is not always super helpful), and because a lot of medical professionals don't fully understand or accept it and will approach pain management like "weaning you off" management is a reasonable goal.
But I also find it weirdly comforting because it makes me kind of... Sympathetic to my stupid idiot animal brain in a way. Like, my brain is just trying to help me be able to create a helpful subroutine so I don't have to consciously think about.. Like... throwing this spear at an antelope! Or whatever!!! It Doesnt know!!! My man Cornflake got the spirit!!!!!!!!
Anyway. I think I have posted about this before but I wanted to articulate it better. This applies to stuff like coping mechanisms that become maladaptive too. Ur brain makes pathways. Those you can consciously alter with hard work but your first INSTINCT may always be a certain thing that is no longer useful, bc of these shortcuts. That is just brains. That is why you can't get stuck getting angry with yourself about your first instinct in difficult situations, you have to suspend judgment and move past them.
So yeah
