Stress is a normal part of life – you become stressed when you face hard situations or have a lot to deal with. 

That’s because stress has a vital function. If we’re under threat, stress gets us ready to take action. Similar to how acute pain lets us know when something is wrong in the body. 

When they function as they should, stress and pain are positive additions to your life, helping to keep you safe. However, if you’re constantly stressed, stress can become chronic. 

A chronically stressed person has an overactive nervous system – one that’s on edge for the next email from our boss, the next phone call from a friend, or even the next lockdown. This overactive nervous system can be the tipping point and begin the cycle of chronic pain.

There might be an event, such as a gym injury, that brings on your pain, or it might creep on over time. However, when the pain does start, it’s likely to feel more painful than if you weren’t stressed. A 2015 meta-study published in the Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences found that we feel pain more intensely when we’re stressed. In particular, negative emotions heighten the impact of stress on pain. 

A study that illustrates this fantastically is one carried out by Boeing. In the study, Boeing teamed up with researchers to identify risk factors for reporting acute back pain at work. 3,020 aircraft employees took part in the study, so this wasn’t a small sample! The researchers found that heavy lifting or repetitive work didn’t predict back pain, but feeling underappreciated did. That’s right, the workers who experienced the worst back pain were the ones who felt chronically underappreciated. 

So, if you’re stressed, you’re more likely to get pain in the first place. That pain might be bad too, which is in itself stressful. 

Once you’re in pain, stress can keep the cycle of pain going. Research indicates that stress influences people’s labelling and attribution of pain. If you’re stressed, you might be more likely to fixate on your pain or label it as something that’s “really bad” instead of “a bit annoying”. 

The crux of developing pain and then fixating on it is that our brain and nervous system are plastic, meaning they’re really good at forming habits. Research suggests our brains can undergo a sensitivity adjustment if we’ve been experiencing pain for a while. Essentially, our brain becomes very good at detecting danger and sending pain as a warning signal. So, although you’re desperately trying to avoid pain, your brain becomes better at creating it.

Does this mean you’re not in pain? Not at all. Your pain is genuine. Could you have reacted differently? No, your brain and body were doing what has helped humans survive for millions of years. It’s essential to make the distinction that just because your mood impacts your perception of pain, it doesn’t mean that pain is your “fault” because you’re stressed. Instead, your constant stress reflects how our wiring doesn’t match our modern way of life.

However, what’s important to take away is that our perception of pain can be changed by how we’re feeling. Stress and pain are two parts of the same underlying neurobiological system and are interconnected. We still don’t understand the relationship entirely. However, if you’re experiencing chronic stress, it may very well be aggravating your wrist pain or hand pain.