Every January, it happens with a terrible predictability.
The decorations come down. The calendar turns. You tell yourself, “This is the year.” This is the year you’ll finally get on top of it. You research new stretches, maybe even buy a membership to a warm pool, or commit to that physio routine.
And then, a week or two in, it creeps back. That familiar, deep ache in your back pain. The stiffness in your joint pain that makes mornings a slow, careful ritual. The flare-up that no new pillow or mattress seems to prevent. You feel betrayed by your own body, wondering why, after all your efforts, the chronic pain finds its way home again.
What if the answer isn’t in a new exercise, but in an old story? What if your pain isn’t a random malfunction, but a reason why a Psoas massage is the reset your body craves?
The return of your chronic pain isn’t a coincidence. It’s a confluence of pressure, memory, and energy. It’s your body speaking the only language it knows to say: “We didn’t finish. We’re still holding last year.”
The January Storm: Why This Month Is a Perfect Trigger
To understand why your pain flares, you need to see January not as a fresh start, but as a season of immense, invisible pressure. It’s a storm of:
- Emotional Whiplash: You go from the heightened, often stressful energy of the holidays, family dynamics, financial strain, performance of joy into the silent, heavy pressure of a “new beginning.” This sudden shift is a shock to your nervous system. For a system already holding trauma stored in the body, this whiplash can be the trigger that overloads the circuit, expressing itself as a pain flare up.
- The Pressure of the Blank Page: “New Year, New You” is not a gentle mantra. For a body carrying old wounds, it can feel like a condemnation of the “old you.” This internal pressure, the guilt of not being better yet, the anxiety of another year of pain creates muscular tension, shallow breathing, and contraction. It literally shrinks the space your joints and nerves have to move freely, pinching and pressing on the very areas already vulnerable to chronic pain.
- The Return to Routine (And Its Burdens): January means returning to jobs, roles, and chairs that may not support you. But more than the physical chair, it’s the return to the emotional burdens of that role, the stress, the dissatisfaction, the feeling of being trapped. Your low back pain isn’t just about sitting. It’s about what you’re carrying in that seat. Your foundation is under pressure.
This is why conventional pain management often fails in the long run. It treats the symptom (the ache) without addressing the climate (the storm). You can take the aspirin for the fever, but if you don’t address the infection, the fever will return.
The Deeper Layer: Your Pain Is an Echo
This is the core of understanding your chronic pain causes. For so many, physical pain is the echo of an unresolved emotional experience. The body keeps the score.
Think of your nervous system as a loyal recording device. When an experience is too overwhelming, too scary, or too painful to process in the moment, a childhood stress, a period of grief, a relationship that made you feel unsafe, your brilliant, protective system says, “I’ll handle this later.” It files the emotional charge away, often in a specific area of the body, for safekeeping. This is trauma stored in the body.
That tightness in your hips? It might be where you learned to “hold back” your truth. That joint pain in your shoulders? It could be the weight of responsibilities you never agreed to carry. Your chronic low back pain? Often, it’s the seat of deep-seated fears about security and stability.
Every January, when you face the pressure to perform, to be new, to be better, you unconsciously re-activate those old, stored survival programs. Your body remembers, “This feels like that time when I wasn’t safe.” And it responds the only way it knows how: by bracing. By tightening. By flaring. It’s not trying to hurt you. It’s trying to protect you based on an old, outdated blueprint.
How to Finally Heal the Root Cause: Shifting from Management to Liberation
True healing isn’t about a better coping strategy. It’s about becoming the safe container your body has been waiting for, so it can finally release what it’s been holding. This is the journey from pain management to root-cause resolution.
Step 1: Reframe the Flare-Up
The next time your pain returns, instead of thinking, “Here we go again, my body is failing me,” try a radical shift. Place a gentle hand on the area and think, “Hello. What are you protecting me from feeling right now?”
This simple question begins to transform your pain from a foe to a messenger. It builds the bridge between your physical sensation and your emotional landscape.
Step 2: The Somatic Pause
Healing low back pain energetically, or any chronic pain, starts with interrupting the tension cycle.
- When you feel pain rising, stop.
- Sit or lie down. Place your full attention on the sensation, not to judge it, but to observe it with curiosity.
- Breathe slowly into the area of pain. Imagine your breath creating a tiny bit of space around the ache.
