#33. Gill & Andrew Short. Pain, recovery and rebuilding confidence.

In this short (ish) Gill & Andrew chat, they tackle one of the biggest topics they get asked about every week: pain, recovery, and coping when your body doesn’t feel like it used to.They start by talking through the three broad pain categories: nociceptive (often linked to acute tissue injury), neuropathic (linked to nerves), and nociplastic (often chronic, where the alarm system can become over-sensitive). The central idea: pain is an output of the nervous system — a kind of alarm — and alarms can be loud, imprecise, and shaped by context.From there, they explore the tension between a more reductionist “biomechanics / something is structurally wrong” story and a biopsychosocial model that includes biology, beliefs, stress, sleep, uncertainty, prior experiences, and cultural narratives about injury. The episode finishes with a practical recovery frame: two levers — calm things down and build things up. Calm the nervous system, reduce threat, create a plan, and adjust load temporarily. Then gradually reintroduce exposure, “flirt” with the edges of tolerable discomfort, and build capability over time — in ways that are meaningful to you, not imposed by a guru.The takeaway is, recovery isn’t “getting your old body back”. It’s building a new relationship with the one you have now.Links for more on this:Greg Lehman – referenced as a key pain educator; “pain is an output of the nervous system” framing.Peter O’Sullivan – referenced in relation to persistent pain work and rehab approach.Todd Hargrove  - Episode 22 – referenced re: “regaining territory” / explorer-map metaphor; also mentioned as a previous podcast guest.Nil Teisner – mentioned for the idea of “flirting with pain” (finding tolerable edges rather than avoidance).Tom Morrison – Episode 14Joanna Myers – Episode 12Jarlo Alano  - Episode 28 – mentioned for the “rusty hinge” analogy.