Chronic Pain
A Vicious Cycle
Managing your pain can feel like a full-time job. Persistent pain is relentless, diminishes your quality of life, and depletes your energy. You show up, and push through, the best you can. But between the demands of your job, your relationships, and responsibilities, it’s becoming more difficult to keep up with your typical day.
Your experience can be an isolating one. No one really seems to understand the disadvantages persistent pain puts you in. You’re stuck in this cycle and looking for ways to manage your pain is becoming futile.
Another disappointment of yet another failed attempt at resolving your pain leaves you feeling helpless and jaded. It seems like you’ve tried everything to get rid of the pain to no avail.
Pain Management Attempts
You’ve tried it all–various medical interventions, alternative medicine approaches, and possibly even medical procedures or surgery. Remaining hopeful is becoming more difficult as the pain persists, new symptoms emerge, and you’re not progressing in your treatment as expected despite your dedication to your recovery.
You’re losing control of the situation, and you’re left wondering, “When will this pain ever end?”.
The fear is palpable; you feel as though you’re running out of options. A continuous cycle of hopelessness, disappointment, frustration, fear, and pain can leave you feeling anxious and depressed. You’re living in survival mode, and you may have been for months, years, or even decades.
“We know there are two things that trigger pain neuropathways. One is tissue damage and the other is emotions that activate the exact same pain processes in the brain as physical injury.”
– Dr. Howard Schubiner
Beyond Pain Management
We’re evolutionarily hardwired to believe pain is a result of a physical injury. However, pain can occur despite a bodily injury, a physical structural problem, or after an injury has healed due to neuroplastic changes in the brain. I know it’s hard to believe, but the new pain science is showing us that your brain can learn pain, and stress fuels the pain-fear cycle.
If medical interventions haven’t resolved your pain, the source of pain may be due to brain-generated pain (also known as neuroplastic symptoms, TMS, and PPD). The good news? Interventions designed to target pain neural pathways can provide relief when treating neuroplastic pain.
If you have a medical condition and are not responding to treatment as expected, neuroplastic psychology can complement your medical interventions by targeting psychosocial stressors that may be contributing to your pain.
Finding Another Way
I’m so glad you found your way here.
I help empower those living with chronic pain to embark on a journey towards relief and renewed vitality using an integrative approach, including evidence-based neuroplastic psychology approaches. These modalities have been shown to reduce or eliminate chronic pain through shifting pain beliefs, reducing fear around pain, rewiring pain pathways in the brain, and restoring health to the nervous system.
Together we’ll explore and apply effective strategies to your life designed to enhance your overall health and well-being while rediscovering your capacity to heal.
Be gentle with yourself. Healing takes time, and healing is possible. Even if it doesn’t feel that way yet.