Do you tend to catastrophise if you are in pain or feeling unwell? “Negative expectations can also contribute to the nasty side effects of the drugs that are meant to cure us,” he says. “Nocebo responses can be so strong that they overpower the would-be positive effects of active drugs.” However, “these negative expectation effects can be neutralised,” says Robson. Do you tend to catastrophise if you are feeling unwell? Try asking yourself the following questions: “Is this thought negative and alarming, positive and comforting, or neutral? What is the evidence for and against this thought? Is there a more palatable way to think about this?” Finally, he advises repeating reassuring phrases, such as “My pain is in my brain” and “The sensations are real, but temporary.” You might find that by soothing your anxiety and “alleviating doom-laden thoughts”, you actually start to feel better.
How we can take the pain out of exercise?
“You can train your body day in, day out for years on end – but ultimately it is your mindset that will decide your physical limits,” says Robson. Theory suggests that muscles tire when they run out of fuel and there’s a build-up of lactic acid. But researchers are now investigating expectation effects in sport. What if it’s our prediction machine that estimates how far it can push the body and, when it believes it’s reaching its limits, puts the brakes on, creating the sense that we are “hitting the wall”? This new understanding of “mind over muscle” suggests that “by adopting the right mindset, even the most devoted couch potato can enjoy more gain, and less pain, from their workouts,” says the author. Many of us struggle to stay fit because of negative expectations, Robson claims. If you had bad experiences in PE, for example, you may have spent your life convinced you aren’t a “sporty” person. According to the “new psychobiological view of fatigue”, this could impact your feelings of exhaustion and your performance. By “recalibrating our perceptions of our own abilities,” he says, we might actually start to find exercise easier.
