This timeline makes it clear that the origin of pain precedes its symptoms. We are not talking about the immediate warning pain that occurs when an event happens. That pain is your signal to back off right now from whatever you’re doing, so that you don’t hurt yourself even more. And that start-up pain, if you will, has a short shelf life. Pretty soon it’s gone and you’ve forgotten all about what hurt you.
What we’re talking about is the lasting, long-term pain that is the result of some trauma or event. Generally this pain is the consequence of your body trying to compensate for a level of damage that initially may be too low for you to even notice. Nonetheless, the pain exists and is detected by your body, which tries to compensate for it and in the process causes more lasting, long-term, severe pain.
As you can see from the timeline, this systemic pain can appear as much as 3/4 of the way between when the causal incident occurred and when you decide to do something about the residual pain.
Those red hash marks between the symptoms and taking action are your “time stripes,” which indicate how long you’ve been putting off doing something about your pain — collecting these stripes is not something you should take pride in. We believe that the longer you wait, the longer you will be in pain. And the more severe the pain will be until you actually do something about it. Something like Structural Therapy. But then, we’re kind of prejudiced in favor of our system because we know how well it works!
So the real questions are about the decision: Which will you live with longer, the symptoms of pain or the relief of pain? Will you choose to become pain free first? Or will you go to your grave in pain?
The choice is yours.
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