Stop the Next Flare Up Before It Starts: Lessons From a Fistfight With a Gorilla
If you’re stuck in the cycle of chronic pain and flare ups, especially if the doctors are telling you that there’s “nothing wrong”, this article is for you.
And you’ll learn:
- Why flare-ups feel so unpredictable and why they might have nothing to do with physical dysfunction
- The hidden link between your nervous system, trauma, and conditioned pain responses
- How a fight with a gorilla in Africa changed my relationship with chronic pain forever (and how you can use what I learned to accelerate your healing journey).
Whether you feel like you’ve tried everything to get relief or you’re just feeling confused by the inconsistent experience you’re having inside of your own body, this article will help you make sense of what’s happening.
More importantly?
It will give you the first steps to reclaim control and start your journey to breaking free from pain for good.
Let’s dive in.
A Broken Back and Mismatched Socks: My Journey with “Pain Management”
Years after I broke my back, right when I was starting to think I was in the clear, I was hit with another flare-up.
Not the, “Oh it hurts to run and lift weights” kind either.
The all-consuming, “Existence is pain” type of flare up.
The culprit that triggered it?
Doing the laundry.
Yep.
In just three short years I went from an All American D1 athlete and Olympic hopeful…
… To getting laid out by a few dirty shirts.
I still remember sitting in the waiting room of yet another pain management clinic, looking down at my legs, and realizing that I was wearing mismatched socks.
Of course I was.
Because my flare ups had gotten so bad that the basics of daily life––like dressing myself in matching socks and unstained clothes––felt like hell.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Not because there was anything funny about the situation.
But to try and avoid the all-consuming fear circling my mind:
“If I can’t even manage my outfit, how the hell am I supposed to manage the rest of my life?”
As I imagined myself moving back into my parent’s house, living in the basement, and withering away by the ripe old age of 30…
… The nurse called me back to exam room.
Where my fear quickly turned to embarrassment, rage, and hopelessness.
“Well, Mr. Crispino, I’ve reviewed your file” the doctor said with a smirk, like he was the only one in on a joke, “And there’s nothing wrong with you, so why are you here?”
I wanted to punch him in the teeth.
Anger felt like a more useful emotion than despair.
But underneath it, I was just sad—deep, hollow sadness that had settled in after years of relentless back pain.
I was only twenty three, scraping by on fifteen dollars an hour and student loans.
Now, it felt like any shred of independence was slipping away.
My mind spiraled, jumping from the fear of not being able to work, to the dread of never feeling normal again, to the frustration of not being taken seriously by yet another medical professional.
In that moment, I felt utterly alone, convinced nobody truly understood how badly I was hurting. I’d never wanted an end to pain so desperately.
Another wave of hopelessness crashed in, whispering:
Maybe I just can’t do this anymore…
That’s the day I realized how deep chronic pain can burrow into your life.
It’s more than physical discomfort, it’s a slow unraveling of hope.
At the time, I had no clue that there could be something deeper going on.
I thought pain was black and white:
Either you’re injured, or you’re not.
I thought pain was only a signal that there’s damage.
In that cold exam room, I would have given anything for someone to explain why “healed” didn’t feel healed at all.
And yet, that soul-crushing visit was the beginning of something unexpected:
It set me on a path to understand the hidden layers of pain beyond bones, nerves, tissue damage, and muscles.
So if you’re reading this and feel a pang of recognition, I want you to know: I see you. I’ve felt that despair, and I’m here to tell you there’s more to the story than a dismissive shrug or a spotless scan.
There is a way forward.
And it starts with understanding because you can’t solve a problem you don’t understand.
The Day Pain Stopped Making Sense (Thanks to a Fistfight with a Gorilla)
After that exam room letdown, I stumbled through years of trial and error, convinced my back was a ticking time bomb.
