What Your Chronic Pain May Be Trying to Tell You
By Maugane Duval, Integrative Trauma Therapist, Hypnotherapist & Somatic Practitioner
It started with the flu.
I caught it, spent a few days in bed, and after days of coughing, my lower back locked. I could barely move, let alone walk. I thought I would take a week off work. That week became a month. That month became more than a year.
The flu did not create the problem. It simply pushed an already overloaded system beyond its capacity.
Fourteen Years of Being Told "It's Just Stress"
I had been experiencing pain long before that. The first signs appeared around the age of thirteen. Tight shoulders. Neck pain. A tension that never fully left me alone.
I visited doctors, physiotherapists, osteopaths and all kinds of specialists. They ran tests, found nothing structurally wrong, and offered variations of the same conclusion: "It's just stress."
They weren't entirely wrong. What was missing was the rest of the explanation: what stress does to the body when it becomes chronic, how trauma can shape the nervous system, and how someone is supposed to heal when pain has become part of daily life.
Each time, I was sent home with no map, no tools and no real understanding of what was happening inside my body. I remember wondering how it was possible to be so “healthy” and be in so much pain at the same time. How I could feel like an eighty-year-old before I was even an adult.
So I just learned to carry it. Many of us grow up learning to tolerate a remarkable amount of discomfort, especially as women. We are taught that painful periods are normal, stress is normal, exhaustion is normal. We hear things like il faut souffrir pour être belle, you need to suffer to be pretty, and learn to override what our bodies are telling us. We become very good at adapting, performing and pushing through.
During my year of sick leave, I met with the company doctor. He listened to my story, including the research I had started doing because I needed answers, and said: “Yes, trauma really does live in the body. That’s well documented.” Then he glanced at the clock and added something like, “Good luck with that. It’s going to be a tough one.”
I left confused. For the first time, a doctor validated the connection I had been sensing. Yet I left the appointment with the same question: now how do I actually feel better?
That was the moment I realised I would have to take my own healing into my own hands.
The Phone Call In India
Before my back locked, I had already booked a 200-hour yoga teacher training in India. When the time came, I decided to go anyway, straight from bed rest to the yoga shala.
Within a week, the pain had almost disappeared. Within two weeks, I was doing headstands. I had spent months barely able to move. At my worst, the pain was so overwhelming that I could not cut a carrot without crying. Yet two weeks of daily movement, presence, simplicity, sunshine, rest and distance from my life in Europe had changed something dramatically.
One evening, I was speaking with my father on the phone. “You know,” he said, “when you get back to Amsterdam, you’ll have to go back to work.”
Action. Reaction. My neck contracted immediately.
My body knew something my mind was still negotiating. It knew that going back meant going back to the pressure, the constant performance and the weight I had been carrying.
It still took me months to fully face what that reaction was showing me, probably because deep down I knew how many parts of my life would eventually have to change if I truly listened.
When I returned from India and walked back into that life, my body said what I couldn't yet say for myself. No.
Looking back, the pain was never the problem. It was the message.
What Pain Actually Is
Most of us think of pain as a sign that something is damaged. Sometimes it is. Acute pain is one of the body’s most intelligent protection mechanisms. You sprain your ankle, burn your hand, or stub your toe. Your nervous system detects a threat and creates the experience of pain so you pay attention, protect yourself and adapt.
Chronic pain is different. Sometimes the original injury has healed while the pain remains. Sometimes scans come back normal while symptoms continue to shape daily life.
Modern pain science shows that pain is created by the brain after it evaluates information coming from the body. That experience is influenced by physical signals, memory, stress, emotions, beliefs, past experiences and the state of the nervous system itself. This is why two people can experience the same injury differently. It is also why pain can persist long after tissues have healed.
I often use the image of a smoke alarm. When it has become highly sensitive, it can start reacting to slightly burnt toast. Yet it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: trying to protect you.
The same thing can happen in the nervous system. Over time, pressure, uncertainty, emotional overwhelm, relational stress or a life that no longer feels aligned can begin to trigger protective responses that were originally designed for immediate danger.
Trauma is not only what happened to us. It is also what our system had to do in order to survive. When the body has learned to stay quiet, brace, anticipate, perform, carry responsibility or keep going no matter what, those adaptations can become physical patterns. The shoulders rise. The jaw tightens. The breath becomes shallow. The belly contracts. The system stays ready for something that may no longer be happening.
What Symptoms Can Be Trying to Say
Symptoms do not need to be reduced to simplistic meanings. A migraine, shoulder pain, digestive symptoms or menstrual pain can have many causes. The body is too intelligent and specific for one-size-fits-all interpretations.
Still, symptoms often carry information.
A migraine can be linked to hormones, genetics, inflammation, sleep or light sensitivity. It can also appear during periods of overload, pressure or emotional suppression when the system has no more capacity to process what is happening.
Shoulder and neck tension can be mechanical or postural. It can also appear when someone has spent years carrying responsibility and living in constant stress.
Digestive issues can have medical and nutritional causes. They intensify when the nervous system is in vigilance, because digestion asks the body to feel safe enough to soften.
Menstrual pain deserves to be taken seriously. Pain that takes you out of your life every month is information. It may be hormonal, inflammatory, gynaecological, nervous system related, or emotional.
The point is curiosity. What is happening in my life when this symptom appears? What changes when it eases? What am I carrying, anticipating, swallowing or overriding? What is my body trying to draw my attention toward?
For years, I wanted my symptoms to disappear so I could get on with my life. Today, I understand that they were drawing my attention toward the life itself. Trauma had taught me to move away from myself. My body spent years trying to bring me back.
Chronic Pain Rarely Has a Single Source
Pain is rarely that simple. The physical body matters. The nervous system matters. Emotions matter. Stress matters. Relationships matter. Family history can matter too.
When I look at my own family history, including a grandfather born during the First World War who survived imprisonment during the Second, I understand why vigilance might feel familiar. Why my body knew something about bracing for impact long before I had language for it.
This is why, when a client comes to me with chronic tension, persistent stress or unexplained pain, I do not look for a single answer or a quick fix. I look for patterns: what the nervous system has learned, what emotions have been pushed aside, what adaptations once kept someone safe, and what parts of their story still need attention.
This layered approach is what finally helped me after fourteen years of searching. Together, we explore all of it at a pace and depth that feels right for your system.
What This Means If You're Living With Chronic Pain
If you are living with a tight neck, burning shoulders, digestive issues, migraines, menstrual pain or chronic fatigue, your pain deserves to be taken seriously. Medical investigation matters. Proper diagnosis matters. Structural causes matter.
And when the appointments, scans and treatments keep producing more questions than answers, it may be worth adding another question:
What is my body trying to tell me? That question changed my life. It is also where many of my clients begin.
Over years of working with chronic pain, I've learned that pain which hasn't responded to traditional approaches often needs something conventional medicine can't offer: a way to work with the nervous system, access the patterns held in your body, and help your system feel safe again.
This is why my approach combines somatic practice, hypnotherapy and nervous system regulation to address what physical treatment alone cannot reach. Not instead of medical care, but alongside it.
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Maugane Duval is an integrative trauma therapist, hypnotherapist and somatic practitioner based in Amsterdam. She specialises in working with chronic pain and nervous system regulation alongside trauma healing. She works with English and French-speaking clients online and in person.
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