Why Your Pain Keeps Coming Back — And What Your Body Is Actually Trying to Tell You
- Dr Anupa Dharamsi
- Apr 16
- 9 min read
It's Not in Your Head — But It Is in Your System
You know the routine.
Something flares up — your neck locks, your lower back seizes, or that familiar ache creeps down your arm or leg. You do what you've always done: rest it, stretch it, take something for it. It settles.
You move on.
And then it comes back.
Maybe it's been months of this. Maybe years. You've tried physio. You've had massage. You've taken anti-inflammatories until your stomach complained. You've been to the GP and been told everything looks fine. Each time, there's some relief — but the underlying thing, whatever it actually is, never goes. It just waits.
If that's where you are right now, here's what I want you to know first: your body hasn't failed you. It isn't broken. It's running a protection programme — and that programme is stuck on.
Understanding why that happens changes everything about how you approach getting better.
Pain Isn't the Problem. It's the Warning.
We've been taught to treat pain like the enemy — something to suppress, push through, or manage indefinitely. But pain science over the last two decades has shifted this understanding completely.
Pain is not a damage report. It's a protective output created by your brain and nervous system.
Think of it like a smoke alarm. When your smoke alarm goes off, it doesn't mean there's definitely a fire. It means the system detected something it considered threatening — and it alerted you. Sometimes that's a fire. Sometimes it's burnt toast. The alarm responds to the perceived level of threat, not always the actual level of damage.
Your pain works the same way. Your nervous system is continuously processing input — from your joints, your muscles, your stress hormones, your sleep quality, your history of past injuries — and making a real-time decision: is this safe?
If the answer is no, pain is the output. Not because something is catastrophically wrong. Because your system has decided you need to stop, back off, or pay attention.
This is brilliant design. The problem is when the alarm gets stuck.
When your nervous system has been in protection mode for long enough, it becomes hypersensitive. The threshold drops. Now ordinary movement, a stressful week, a long drive, or simply sitting at a desk too long sets it off — not because you've torn something, but because your system has been running on high alert for so long it's lost its sense of what's actually dangerous.
That is chronic pain. And it's why you can't stretch your way out of it.
Why the Fixes You've Tried Haven't Fixed It
There's nothing wrong with how hard you've tried. The issue is that the standard toolkit — rest, medication, stretching, even massage and physio — addresses the output (pain, tension, inflammation) without touching the pattern generating it.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Rest. The pain settles because you've stopped loading the system. But the underlying nervous system sensitivity, the joints that aren't moving well, the compensation patterns your body built around an old injury — none of that changes with rest. The moment you load it again, the alarm fires.
Painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Genuinely useful for acute, short-term pain. For recurring or chronic pain, they're managing the signal without addressing what's generating it. Many people find over time they need more for less relief — which is the system itself telling you it still hasn't found safety.
Stretching. Temporarily increases range of motion and can ease tension. But if your nervous system perceives a movement as threatening, the tightness returns — often within hours — because that tightness is a protective response, not a structural one. You're not tight because your muscles are short. You're tight because your system is guarding.
Massage. Deeply valuable for reducing tension and promoting nervous system regulation. But if the joints driving the pattern aren't moving properly, the muscles have to keep working overtime. The relief is real. So is the return.
Physio. Genuinely useful, and often part of the solution. But if the neurological driver isn't addressed — the quality of signalling between your joints, spinal cord, and brain — rehabilitation can strengthen patterns built on top of dysfunction.
None of these are failures on your part. They're incomplete tools for what's actually happening.
What's Actually Happening in Your Body
To understand why pain persists, you need to understand your nervous system — not just as something involved in pain, but as the master control system running everything.
Your nervous system governs movement, organ function, immune response, recovery, sleep, and your capacity to adapt to stress. At its core, it has one job: keep you safe.
Your spine is the physical housing of your central nervous system. When spinal joints stop moving well — from injury, repetitive stress, posture, accumulated tension — the quality of sensory information traveling from those joints to your brain changes. Your brain receives a noisier, less precise signal. And a nervous system receiving poor-quality information from the spine starts to interpret the body as less safe than it actually is.
Add the cumulative weight of modern life — chronic stress, disrupted sleep, desk work, old injuries that were rested but never truly resolved — and you have a system that's been running on high alert for a very long time.
This is what it means to be "wound up." And it shows up differently depending on where in your spine the dysfunction is concentrated.
Where Your Pain Lives — And What It's Telling You
Neck Pain and Stiffness
The cervical spine is one of the most neurologically rich regions of your body. The upper cervical area — the junction between your skull and spine — has a direct communication line to your brainstem. When movement quality here is compromised, the downstream effects extend well beyond neck pain: headaches, jaw tension, disrupted sleep, and a nervous system that maintains a heightened state of alert.
If your neck pain reliably worsens with stress or screen time, settles partially with massage, then returns within days — this pattern makes sense. The joint function hasn't changed. The nervous system load hasn't changed. The signal is still noisy.
Mid-Back Pain and Stiffness
The thoracic spine is anchored to your ribs and is the least mobile segment of your spine by design. It is also the most commonly restricted. When the mid-back stiffens, the regions above and below it — your neck and lower back — are forced to compensate. This is one of the most common reasons lower back treatment alone produces only temporary relief: the real driver is mid-thoracic restriction.