I’d brace for pain with every move:
- Folding the laundry
- Driving to the store
- Cooking (fun fact: My pain was so bad at one point that I left a steak rotting on the floor for seven days because it was too painful to pick it up)
- Even just sitting down
But I started to notice something strange.
Some days, folding clothes, driving, or making a meal was agony. Other days, I’d manage just fine.
If my spine was so broken, shouldn’t it hurt the same way every time?
The answer to this question came one ordinary day, mid-routine, as I powered through a bridge exercise from the program I now teach.
I hated this exercise, it lit up my lower back like a flare gun, every rep a reminder of how weak and broken I felt.
I’d grit my teeth, tense every muscle, hyper-focus on bracing my core, and predict the pain before it even hit.
It was the PT equivalent of an electroshock ice bath.
As I was on the floor, my four year old son burst into the room.
Now most of you don’t know him, so let me tell you…
My son Rocco is an absolute riot, much like his father 😉
And he immediately started chatting me up with his goofy jokes.
And as we talked and I continued wincing through my bridges, a Discovery Channel program about gorillas was playing in the background.
The narrator, none other than the great Sir David Attenborough, was going on and on about how strong gorillas are.
And I asked Rocco:
“If you had to choose, where would you take a punch from a gorilla?”
I thought he’d choose an arm or a leg, maybe if he was being silly he’d say the face.
But without thinking, he said, “Africa.”
He wasn’t even trying to be funny.
But his response was so hilarious that we both started belly laughing.
I was still doing the bridge, chuckling, watching his little face light up—and then it hit me: I wasn’t hurting!
For years, bridges were almost a guaranteed flare-up.
But in that moment, distracted, light, laughing with my kid—I felt nothing.
No pain. I was moving freely, naturally, without the usual vice grip of tension.
As soon as I noticed, I shifted focus back to the exercise:
“Am I bracing enough?”
“Am I doing it right?”
“What’s different?!”
Boom, pain rushed in like I’d flipped a switch.
That was my turning point.
As I laid on the ground in fresh agony, I started to wonder:
If my back was structurally wrecked, why did placing my attention differently turn off the pain?
Why did my focus decide what I felt?
What did my mind have to do with a “physical” “structural” problem?
That day kicked off a new search, not for a cure, but for understanding.
I dove into pain science, desperate to unravel why “healed” didn’t feel healed.
What I found flipped everything I thought I knew on its head.
The Truth About Flareups: Structural Damage vs. Conditioned Responses
As I started to approach pain through a different lens, I discovered a fascinating body of research that finally helped me make sense of my experience (and now, to understand the experience of tens of thousands of students all over the world).
Flare-ups aren’t always about damage.
In fact, they’re rarely about structural damage.
Instead, they’re the result of an overly sensitive alarm in your brain.
Stuck on high alert.
Constantly screaming “Danger” even when there’s no present threat.
Modern research, from Dr. Lorimer Moseley, Alan Gordon, and others—shows pain isn’t just a body signal; it’s a brain decision, shaped by fear, stress, and memory.
fMRI scans have shown that many individuals who struggle from chronic pain “feel” pain in the memory and learning centers of the brain, an entirely different part of the brain than someone with a true active injury.
My flare-ups weren’t my back betraying me.
They were my nervous system trying to shield me, long after the threat was gone.
If you’ve ever wondered why your pain flares up unpredictably—why it’s brutal one day and quiet the next, I’ve been there.
And here’s the truth I wish I’d known in that sterile exam room:
You’re not broken.
Your body’s just speaking a language you haven’t learned yet.
Let’s decode it together, starting with what a flare-up really is.
Understanding Flare Ups: Beyond the Pain, Into the Brain
Picture your nervous system as a smoke alarm.
It’s not there to annoy you or make your life miserable, it’s designed to get your attention when there’s a problem.
When you break a bone, like I did my back, it starts blaring like crazy to protect you:
“Rest! Heal! Chill out dude!”
That’s acute pain doing its job.
