How Safety Helped Me Overcome Chronic Pain: A Guide to Nervous System Healing

This post is written from the perspective of a young person who participated in CHYP.

Safety was the key reason I recovered from seven years of chronic pain and illness. Safety is vital in regulating the brain and nervous system, and as you may already know, most chronic pain stems from these systems. This then begs the questions: Why safety? And how do we create it?

Receiving Signs of Danger
The nervous system's main purpose is to send and receive messages to and from the brain, and its main goal is to keep us safe.

Our nervous systems are constantly scanning our environments (internally and externally) for signs of safety and danger. This is called “neuroception.” “Neuroception” is constant, unconscious, and quick in comparison to “perception.”

When we neurocept danger, our nervous systems react to protect us. This can look like a flare-up of pain or symptoms.

What is Danger?
What we neurocept as “safe” and “dangerous” is different for each person and depends on various factors. What matters is accepting what is safe or dangerous for your child.

When I was sick, I experienced danger through words, hot temperatures, loud noises, and, most of all, fear. Danger can come in any form, not just bodily harm. To your nervous system, any form of danger is dangerous, and it will react.

Cultivating Safety
As a parent of a child with chronic pain/illness, this is a vital awareness. It gives you the opportunity to create as much safety as possible for your child. This will regulate their nervous system and reduce pain/symptoms.

When I was sick, examples of safety signals came in the forms of acceptance from my parents, short intervals of stimulus, and when my mom would massage my feet! The latter would actually reduce my symptoms because I was able to neurocept positive sensations and care from my mom.

It is Temporary
What will work for your child may be different. I recommend working with your child and their support team to investigate ways to cultivate safety.

Know that this extra care to regulate the nervous system is temporary. Once the nervous system is regulated in safety, your child can find healing through other interventions and they will actually be effective. This is because we focus on survival in a state of danger response.

We can only heal in a state of safety.