Mid-back pain often presents as a persistent dull ache between the shoulder blades. Taking a deep breath sometimes offers a moment of relief — that's your body attempting to self-mobilise through the rib cage.
Lower Back Pain
The most common presenting complaint in chiropractic, and the one with the greatest variation in cause. For some people it's a hip that's stopped moving, forcing the lower back to do the rotation work. For others it's long-standing pelvic imbalance. For many, it's the cumulative effect of years at a desk, where lumbar joints have slowly stiffened and the surrounding muscles have taken on a guarding role they were never designed to hold permanently.
If your lower back pain is worst first thing in the morning, eases slightly as you move, then worsens again after long periods of sitting — this is a specific and recognisable pattern. It responds well to care that addresses both joint function and nervous system sensitivity at the same time.
Radiating Pain Down the Arms or Legs (Radiculopathy)
When pain, tingling, or numbness travels down your arm or leg, a nerve is involved. This is often the symptom that frightens people most — and the one most likely to result in referral for imaging.
But here's what the research consistently shows: structural findings on scans (bulging discs, mild stenosis, degenerative changes) are extraordinarily common in people with no pain at all. The scan finding and the pain experience are not always directly linked.
Radiculopathy often responds well to restoring movement to the spinal segments that have become restricted — reducing mechanical and neurological pressure on the affected nerve over time. It requires patience and a structured approach, but for many people it resolves without surgical intervention.
What Chiropractic Care at Handcrafted Actually Is
Here's where I want to correct something persistent: chiropractic is not about cracking bones back into place.
At Handcrafted Chiropractic in Māngere, Auckland, the work is neurological. Specific, careful adjustments restore movement quality to joints that have become restricted — not because bones are "out of place," but because restricted joints send a compromised signal to your nervous system.
When movement is restored, the information your brain receives changes. We're shifting the signal from static to clear.
Over a course of care, the result is a nervous system that no longer needs to run at high alert. The alarm threshold returns to appropriate levels. The guarding eases. And the pain — which was always a protective output — has less and less reason to fire.
Care is structured around three layers:
1. Clearing the signal. Adjustments to the joints contributing most to nervous system noise — often beginning with the upper cervical region regardless of where pain is felt, because this is where the neurological impact is greatest.
2. Addressing the compensation pattern. Where is your body overworking to protect something that isn't functioning well? If your lower back is overloaded because your hips are locked, we address the hip. If your neck is guarding because your mid-back is stiff, we free the mid-back. Pain location and pain source are often different things.
3. Building capacity. Once the system begins to settle, we help you understand what loads your body can handle — and how to progressively expand that. The goal is not just less pain. It's a body that feels genuinely safe, and a person who knows how to maintain that.
What Getting Better Actually Looks Like
Progress in care isn't usually a straight line. The first thing most people notice is that the pain becomes less unpredictable. Flare-ups lose their edge. Sleep improves. There are days where you simply didn't think about it — which, after months or years of constant awareness, feels remarkable.
Eventually, the goal shifts from managing pain to building freedom.
Freedom to train without wondering what you'll pay for it tomorrow. To sit through a long day at work and stand up without bracing. To pick up your kids, carry groceries, get through the weekend without planning your life around your body.
That's what we're working toward. Not just less pain. A different relationship with your body altogether.
Common Questions
I've had this pain for years. Is it too late?
No. The nervous system retains the capacity to reorganise and adapt at any stage — this is neuroplasticity, and it doesn't have an expiry date. The longer a pattern has been in place, the more consistent care typically needs to be. But the capacity for meaningful change is always there.
I've seen a chiropractor before and it didn't help.
Chiropractic is not one approach. Technique, philosophy, and the focus of care vary significantly between practitioners. A nervous-system-focused approach is quite different from a purely mechanical or pain-focused one. If previous care didn't address what was actually driving the pattern, it makes sense that results were limited or short-lived.
Do I need a referral to see you?
No. You can book directly. We are also ACC registered, which means eligible conditions may be covered — ask us when you get in touch.
How many appointments will I need before I see results?
It depends on how long the pattern has been in place and how your system responds. After your first appointment, you'll have a clear picture of what care would look like for you — with no obligation to commit before you have that information.
Is chiropractic safe?
Yes. When delivered by a qualified, registered chiropractor, chiropractic care has a strong safety profile. We take a thorough health history before any care begins and tailor our approach to your specific situation.
Ready to Understand What's Actually Driving Your Pain?
If you're tired of the cycle — treat it, it settles, it comes back — you're ready for a different kind of conversation about your body.
At Handcrafted Chiropractic in Māngere, Auckland, we start with a thorough assessment: not just where the pain is, but what's generating it, what patterns your body has built around it, and what care would actually address the root cause rather than the symptom.
Your pain is not a life sentence. It's a signal. And once we understand what it's saying, we can help your system finally let go.
Book your first appointment below. Let's get clear on what's actually going on — and what's possible from here.
Book Your First Appointment →
Dr Anupa Dharamsi is the founder and lead chiropractor at Handcrafted Chiropractic, a nervous-system-focused practice in Māngere, Auckland. She works with patients experiencing recurring neck pain, lower back pain, mid-back pain, and radiculopathy — helping them understand and address the root cause of their pain rather than managing symptoms indefinitely.
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