28/05/2023
Healing chronic pain, and breaking free of the pain-fear cycle, is a process that works on the physical, emotional, and psychological levels together.
The first step is to understand the evolutionary and physiological role of pain (or fatigue/anxiety/depression) and how it is generated. Pain is usually something that we attribute to external factors, but it is generated within our brains as a danger signal. The 'primitive brain' watches through our eyes, listens through our ears and monitors all the input of our nerves, ready to warn us, in a language of sensation, of any danger or threat.
When our primitive brain learns that life is not a safe place, like a child deep within us all alone and afraid, it begins to become a little trigger happy with our alarm system, over reacting to the smallest threat, causing us discomfort or pain. And we, uneducated about this situation and often taught to repress such feelings, respond with fear or anger, which only heightens the anxiety within us. And Et Voila, the pain-fear cycle is borne, ready to spiral us all the way to join the 1/3 - 1/2 of people in the UK experiencing chronic pain.
When we are in pain it is hard to believe that there could be a simple solution, the fear of and belief in structural damage can be completely overwhelming.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy teaches us to see pain for what it is and respond correctly, de-escalating the hypersensitivity, reassuring and comforting the frightened part of ourself and resetting our alarm system triggers to where they should be.
In a recent randomised clinical trial, PRT demonstrated the highest known success rate for treating back pain, with 66% of participants pain free (or nearly pain free) after a 4 week process, compared with 20% from the placebo test group and only 10% of participants receiving usual care for back pain (physio and stretching etc.).
*For more info check out the Boulder Back Pain Trial
If you are interested in seeing if PRT could help your pain, please get in touch to book a free consultation