Why High Achievers Struggle to Overcome Chronic Pain - Motivation & Fear of Failure (Part 1)

Why High Achievers Struggle to Overcome Chronic Pain - Motivation & Fear of Failure (Part 1)

High achievers often have difficulty recovering from chronic pain.

I know this not only from working with clients but from overcoming more than a decade of chronic pain.

If you are a high achiever, you are probably doing everything you can to overcome chronic pain. You are trying to achieve your way to recovery, which is, in essence, what I did.

I became a personal trainer and later earned my doctorate in PT all to learn how to overcome chronic pain.

But it wasn't until I looked under the hood of my need to achieve that I understood the forces that were keeping my nervous system on high alert and my body in pain.

In this video, we discuss the motivational factors that prolong pain in the body.

There are two main motivational strategies:

1. Success orientation
2. Fear of failure

Most successful people have high orientation towards success and at least some fear of failure.

In the beginning, failure is expected and as long as orientation towards success is high, it is easy to accept the failure.

However, as you inevitably climb the ladder of skill in any given domain, your capacity to reach higher level of success dwindles and the probability of relative failure sky-rockets.

"Success" becomes defined as anything at baseline or above. Anything below baseline is failure. Given this asymmetry, fear of failure can take over as a primary motivational strategy.

As fear and threat become more and more frequent with this shift, an acute increase in stress, an injury, or simply prolonged exposure can produce symptoms in the body.

If you continue to engage in an activity where the primary motivation is a fear of failure, your body will have difficulty feeling safe enough to reduce symptoms.

The worst part is that you may have little to no awareness of your motivational strategy being biased in this way because you may have developed this at an early age. Or the shift might be so insidious that you barely notice it.

This can keep you desperate, trying new exercises and wellness regimens with little success. After all, if all day fear and threat are present at high levels, brief breaks from fear and threat are only going to do so much.

In this video I offer a few simply strategies, including:

1. Redefining/expanding your role to allow for more failure and potential for new success
2. Increasing awareness of fear of failure to deconstruct the constituent elements of your experience

Along with these strategies, you'll also want to avoid putting excessive pressure on your exercise and wellness-based strategies. This will only be a cause for more frustration, as increasing pressure and criticism is likely to activate the same neural circuits that produce pain.

00:00 - Intro
00:35 - What is Chronic Pain?
01:56 - Two Main Motivators
03:04 - Motivational Shift
05:10 - Helpful Strategies
06:23 - Considerations for Rehab
07:00 - Outro

[filipvretenar]

This video is so accurate. It s exactly my situation.

[emilyc_official]

It’s not always injury or stressful life event that can cause chronic pain for 10 years or longer. It can be from an ongoing lifelong disease which is what a lot of people fail to realise.

[maryjomagar]

Thank you, I really enjoyed this so much and look forward to the entire series and further series to come! You vest deep thought in these unique videos.

[geekygambler]

Interesting perspective ... Nice video ...

[TOSUnbound]

Not going to lie though, I think the majority of the pain in chronic pain is from actual muscular imbalances, not some elusive fear mind body mechanism.
For instance, I suffer from TOS and Piriformis Syndrome, and my capacity to use the computer increases upon strengthening the right muscles.

Seeing progress is what really matters. Success and failure is harder to measure.