- Ask: “If this sensation had a color, what would it be? If it had a texture?” This pulls you out of fear (“my pain”) and into witness (“a sensation in my body”). In this space, healing can begin.
Step 3: Connect the Dots
Keep a simple log for one week. Not a food or exercise log, but a pain and pressure log.
- Note the time of day your pain flares.
- Then, note: What happened just before? Was it a stressful call? A memory? A feeling of overwhelm looking at your to-do list?
You are not looking for punishment, but for patterns. You’re learning the unique language of your body. This is how you uncover your personal chronic pain causes.
Step 4: Speak to the Story
Find a quiet moment. Close your eyes. Go to the area of your body that holds the most persistent pain. In your mind’s eye, imagine that area as a younger version of you.
What does that part need to hear to feel safe? It might be:
“You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.”
“I am here now. We are safe.”
“It’s okay to let go.”
This practice of internal reparenting is profound emotional healing. It addresses the loneliness and fear that often underpin chronic conditions.
A Different Path for 2026
This year, your resolution doesn’t have to be to “fix” your pain. It can be to understand it.
What if how to heal chronic pain begins not with another stretch, but with a moment of stillness? Not with another appointment, but with a compassionate conversation with your own body?
The pain that returns every January is a sign of a loyal, protective system that has been working overtime for years. It’s not your enemy. It’s a part of you that got stuck in a loop, using the only tool it had, contraction, inflammation, pain to get your attention.
When you begin to listen, when you offer safety instead of resistance, the need for the signal begins to fade. The body only screams when whispering hasn’t worked. Your journey now is to become someone who can hear the whisper.
This is the path to Heal the Root Cause. It’s not necessarily fast, but it is deep. It’s not about never feeling discomfort again, but about breaking the cycle of the same pain returning, year after year, with the same helpless story. You can write a new one. It starts the moment you decide your pain has something to say, and you are finally ready to listen.
Jacqueline’s massage work supports this listening, helping the body feel safe enough to release and begin 2026 not with resolutions, but with revelation.
FAQs
Why does my chronic pain flare up after the holidays?
The holiday season is a cocktail of stress, emotional triggers, and physical demands, leaving your nervous system overloaded. The January crash and pressure to change act as a final trigger, causing the trauma stored in the body to express as a physical flare.
Is New Year’s stress connected to pain?
Absolutely. The stress of “resetting” activates your body’s threat response, creating muscular tension, inflammation, and nerve sensitivity, directly fueling pain flare ups.
How to stop chronic pain from returning every year
Shift from symptom-focused pain management to root-focused healing. Identify and safely release the emotional and energetic patterns (the chronic pain causes) that get re-triggered each January, rather than just treating the physical ache.
What does “somatic causes of recurring pain” mean?
It means the pain originates from unresolved experiences, stress, fear, trauma, that are held as tension, bracing, and dysregulation in your body’s tissues and nervous system, not just from a structural injury.
How does one heal low back pain energetically?
By addressing the energetic information stored there often fear, instability, or overwhelm, through practices like mindful breath directed to the area, guided visualization to release stored weight, and compassionate dialogue to reassure the body it is now safe.
Why does my chronic pain come back every year?
Because the unresolved root cause be it emotional stress, an unprocessed event, or a deep-seated belief held in the body is still present. Each year, life’s pressures reactivate this stored material, creating the same physical symptom.
Why does pain flare every January?
January combines post-holiday depletion, psychological pressure for transformation, and the return to stressful routines. This perfect storm overwhelms your system, triggering protective patterns that manifest as pain.
How to heal chronic pain for good?
By committing to heal the root cause, not just manage the symptom. This involves exploring the connection between your physical sensations and your emotional history with a skilled guide, releasing stored survival energy, and retraining your nervous system toward safety.
What’s the link between chronic pain and emotional healing?
They are often two sides of the same coin. Unexpressed, unprocessed emotions become trauma stored in the body, creating tension and inflammation. Emotional healing releases this stored charge, which can allow for profound physical release.
How to stop pain flare ups?
Build daily practices of nervous system regulation (like gentle breathing, somatic checking-in) to keep your baseline calm. When a flare starts, use it as a signal to pause and ask your body what it needs (rest, a feeling acknowledged, a boundary set) instead of just trying to suppress the sensation.
