From Fear to Safety: A Roadmap to Recovery from Musculoskeletal Pain

Abstract

Abstract Contemporary conceptualizations of pain emphasize its protective function. The meaning assigned to pain drives cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. When pain is threatening, and a person lacks control over their pain experience, it can become distressing, self-perpetuating, and disabling. Although the pathway to disability is well established, the pathway to recovery is less researched and understood. This Perspective draws on recent data on the lived experience of people with pain-related fear to discuss both fear and safety learning processes and their implications for recovery for people living with pain. Recovery is here defined as achievement of control over pain, as well as improvement in functional capacity and quality of life. Based on the common-sense model, this Perspective proposes a framework utilizing cognitive functional therapy to promote safety learning. A process is described in which experiential learning combined with “sense making” disrupts a person’s unhelpful cognitive representation and behavioral and emotional response to pain, leading them on a journey to recovery. This framework incorporates principles of inhibitory processing that are fundamental to pain-related fear and safety learning.