Pain is a normal reaction to injury that lets you know there is something wrong. Once you have healed, the pain will usually subside. When your injury has healed, but the pain persists, for longer than three months, it is called chronic pain. Chronic pain can take a toll on your mental health as well, and can lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety. Although chronic pain can often be difficult to treat, pain reprocessing therapy can be an effective treatment for neuroplastic pain.
What Is Chronic Pain
Everyone experiences acute pain. This type of pain is often the result of injury, such as a stubbed toe. The acute pain experienced from a soft tissue injury is short lived and goes away when the injury heals. Chronic pain, on the other hand, is pain that is long lasting, occurs often, and doesn’t have an easily identifiable cause. This type of pain creates suffering, confusion, and uncertainties for those experiencing the pain. When pain becomes chronic, it alters the structure of the brain by changing neural pathways. This change in the structure of the brain leads to the brain holding on to the sensation of pain. This can cause centralized pain, or pain caused by the changes in the neural pathways, not by problems in the body. While this pain is real, traditional medical interventions are unhelpful, and chronic pain sufferers find little relief from the help they provide.
What Is Pain Reprocessing Therapy
Pain Reprocessing Therapy is a treatment method that addresses chronic pain by retraining the way the brain perceives pain signals. Instead of viewing the pain as dangerous, PRT aims to change the perception of pain, so the brain views it as a neutral sensation. PRT sees chronic pain as a learned response, rather than a sign of physical damage. Based on neuroscience research, chronic pain is the result of the brain misinterpreting messages from the body. Even when receiving safe messages, the brain misinterprets them as dangerous. PRT utilizes techniques to retrain the brain to accurately interpret signals from the body. Once the brain interprets signals as safe, the cycle of chronic pain stops. According to painreprocessingtherapy.com, a study showed that 98% of participants showed improvement through the use of PRT. Also, over 60 percent were completely pain free at the end of treatment, and maintained this for a year.
How Does Pain Reprocessing Therapy Work
PRT aims to retrain the brain to identify pain signals as less threatening. This therapy focuses on neuroplastic pain, which is real pain without a structural cause. Neuroplastic pain is caused by the brain misinterpreting safe signals from the body as dangerous. PRT uses somatic tracking techniques such as body scanning, meditation, and guided imagery to help you change your relationship with neuroplastic pain signals so they are no longer viewed as threatening. Once your brain begins to view these signals as a neutral sensation, rather than dangerous, it starts breaking down the fear-pain cycle. This leads to a decrease in chronic pain sensations and an increase in overall functioning. When the brain no longer expects the pain, it no longer needs to create or maintain symptoms, as it no longer has to fear injury.
Components Of Pain Reprocessing Therapy
There are four key components of PRT. The first component is education. You are taught about neuroplastic pain and how the brain can send pain signals to the body, even without injury. The second component of PRT is Mindfulness. With mindfulness, you are taught techniques to view these pain signals as neutral sensations rather than negative, or dangerous sensations through guided imagery. The third component of PRT is cognitive restructuring. Here, you learn how to challenge the thoughts that reinforce the pain. When these thoughts have less power, fear of movement because of the pain can decrease. The final component of PRT is exposure. You are gradually exposed to feared actions in order to retrain the brain that these movements are actually safe. Once the fear/pain cycle is broken, chronic pain often decreases.
While chronic pain can be difficult to live with and hard to treat, there are things that can help. Pain Reprocessing Therapy can help retrain the brain to interpret pain signals as neutral sensations. This can disrupt the fear/pain cycle that reinforces neuroplastic pain. Once this happens, chronic pain and quality of life can vastly improve.