A loud but helpful warning during the active injury window—those days, weeks, or even months when swelling, bruising, or tissue repair are still in play.
But what happens when the injury’s healed, the smoke’s cleared, and the alarm keeps shrieking anyway?
Like an overly sensitive fire alarm in your kitchen that goes off every time you bake cookies, even when there’s no fire.
That’s what a flare up is.
It’s your brain stuck in “threat mode,” dishing out pain that feels as real, or worse, than the original injury, even when there’s no structural damage to blame.
It’s not your body turning against you.
It’s your nervous system acting like an overzealous dad on prom night.
What starts as a helpful shield during an active injury can morph into a stubborn, misguided, hyper-anxious defense, running wild long after the threat’s gone.
This is a delicate and difficult topic to discuss for so many reasons.
Not the least of which is that this conversation often feels like the dismissive experts and professionals telling you:
“It’s all in your head.”
Five years after my back healed, a doctor shrugged at my clean scans and implied my pain wasn’t real.
I wanted to scream, punch a wall, and set something on fire all at the same time.
So if you’re feeling that sting right now, please hear me: your pain is real.
Every twinge, every ache, it’s not imaginary.
You’re not making it up.
What’s happening is neuroplasticity gone rogue—your brain’s gotten so good at “learning” pain, it’s turned it into a habit, firing off signals to keep you safe, even when the danger’s long gone.
This isn’t about invalidating your experience…
… It’s about understanding your experience so we can fight it together.
Because this is exactly how trauma works.
If you’ve ever been through something shattering—a car accident, abuse, a loss, a moment that shook your core, the pain of that experience doesn’t just go away.
It lingers.
Years later, a loud noise, a crowded room, a word, or even a familiar smell can hit you like a freight train.
Your heart races, your chest tightens, and suddenly you’re right back there, feeling every ounce of that old fear and pain.
Even though you could be objectively safe right now, it feels like you aren’t.
It’s just like combat veterans who struggle with PTSD from fireworks during a celebration.
Their brain knows they aren’t under threat from enemy mortars. But their nervous system doesn’t.
That’s your brain, stuck on a loop, replaying the alarm because it’s convinced danger’s still around.
It’s not weakness; it’s misplaced protection.
Pain works the same way.
Let’s say in your case, a nasty fall broke your ankle.
It heals, but months later, a new ankle exercise, long walk, or helping a friend move, you feel a sharp, real, urgent sensation.
Or my back: long after the fracture mended and the herniations healed, bending for laundry could drop me to my knees.
If trauma can make a safe moment feel threatening, why wouldn’t an old injury make a healed body feel broken?
It’s the same machinery, your nervous system, wired to shield you, hitting repeat on a song that doesn’t need to play anymore.
Pain and trauma aren’t twins, but they’re cousins, born from the brain’s relentless drive to keep you alive.
Once I recognized this, everything started to click:
My flare-ups weren’t proof I was fragile, they were echoes of a bodyguard who didn’t know the fight was over.
The second challenge is that the pain feels so physical.
When your back’s raging or your knee’s throbbing, it can feel impossible to accept that there isn’t a real and present physical danger.
That even though the pain is real, it isn’t coming from your body.
I get it, it’s a mental stretch.
For years, I thought my back pain lived in my spine, a structural curse I’d carry forever.
I remember seeing my broken back on a light-up X-ray board thinking that’s the only place the problem is.
But here’s the truth: your nerves don’t feel pain, they’re just messengers, sending signals like “pressure” or “stretch” to your brain.
Your brain’s the editor, deciding, “Danger!” or “No big deal.”
When it’s stuck in threat mode, it can crank out pain anywhere, anytime, knee, hip, toe, based on memory or fear, not just injury.
That’s why my laundry flares were random: my brain, not my back, was running the show.
Take my bridge moment. I’d tense up, expecting agony, and my brain delivered—until laughter with my son flipped the script.
