Just when I was thinking chronic hip pain was going to be my fucking life, a Bowen therapist handed me a book, suggesting that there were a few things about how my pain was presenting that suggested it was neuroplastic — that is, my brain had learnt this pain.

Oh fuck. Yeah, that makes sense, I thought — because the pain moves around, and there seems no real reason for it, at least not one that's showing up in tests and scans. What if my chronic pain isn’t always a sign that something is still being damaged? After all, it was good for about a month after having the corticosteroid injection into the hip joint for severe inflammation — and then the moment I started feeling tired from the physio exercises, it came back with a vengeance. It didn't make sense. This immediately made sense, maybe because I'd read about it before and just hadn't clicked that this could be the issue.

Neuroplastic pain, he explained, is essentially pain amplified by a nervous system that has become overly protective. The brain and nervous system are capable of changing through experience — a process called neuroplasticity - but just as we can use it for positive things like learning a skill, it can also be negative - the brain learning a particular movement or sensation means “danger” and start producing pain more readily. In theory, that's why people can just get pain from the most ordinary things like sitting or walking when there isn't even any new tissue damage. It's the same thing with phantom limb pain - you can feel the absent limb even if it isn't' there. That's why, in theory, something as ordinary as sitting, bending or walking can eventually trigger pain even when there is no new tissue damage. You can see similar principles in phantom limb pain, where someone can feel intense pain in a limb that has been amputated, or in cases where people experience severe pain from an apparently harmless stimulus. The pain isn't imaginary; the nervous system is generating a very real experience based on what it has learnt to predict.**

So, for $30, he sold me the book and told me to read it — and I did, in one evening. Psychotherapist Alan Gordon’s Pain Reprocessing Therapy has given me a different way of looking at this persistent and chronic hip pain. It's not to say the pain isn't real — it absolutely is — but sometimes my brain’s protective alarm system can become overly sensitive and continue to sound long after the original injury has settled.

Pain is less like a direct message from an injured body part and more like a protective prediction made by my brain. Think about how you might burn your hand on a hot stove, and the nerves send danger signals to your brain, which quickly produces pain to make me pull away. Well done, Brain.

But if I later see a stove that resembles the one that burned me, my brain may trigger a protective response before I even touch it. Calm down, brain — you are sometimes a dickhead. He referred to the case of the guy who put a nail through his foot and was in agony — yet when they took his boot off there was no significant injury. His brain had interpreted the situation as catastrophic and produced an enormous pain response. It's a brilliant illustration of just how powerful the brain's protective system can be.

It seemed then, because of the awful pain I'd been legitimately having, that my brain could learn to associate certain movements, positions or sensations with danger. It had just got more and more sensitive, even though these movements were no longer necessarily inflaming anything. Asshole brain.

Gordon’s approach is about encouraging me to change my relationship with pain rather than constantly fighting, fearing or monitoring it. Through techniques such as somatic tracking, I'm meant to be curious, simply observing the pain instead of interpreting it as dangerous. The idea is that I'm teaching my nervous system that a sensation can be uncomfortable, but not necessarily threatening.

It's not as if my pain in my hips wasn't real, and that it doesn't continue to be real, but my brain might also be capable of learning that I'm actually safe in day-to-day movement as well, and not be such a drama queen about it.

The book argues that fear, anxiety, uncertainty, anger and frustration can all amplify pain. So if I'm telling a fear story about my pain, guess what? That's going to become part of my reality. And I'm not ready to accept that as my life.

So I've been practising somatic tracking and the usual breathing strategies, plus a few mantras — like when I went paddle boarding for the first time in eight months, reciting “I am safe, I am home, I am secure” over and over. And you know what? For the first time in ages, I felt hope.

The hardest thing is really trusting the process and believing this will work. But if my other choice is to be in abject and chronic pain? Yeah. I'll keep trying.

And so far, it seems to be working. I'm stand up paddle boarding again - it still hurts, but it doesn't get worse, so that's a massive win. I'm starting to do a lot of movement - improv yoga, mobility stuff. I feel like I"m at last building strength without being on the couch in tears with pain killer. I feel hope.