Chronic Pain

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) works to address and reduce chronic pain through neuroscience, mindfulness, and somatic tracking (exploring sensations in your body).

What is pain?

We’ve all been taught that pain is a useful danger signal. If you touch the hot stove, you feel pain and know not to touch it again. If we injure ourselves, pain keeps us sedentary so we can heal. Pain has evolved with us to keep us alive, we need it!

What’s interesting is the more we study pain, the more we understand that most pain is not structural, meaning, there is nothing physically causing the pain. If you’ve ever had a doctor tell you there’s nothing wrong with you, you may be familiar with this. That does not mean the pain is not real, oh no, it definitely is! What this means is that the pain is what we call ‘neuroplastic pain.’

What is neuroplastic pain?

Neuroplastic pain is pain caused by psychophysiological processes - the mind body connection. Like all things with humans, our brains can make mistakes too. Sometimes you use the wrong word for something, sometimes you trip over your own foot, sometimes your brain misfires and interprets pain where there is no danger. Think of neuroplastic pain like a false alarm- your smoke alarm going off because of the shower instead of a fire. This pain is learned and, in the right circumstances (high-anxiety, high-pressure, high-stress lifestyles), can become chronic.

Neuroplastic pain can also result after an injury. Studies show that most structural injuries are healed after 3 months, but for many people the pain persists. Why? Because our brains have learned that there is supposed to be pain there. The good news is, anything our brains learn, they can unlearn!