The Role of Stress and Past Experiences in Shaping Your Pain Threshold

If you live with chronic pain, chances are you’ve been told to “just reduce your stress.”
It’s well-meaning advice, but not very helpful.

Why? Because stress and pain aren’t just emotionally linked. They’re physiologically intertwined. When your body is in a state of stress, your nervous system shifts into protection mode. That means:

• Your muscles tense

• Your heart rate increases

• Your brain gets better at scanning for threat and worse at regulating pain

• Stress hormones if elevated for short periods have the capacity to increase the pain threshold, but if elevated for even more than an hour they can have the opposite effect.

Over time, this can sensitize your nervous system, meaning it becomes more reactive to even small signals. The result? More pain. Which leads to more stress.
Welcome to the loop.

But here’s the empowering part: You don’t have to eliminate stress to change this.
You just have to relate to it differently.

🧠 What the Science Says About Befriending Stress

Research from Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal and others shows that your mindset about stress shapes its impact on your body. In one study, people who believed that stress was harmful had worse health outcomes, even if their actual stress levels were moderate.
Meanwhile, those who believed stress was a normal, helpful response showed better resilience and cardiovascular recovery.

When you learn to pause and meet stress with curiosity instead of fear, your body reacts differently. You stay more regulated. You feel less overwhelmed. And you may even experience less pain.

This doesn’t mean pretending everything’s fine. It means saying:

“I see you, stress. You’re trying to protect me. Let’s work together instead of against each other.”

💡 Try This

Next time you feel that rush of tension, whether it's from a difficult conversation, a full calendar, or a pain flare, try meeting it like you would a friend:

1. Notice it. (“There’s that familiar tightness in my chest.”)

2. Name it. (“Stress is here. And that’s okay.”)

3. Nurture it. Take a breath. Place a hand on your body. Let the stress know it’s allowed to be here, but it’s not in charge.

Small shifts like this don’t just feel good. They change your physiology. You move from fight-or-flight into something more spacious. More adaptive. And over time, more healing.

You don’t need to conquer stress to change your pain. You just need to listen to what it’s trying to tell you.