Chronic pain can be complex. Until quite recently we thought that pain was a message sent by the nervous system a bit like pressing a doorbell and getting a ding-dong in your brain. So pressing the doorbell more - or more damage = MORE PAIN! 

A lot of teaching has concentrated on looking for a cause for the pain or on trying to block it with painkillers or procedures. 

Now we know that things are a bit more complicated - pain isn't always a sign of how much damage there is - sometimes people can have a serious injury and not feel anything - and sometimes pain can affect a part of the body that is not even there any more! - Phantom pain after an amputation.  

So now we use a BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL approach to help us understand how pain happens in the nervous system and how it affects you.