If pain was purely physical, distraction wouldn’t touch it.
But it did.
Researchers like Dr. Lorimer Moseley calls this the brain’s “protective illusion”—real pain, wrong reason.
It’s a tough pill, I know.
But here’s the good news.
Your brain isn’t an untouchable drill sergeant who won’t take “no” for an answer.
Sure, it’s shouting orders.
But you can talk back.
And that’s where the hope lives.
Take my laundry conundrum.
Bending to grab a shirt sometimes hurt, sometimes didn’t. If my spine was the issue, wouldn’t it be consistent?
Pain science says no.
Researchers like Dr. Vania Apkarian have shown chronic pain lights up brain areas tied to emotion and memory, not just injury.
My brain had linked bending to danger, so it hit the panic button—unless I was distracted, calm, or feeling safe.
That’s the kicker: flare-ups often hinge on perception, not structure.
It’s kind of like food poisoning.
I have a friend who got sick with a stomach bug the day he went out for Ramen.
He was already feeling worn down and out of sorts before going out to eat.
But when he got back?
The virus escalated and left him hugging the toilet into the early morning.
To this day, almost seven years later, he still can’t look at a bowl of ramen without feeling sick.
Even though he logically knows that the problem wasn’t the food––it was a bug––his brain is convinced that ramen is the cause.
And it triggers the “danger” loop every time he walks into an Asian restaurant.
The same principle applies to movement.
An old injury, or even stress, teaches your brain to yell “Stop!” when you stretch, lift, or twist.
Over time, that yell becomes automatic.
That’s a flare-up: real pain, wrong reason.
For me, bridges were the bogeyman. I’d tense up, expecting agony, and my brain delivered, until my son’s jokes proved it didn’t have to.
Here’s the good news: if your brain can learn pain, it can unlearn it.
That’s not wishful thinking, it’s neuroscience. And it starts with shifting how you see those flare-ups, not as proof you’re fragile, but as a sign your system’s overeager to protect you.
Tools to Rewrite the Story
Understanding flare-ups is step one; navigating them is where the rubber meets the road.
For years, I fought pain like an enemy, tensing up, avoiding moves, or freezing in fear.
Sound familiar?
Those are the brain’s defaults: fight, flight, freeze.
They’re human, they’re natural, and they aren’t a sign that there’s anything wrong with you.
But they fuel the fire.
- Fighting tensed my back worse.
- Fleeing led me to quitting and avoiding movement which further left me stiff and weak.
- Freezing trapped me in a loop of second-guessing myself.
All the while, my nervous system stayed in “threat mode,” amplifying every twinge.
Then, I found a fourth way: rest and reset.
Tap into your parasympathetic system, calm, safe, rest, digest, and heal.
But here’s the catch: it only kicks in when your brain feels secure.
That’s where gentle exercise designed to downregulate the nervous system, psychology tools to use while moving like somatic tracking and reframing come in, tools I’ve honed in my online course called The Movement Program.
This program doesn’t erase pain overnight; it retrains your brain, step by step, to dial down the alarm while relaxing muscle imbalance and improving your capacity to move.
As much as I’d love to lay out every detail here, it’d be like trying to teach you to cut your own hair with words alone—possible maybe, but messy.
You need step-by-step guidance, examples, audio, video—someone walking you through it.
That’s why I built my online movement program: to hold your hand, show you exactly what to do, and turn flare-ups from tyrants to teachers.
And because I know you’ve likely been burned in the past, I don’t want you to take my word for it or make a purchasing decision off of one article.
I want you to try the program for yourself for free for 7-days.
More than 60% of our students experience noticeable relief after just one session.
And I’d love to invite you to try it for yourself to see if it can help you on your journey.
Best case, it’s a game-changer that rewrites your pain story.
Worst case, you cancel before the trial’s up and spend your energy elsewhere. Pain’s loud, but it’s not your boss.
Ready to take back control?