Playing with Pain - Why Avoiding Movement Can Worsen Chronic Pain (And What to Do About It)
“I didn’t want to make things worse, so I just stopped doing ____.” We hear this all the time…from runners who’ve stopped running, gardeners who’ve given up their favorite hobby, or anyone who’s lived with pain long enough to lose confidence in their body.
Avoiding painful activities makes sense in the short term -it’s protective. But when pain becomes persistent, this well-meaning strategy can backfire.
In this blog, we’ll explore why avoidance can prolong chronic pain, what the pain-fear-inactivity cycle looks like, and why intentional movement is a crucial part of the way out.
Pain Is Protective - For a While
One major feature of pain is protection. Twist your ankle, strain your back, or overdo it at the gym, and pain pushes you toward rest, recovery, and avoiding making things worse. That’s the system working as it should.
But when pain sticks around past the point of tissue healing—more than 3 months—it becomes something different. This is known as persistent pain, and it affects between 18–35% of American adults
PAIN Journal, 2022.
With persistent pain, avoiding movement often turns into its own problem.
The Pain-Fear-Inactivity Cycle
When you stop doing something that once caused pain, your brain may associate that movement with danger. Over time, this fear can get sort of baked into your nervous system. Even thinking about an activity like bending, squatting, or walking may trigger discomfort.
This cycle looks like this:
Pain → Avoidance → Fear → Deconditioning → More pain → More avoidance…
This is the pain-fear-inactivity cycle, and it keeps many people feeling stuck.
Movement Is More Than Just Exercise
When pain takes away your ability to move, it often takes something much bigger - your identity.
“I used to be a runner.”
“I haven’t played golf in years.”
“Even walking the dog feels impossible.”
Movement isn’t just about staying in shape. It’s how we engage with the world. It’s how we express ourselves, connect with others, and find joy. So when it’s taken away, it’s not just inconvenient - it’s deeply personal.
Persistent Pain ≠ Ongoing Injury
Here’s the key difference:
Persistent pain is often not a sign of ongoing damage.
Instead, your nervous system may be overprotecting you. In essence, it’s sending out a warning signal long after the injury has healed.
Example: If gardening once flared your back pain, your brain may now flag gardening as dangerous… even if there’s nothing to actually protect you from.
That’s why we need to rethink how we interpret pain.
What’s Next
In our next blog, we’ll look at how to safely retrain your body-brain-pain system. You’ll learn about:
How pain predictions form
Why curiosity and courage matter
Specific strategies for reintroducing feared movements
You don’t have to stay stuck in the pain-fear-inactivity cycle. There’s another path forward and it starts with challenging the cycle.
