Fear of Movement Causes Pain Independent of Physical Injury Research Shows

What was said

"One of these is a fear of movement, and fear of movement is something that triggers muscle spasms. It tightens everything up, it restricts the movements of your joints, and it's primarily driven by what's going on in the neural circuitry. I had many people come into the practice who didn't have any obvious injury but they still had a lot of pain."

Harlow explained that kinesiophobia, or fear of movement, generates real chronic pain through neural inhibition and muscle spasms without any tissue damage. He treated patients whose primary pain driver was psychological fear from past injury, not current physical damage, showing pain science has moved beyond the injury model.