Why fighting pain keeps pain in charge

Why does fighting pain so often keep it in charge? 

In this episode, we explore why awareness—not force—is the starting point for change. Shift The Field isn’t about ignoring pain or replacing medical diagnosis. It’s about recognising when automatic protective responses begin to dominate and learning how to interrupt them, gradually building the capacity for more intelligent, adaptable responses.

© 2026 Shift the Field by AMDtherapie. All rights reserved. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, I'm AMD from AMD Therapy, and welcome to another episode of Shift the Field, the practical methods to help you out of the protective patterns keeping you stuck. Today I want to talk about one of the biggest paradoxes I see in clinic, and I see this one a lot. It's one of the reasons I started noticing the same thing happening over and over. If something hurts, we naturally assume that the pain is a thing we need to deal with. Everything tells us to focus on it, to monitor it, to protect it, we test it, we search for answers, we push through it, or we avoid it altogether. Every decision begins with one question. What is the pain doing today? And I understand that completely. When pain becomes dominant, it doesn't just affect how you feel. It begins influencing how you think, how you plan, what you expect, and ultimately how you respond. It quietly starts organizing your behavior. The important thing to understand is that none of that means there is anything wrong with you. It's a natural response to anyone who just wants to get away from the pain for it to stop. It's exactly what an intelligent system is designed to do. And before I go any further, I want to make something very clear. Shift the field is not about dismissing a medical diagnosis, nor is it about suggesting that every protective response should be changed. Some protective responses are exactly what we want. They're intelligent, they're necessary, they're life-saving. Without them, we wouldn't survive. So protection is not per se the problem. In fact, protection is one of the greatest successes of the human system. A medical diagnosis is equally important. It tells us something about what has happened or what is present. So the information matters, but it's only one side of the story. A diagnosis does not train the system how to move forward in day-to-day life. And it can in fact become the inhibiting and limiting factor because we naturally attach meaning to the information we receive. The system is still learning every single day. Every response reinforces something. The question is, what is it learning? One of the biggest misconceptions is that once we've received a diagnosis, the work is over. It isn't. Whatever has happened, the system continues to learn from the way we respond. That is why doing nothing doesn't change anything. The system doesn't stop learning because we've been given a name for what's happening. It keeps adapting. Most importantly, it adapts to what we keep telling ourselves and what we believe. The opposite is also true. The question is whether we are consciously training it or whether we are allowing automatic responses to become stronger through repetition. This is where things become incredibly counterintuitive. Most people believe the answer is to deal directly with the pain. That makes sense. Of course it does. I understand that. Discomfort is strong, it persists without anyone else knowing and demands attention. It's something you want to get rid of as quickly as possible. So naturally, we think the discomfort itself is what we need to target. But constant attention, however understandable, does not necessarily change it. It reinforces it. The more dominant it becomes, the more dominant our responses become. We brace before we move. We anticipate before anything has happened. We begin organizing our lives around avoiding what we believe might happen next. None of these responses are necessarily conscious. The system has simply learnt that pain deserves priority and to avoid it where possible. That's exactly what the system was designed to do, and that works if you're about to burn your hand, but is very different for pain that sits with you day and night, plaguing your every move. This is why pushing through pain often doesn't make it disappear. By the very act of pushing or forcing, we can reinforce the signal. The system simply learns to reinforce the very thing you're trying to get away from. But this isn't the kind of pain you can just move out of the way. The opposite isn't the answer either. Avoiding everything that feels uncomfortable teaches exactly the same lesson. Pain remains in charge. So whether we obey it or fight it, we're still allowing it to dictate our behavior. That's why I often say you can't solve this by going to either extreme. One extreme is avoidance and the other is force. Both remain organized directly to the protection by pain. Neither changes the relationship. Forcing something that is stuck usually makes it more stuck. And pulling at it is by virtue the same concept from the opposite end. Pulling at a puppy won't make it walk. It just digs its paws in, however much you pull at the lead. Pulling at a we only works if there's already enough give. Otherwise, the top snaps off while the root remains exactly where it was, ready to grow again. We don't do nothing, but we have to be clever. We also have to be absolutely clear about what we want the system to do. For that, we need to understand this aspect of how the system works and how to enable it to cooperate in the desired way. We are training the system by becoming aware of how we respond so we can change the response when it's necessary. So we can learn not only how to help turn the volume down on protective signals that are not necessary or no longer needed, every response from pain to holding a boundary, speaking in front of a hundred people, being able to make moves and decisions that our highly designed system has equated to the protective response equaling life or death, such as the magnitude. This is where shift the field is a universal practical framework. That awareness is the beginning of everything. And until we recognize an automatic response, we can't interrupt it. And until we interrupt it, the system simply continues running the same program, protecting, bracing, anticipating, because that's the response it currently believes is most useful. But we also have to practically teach the system, and this is why shift the field is a practical method. This is what I mean when I talk about building capacity. I don't mean building the capacity to tolerate more pain or becoming tougher. I mean building the capacity to recognize when the automatic response has begun to dominate our behavior, that is entirely unhelpful, and starts limiting our capabilities and our trust in ourselves, to notice the moment the system has taken over before it makes every decision for us, and then gradually to interrupt that response, not with force, not by pretending the pain isn't there, or by ignoring a medical diagnosis, or by teaching the system that another response is available. Every interruption is a lesson, and every repetition teaches the system something. But the question is always, what are we teaching it? Because whether we realize it or not, we are always training the system. The difference is whether that training is intentional. Over time, something begins to change. Not because the pain has magically disappeared overnight or because we've ignored reality, but because pain gradually stops being the only direction of every decision. Capacity can begin to grow. Not the capacity for pain, but the capacity to adapt, to remain engaged, and to recognize more than one available response. We're not asking the system to stop protecting us. We're teaching it to protect us intelligently. An effective system is not one that protects all the time. It only protects appropriately. And that is what makes it successful. And perhaps the biggest shift of all.com. See you next week.