It’s easy to think that the place in your body where you feel pain is the cause of the problem, but often times it’s not.
Imagine this. There are two guys whose job it is to dig a ditch. One of them gets to work digging. He’s working hard, sweating in the sun, doing his best to get this ditch dug as well and efficiently as possible.
Then he looks up and sees the other guy, sitting under the cool shade of a tree, looking at his phone and drinking a beer.
Digging guy looks at his watch and realizes that the deadline for when the ditch needs to be done is coming up soon. He realizes that it’s up to him and redoubles his efforts. Unfortunately some jobs are just too big for one person, so at some point he becomes exhausted and fed up with the unfairness of the situation.
Now ask yourself a question…
Who goes and complains to the boss?
Obviously it’s the guy digging. It’s the guy who’s doing his job as best he can, and through no fault of his own is being asked to do more than his fair share.
Hopefully you see the connection here and I don’t have to explicitly spell it out for you. But the same thing happens in your body.
If you have not had an acute injury, then there is a very good chance that the body part that hurts is not actually the problem. There’s a good chance that that body part is doing more than its fair share, gets sick of doing all the work, and rightfully complains. There’s a good chance that a nearby body part is not doing it’s fair share.
So the solution to the guys digging holes problem shouldn’t focus on the guy who is doing all the work but complaining. You shouldn’t silence him or drug him into passivity and send him back to work. That might work for a short time, but the dynamic is still exactly the same.
The solution is to give that guy a little break, figure out who isn’t working, give them the resources to do their job better and a kick in the ass so they get digging too.
In your body, figuring this out can be the difference between endlessly chasing pain versus actually taking care of the problem and having an improvement that lasts.