asking for help: your body is talking — are you listening?
Recognizing When Your Body Needs Support — and Why You Shouldn't Wait
We're so externally focused — on the people, things, and experiences happening around us — that we miss the signals our bodies send every day. If our bodies just spoke to us in plain English, there'd be a whole lot less chronic pain. Instead, it's all code. It's decoding: what does that sensation mean? Your car makes a noise and you can pretty much pinpoint where the problem is. Not so much with your body.
This is the second installment in our series on asking for help. Today, we're talking about how to recognize when your body is asking for help — and why so many of us struggle to listen.
The Cup Theory: Why Your Pain Didn't Start Where You Think It Did
There's a concept called the Cup Theory that helps explain how chronic pain develops. Imagine placing a cup under a faucet and turning it on. The water filling your cup represents everything in your life — the expectations of others and yourself, mental distress, physical stress (even good stress), poor sleep, poor nutrition, and whatever else is going on. Eventually, that cup overflows if you don't take time to ground yourself, rest, and reconnect with your body.
Usually, we notice the "overflow" moment — that's when an injury happens, and we think, "Oh no, the chronic pain cycle has started." But the truth is, the chronic pain cycle started long before that cup got overfilled. We were ignoring the signals all along.
Building Trust With Yourself
Here's something that doesn't get talked about enough: if you're constantly ignoring or diminishing the sensations and emotions you feel, you're eroding trust in yourself. You are the only person who knows what your body is experiencing because you feel it. Just because someone can't see it or doesn't understand it doesn't mean they're right.
We need to keep looking for people who are willing to provide the support we need — people who hear us and say, "I don't feel it, but I believe you. Let's figure it out."
I had a client who came to me after three major surgeries, at a relatively young age. She was referred for pelvic health therapy, which was new to me at the time. I just listened to her story and told her I thought we could work on this and get her better. She still brings it up to this day — it was the first time she felt heard and cared for. And all of those symptoms she'd been experiencing? They resolved. That's how powerful it is to find someone you can trust.
You're Not Stuck With Any Provider
Here's something we need to normalize: you don't have to stay with any provider. If your provider isn't helping with the chronic pain you went in for, go find somebody else. Take responsibility for your own care. If your provider isn't willing to refer you to someone who might be a better fit, you can do it yourself. There are so many options out there.
For a long time, we were told you have one provider and their word is scripture. That's changing, and it should. You find what works for you — just like you would with therapy, or any other important relationship in your life.
Learning to Read Your Body's Signals
Here's a practical example: exercise. A coach can give you sets and reps, but they don't know what you're experiencing in your body. Only you know that. If you start to feel fatigued and notice you're changing how you move just to complete a set — that's when you stop. You rest. Then you try again.
I like to call this "ding dong ditching" pain. When you're working on range of motion — say, straightening your elbow — it feels fine bending, but straightening it out, you reach a point where it hurts. You can push, but it hurts more. Instead, you want to get right to the point where it starts to hurt, and then back away. Over time, you're building trust between your body and your brain. That movement eventually stops causing pain.
The "no pain, no gain" mindset can be severely detrimental. I was a huge supporter of it for a long time, especially when I was experiencing chronic pain. I'd think, "If it didn't hurt, did I even do anything?" That mindset will affect your next workout, your next week, and your long-term relationship with movement.
Discomfort can happen — that's your body saying, "Hey, alarm bells, don't push too much." But if you push past discomfort, you enter pain territory. That could be an injury, or it could be something you're not totally sure about. That's when you should ask for help and get it checked out.
The Cost of Waiting
I recently gave a presentation to about 35–40 people and ran a poll. The question was: "How long do you wait before you ask for help?" Twenty people said they wait until it's unbearable.
Here's what you need to know: when you have an injury and you wait — you rest, you wait for it to go away — however long you wait is going to take just as long to fully get back to where you were beforehand. That sounds scary at first. But it doesn't mean it'll take that long to feel better. It means it'll take that long to get back to your full capacity. When you frame it that way, it's actually encouraging — it's still possible to get there. There is hope.
If you ask for help sooner after an event, it's going to be a lot easier to get back to where you want to be — and maybe even better than you were before. You're gaining knowledge from a professional who understands different techniques and how to support you in ways that Dr. Google and AI simply can't.
Why the Internet Can't Replace a Professional
Physical therapists are the musculoskeletal specialists in our healthcare system. We're trained to adapt to you — to your specific body, your compensation patterns, and your unique experience. Dr. Google and AI don't have a physical body. They can't assess how you're moving, what your compensation patterns are, or how to correct them without going too far in the wrong direction.
My favorite question to ask people who rely on the internet to rehab themselves: "How often does this injury come back?" It goes away for a week, then comes back. Or you're good for a few months, and then it hurts again — and those same exercises don't work as well the second time. Please utilize a licensed human provider.
Compensations We Normalize
There are physical limitations people normalize every day without realizing it. Pelvic health therapy is finally getting the news coverage it deserves, because something that's been normalized in our society is peeing a little when you cough, sneeze, jump, or laugh. This happens to mothers postpartum, but it's also showing up in people who've never been pregnant — because of the "skinny fad." Sucking in your stomach increases pressure on the pelvic floor, weakening those muscles and their ability to tolerate changes.
Limping after an injury is another one. If you've been non-weightbearing for 10 weeks after ankle surgery, your muscles atrophy and you change how you move through your entire life. Then your surgeon clears you to walk again and your brain says, "I can do this!" but your body says, "Not quite like we used to." You start taking long strides, compensating with your other leg, and before long you've got hip discomfort and low back pain — all from changing how you normally move.
Even something as simple as using a cane on the wrong side (yes, Dr. House uses his on the wrong side, putting more pressure on the bad leg) or wearing crutches up in your armpits instead of four inches below — these small things matter. If you don't have a friend who's a PT, at least have someone in your life who can help you through physical transitions and help you understand your body.
The Mental Side of Injury
The mental component of injury is massive. When an injury forces you to slow down, sometimes it's the universe telling you exactly what you need. I've seen it firsthand — major life changes, including this very project, might not exist if a forced slowdown hadn't created the space for intention.
If you're going through a big physical transition, don't do it alone. Find someone with more knowledge of how the body works. Reach out in community forums. Ask for recommendations. Providers love when you ask for help — it gives them satisfaction in what they do. And don't be afraid to ask.
