Whack-A-Mole
- Apr 25
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 29
Playing the Game of Moving Pain
Growing up in the ‘80’s, I was not an arcade loving kid. Too many flashing lights. Too many loud sounds. Just too much chaos all around. But for parties they seemed to be most kids inevitable venue-of-choice, so off I would go to brave the birthday bedlam.
I had exactly two games that occupied my time at these frenetic soirees, Skee-Ball and Whack-A-Mole. And while my utter lack of hand-eye coordination prevented me from having much success at landing the holes in Skee-Ball, Whack-A-Mole was a completely different scenario. It was a game of anticipation and quick response—that I could do. Now what I didn’t count on, was that down the road I’d be playing a live-action version of it in my professional career.
Some of you might know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. You come in for an appointment to address an area of chronic pain in your body and by the end of the session it feels better, but now pain seems to have crept up in another spot. What exactly is happening? Whack-A-Mole. Why is this happening? Well, that’s way more complicated than an engineered arcade game…
If we opened up the compartment of a Whack-A-Mole machine, we’d see all the wires and connection parts that work together to make the moving magic happen. If we peered into our bodies the same way, we would see a giant web encapsulating everything in our bodies—fascia. Fascia serves many purposes in our bodies, but one of its most significant attributes is the communication it provides between our bodies and our brains. This happens via the 250 million nerve endings it holds, of which 80% send messages to the brain about the state of our body. If the wires in a game of Whack-A-Mole weren’t connected properly it wouldn’t function as designed, and the same premise holds true for our bodies. Due to the fact that our nervous system and fascia are so intricately intertwined throughout our entire structure, if something goes haywire somewhere in our body it can signal a misfire response in another area. This conduction phenomenon is known as “W-A-M” because addressing pain or symptoms in one spot can cause them to almost immediately emerge in a separate locality. When you start to experience this, it is because your nervous system has become over-sensitized to stimuli and reacts as though it is “under-threat”—meaning that normal signals in your body are interpreted as potential danger and the brain responds by over-protecting the body.
When you endure chronic pain, your nervous system remains in a state of hyper-alert. This can trigger a cascade of one or more of the following internal reactions to ensue. Let’s break down each of these structural phenomena one-by-one:
Central Sensitization: When pain becomes persistent, the nervous system stays "overly alert," essentially turning up the volume on pain signals. This makes the brain "hyper-attuned" to danger, causing it to produce pain signals even when no new tissue damage exists.
Maladaptive Plasticity: Neuropathic pain is often a result of "maladaptive plasticity," where the somatosensory nervous system's structure and function change, causing pain to be generated spontaneously and responses to be pathologically amplified.
Moving Pain Mechanism: When one pain source is addressed (the "whack"), the nervous system, which is still in a high-alert state, simply shifts its focus, producing a new symptom or pain in a different location (the "mole" emerging elsewhere).
Brain Mapping: Chronic pain can cause the brain's map of a body part to become "blurry" or over-sensitized, causing the area of pain to feel larger or move around.
So what can you do to reprogram your constitutional W-A-M?
Reset Your Nervous System: Bodywork, mindfulness meditation, conscious breathing techniques and gentle movement like yoga are all excellent for this.
Reduce Your Sensitivity: You can learn to interpret your nervous system responses and actively employ techniques (like natural vagus nerve stimulation) that inhibit pain signals through descending modulatory pathways that reach the spinal cord, essentially "turning down" the pain volume.
Address the Root Cause: Rather than just treating symptoms as they pop up, addressing the underlying central sensitization and compensating patterns is key, as moving pain is a sign of a highly adaptive (but overloaded) nervous system. Consistent, targeted bodywork helps immensely with this.
