Chronic pain is complex, deeply personal, and often misunderstood. No two people experience it the same way — because what you carry in your “chronic pain backpack” is unique to your own life story. That said, there are common themes we see time and again: emotional stress, past injuries, unresolved trauma, lifestyle patterns, or even long-held beliefs about pain. These experiences and influences can shape how your nervous system responds, sometimes creating a loop of persistent pain even when there’s no ongoing injury.
In this post, we’ll explore what might be in your backpack — and how understanding it can be the first step toward healing.
The Chronic Pain Backpack Worksheet
One of the tools we use at Osteopathy For All to help people understand their chronic pain is the idea of a “chronic pain backpack” — these can be emotional, physical, and psychological burdens that you may be carrying. Our Backpack Worksheet can help guide you to identifying past events, life stressors, and other underlying factors that may have contributed to why your nervous system feels stuck in a heightened, protective state.
This activated state can often lead to the development of the unhelpful neural circuits, producing what we sometimes call a “software glitch,” where the brain continues to produce neuroplastic pain or other chronic symptoms, even in the absence of ongoing physical injury.
What is in your chronic pain backpack?
Below, and available to download, is a worksheet that you can fill in to see what could be contributing to your chronic symptoms. It gives you an example on the first sheet of some of the common areas that can be contributing to an activated nervous system. On the second sheet there is space for you to record your experiences in these categories and on the third sheet are blank categories so you can add what is most relevant to you.
What do I do with this information?
Well, it depends on what you find. If you don’t have much in your backpack then that is great. But many find they can put quite a lot in quite a lot of boxes. If this is you it may mean there is an emotional or stress component to your pain. This doesn’t mean you are imagining your pain, or that it isn’t real, but it does mean that a solely biomedical/musculoskeletal approach may not be as effective for you.
But don’t worry that is where we come in. At Osteopathy For All we work with chronic pain from the latest neuroplastic approach. (Neuro – nervous system…Plastic – changeable) ,What does this actually mean? Well, it means that we consider all parts of your health story and as well as providing gentle hands on care to help calm and relax your body and nervous system, we also use the SIRPA approach to integrate a MindBody approach into our treatment.
If you are not sure or want more information then you can book a discovery call or there is a handy guide on page 4 of the worksheet as to resources that are available to you next. This includes a link to a series of videos on our Change Your Pain Youtube Channel about what is in your chronic pain backpack or how to find a SIRPA practitioner.
We hope this is a helpful guide to start your exploration into neuroplastic pain and recovery from it.
