Does Stress Cause Pain in the Body? How Your Nervous System Links Stress to Pain
If you’ve ever had pain that seemed to come out of nowhere - you didn’t lift anything heavy, overdo your activity, or sleep weird - it can be incredibly frustrating.
Maybe you’ve even found yourself on Google searching “does stress cause pain in the body?”
What I often see happening with my patients when they’re experiencing unexplained pain in their body is that their stress levels are high.
The goal of this blog is to look at the connection between stress and the role of the nervous system in pain. I’ll use the idea of a “threat bucket” to help you understand how stress can cause pain in the body and you’ll learn 6 simple practices to help break the stress-pain cycle.
If you don’t have pain, but you notice:
Tension
Anxiety
Overwhelm
Fatigue
Feel free to sub in whatever symptom shows up in your body any time I mention pain, they’re all connected.
The Connection Between Stress and Pain in the Body
Maybe you’ve always thought that if you have pain it must mean there’s an injury or tissue damage in your body.
Unfortunately, pain is not so simple.
Pain is complex and influenced by many factors including stress, your nervous system, environment, and past experiences with pain.
When pain comes out of nowhere, one of the first things I recommend is zooming out to get the full picture of what might be contributing to the pain.
When you zoom out, you might find a long list of stressors:
Parenting, caregiving, and family
Financial and work-related
Seasonal and chronic illnesses
Allergies
Political and environmental
These stressors can absolutely lead to pain.
Pain and the Nervous System
One of the primary jobs of your nervous system is to keep you safe. When you experience a threat, a threat being anything that causes stress in your body, its default pattern is protection.
In the body, these protective patterns can show up around your central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, organ systems, or muscles and joints and can have an impact on your movement quality.
The concept I like to use to understand how stress causes pain in the body is the idea of a threat bucket.
Understanding the Stressors in Your Threat Bucket
We all have a threat bucket that has a limited amount of space in it.
Everyday your threat bucket gets filled up with different stressors.
These stressors might be:
Current Injury, Past Injury (including your beliefs about your healing)
Acute Illness (cold, flu, Covid, etc)
Chronic / Invisible Illness (autoimmune, long Covid, MCAS, EDS, etc)
Work Demands, Financial Stress
Relationship Challenges
To-Do List, Mental Load
Exercise Load, Recovery, Sleep, Nutrition, Hydration
Environment, World Events, Climate Crisis
I like to think of these stressors as rocks going into your threat bucket.
When these stressors fill up your threat bucket, your nervous system responds with an output - pain, tension, overwhelm, anxiety, fatigue, or some combination.
Your Stressors are Unique to You
It’s important to note that what your nervous system views as a stressor may not be the same as someone else.
For example, your nervous system might view an upcoming work deadline as a big rock or stressor that takes up a lot of space in your threat bucket, but that same work deadline might be a small rock or stressor in my threat bucket.
How to Work with Your Stressors
Noticing and understanding what your stressors are and how full your threat bucket is is a powerful practice that can help you link your stress to pain in your body.
Some questions you might ask yourself:
What are the biggest stressors or rocks in my bucket right now?
Which stressors come and go throughout the day, week, or month?
What small adjustments can I make to minimize certain stressors?
Who might I ask for support (ie - partner, friend, therapist, coach, employer, etc) to help create more space in my bucket?
When you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, you might start to see patterns and gain a clearer sense of where your stress is coming from and how stress is causing pain in your body.
It’s important to note that this isn’t about getting rid of all your stress - because, well…life and because some stress is actually good for our system.
That said, small shifts can make a big difference in creating more space in your threat bucket and more safety in your nervous system.
6 Simple Practices To Shift Your Stress-Pain State
Identifying a few quick and easy nervous system practices that create a sense of safety, settling, ease, and/or calm in your system will help you free up space in your threat bucket and can often decrease pain.
Presencing - orient to your space and find something that’s pleasant or neutral to look at; look at it as if for the first time, noticing as much as you can about it
5 Senses Technique - notice 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can taste
Tapping - you can use EFT tapping or simply tap along your trigeminal nerve
Breathing Techniques - Box breathing or 4-7-8 Breathing
Eye Exercises - pencil push-ups or eye circles
Gentle Mobility Work - self soft tissue work or mobility practices
I encourage you to get curious and experiment with these practices to find which one(s) work best for you, your body, and your nervous system.
Key Take-aways
To answer the question: does stress cause pain in the body? The short answer is yes.
Fluctuating pain and pain that comes on out of no where is frustrating and exhausting.
The primary role of the nervous system is protection, so when our nervous system senses a stressor (or threat) it can lead to protective patterns in our body.
The good news is, you can start to work with your nervous system by understanding your threat bucket, identifying what stressors fill up your threat bucket, and integrating simple practices that help create nervous system safety and decrease pain.
Physical Therapy and Coaching for Stress and Pain - Who to Work With
I offer holistic physical therapy at Orchard Physical Therapy + Coaching in Bend, OR and coaching online for active adults to help break the stress-pain cycle by integrating mind-body and movement practices to help you re-engage in your life in ways that are meaningful for you. Contact me to find out more about working together.
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Shift out of the stress-pain cycle by identifying your stressors and creating a plan to support your nervous system.
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Disclaimer: this post is intended for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. If you are experiencing pain, it is always in your best interest to consult with your medical doctor and/or your physical therapist.
