Why Do I Always Hurt?
What happens when you stop fighting your body and start listening to it?
Pain is not a moral failure or proof that your body is broken. It is a language, and most people were never given the dictionary.
Why do I always hurt?
There is a particular kind of patient who shows up over and over:
“I’ve tried everything.”
“All my tests are normal.”
“Maybe this is just who I am now.”
Underneath the words is something more raw: a quiet belief that their body is the enemy. Chronic pain becomes their identity, “I’m the person who hurts,” instead of a message that has not yet been understood. In DeFT, pain is seen less as damage and more as a conversation between fascial tension, nervous system tone, and old emotional imprints that never got fully processed.
Pain, resistance and the nervous system
When pain is chronic, the nervous system stops playing offense and lives permanently on defense.
Muscles brace, breath gets shallow, and fascia stiffens to “hold it together” just to get through the day.
The longer this defensive pattern runs, the more any new input such as work stress, poor sleep, or a small argument lands on a system that is already maxed.
What looks like “mysterious pain” is often layered: unresolved injuries, postural strain, unprocessed grief or fear, and a nervous system that never truly feels safe enough to downshift. Chronic tension is not weakness or lack of willpower; it is the body’s best attempt at protection with the options it thinks it has.
The fascial-tonal lens
Through a fascial tonal lens, the question shifts from “Where does it hurt?” to “Where is this being held?”.
Fascia becomes the archive, storing the history of old bracing patterns, surgeries, emotional shocks, and repetitive stress.
Tone, how “on guard” the system is, determines whether a touch feels relieving, intolerable, or completely invisible.
In DeFT, the goal is not to smash through tight spots but to meet the tissue and nervous system at their current threshold and invite a different choice. Gentle, precise inputs tell the body, “You are safe enough right now to let this go.” When the system believes that, pain patterns can change faster than the story people have been telling themselves for years.
When the story is the cage
Many people in chronic pain are not only trapped in their body, they are trapped in a story:
“If the MRI did not find anything, then it must be in my head.”
“If it flares when I am stressed, that means I am weak.”
“If it comes back, nothing really works.”
These stories feed a loop of fear, hyper vigilance, and self doubt that keeps the nervous system on high alert. The body listens to those narratives and organizes tone, breathing, and posture around them. Changing pain often requires changing the internal language from “What is wrong with me?” to “What is my body trying to protect me from, and can I help it feel safer?”.
An invitation for your own body
If “Why do I always hurt?” feels uncomfortably familiar, consider this a gentle reframe:
Your pain is not evidence that you are broken; it is evidence that your body has been working overtime to protect you.
You do not need to fight your tissue; you need to listen to it, respond to it, and give your nervous system new options.
This is the work that DeFT is designed for, helping the body unwind old tension patterns, updating the nervous system’s threat map, and giving you back the experience of living in a body that feels like home instead of a problem to be managed.
If you are ready to explore that possibility, this is where the real conversation with your body begins.