Stress and pain

On my musculo prac I had a client that I saw every week who had a lower back problem due to an irritated L4-S1 and was experiencing a 'cancer to the bone' pain in both her legs. On average she was only getting 2hr blocks of sleep and often experienced intense cramps during the night. PPIVMS really worked well on her, and would decrease her pain instantly although the pain would return after a number of days. After a number of visits I was able to get her resting pain to 0/10. At this time the patient starting having a number of family problems, which consequently increased her pain to ~6/10 and was really struggling to get to sleep at night. She was really worried why her pain was increasing and I told her that it was most likely due to the other stressors in her life. We talked for most of this session because she simply had to get it out and I gave her some suggestions of how to relax herself simply from what I do when I'm stressed. She felt really relieved from our chat. I continued to do PPIVMS, active
'opening up' patterns of movement and STM. We noticed that as her family situation was dealt with and treatment increased, her pain began to decrease again. Treating this patient was a real learning experience for me and she made me realise that psychological issues really have a major impact on pain and sometimes you just have to talk to your patient to educate them and to give them some confidence rather than just hands on treatment.