Pain Reprocessing Therapy to help and even eliminate chronic pain

Good morning bkaycoth. If you go back to my original post I said “ Chronic pain is real no matter what the cause”. I don’t know if this is a good analogy..You can’t see without your brain. You can’t smell without your brain. You cannot feel without your brain. What if your body has done its wonders of healing but you were left with chronic pain for some unknown reason. Feelings are two fold. If you smash your finger you feel pain. If you have a bad gut feeling you may experience anxiety or distress. I like to believe that these feelings get mixed up and sometimes the brain expresses itself with pain.
What if you could reframe your brain in a positive light to reduce or eliminate pain. Sounds woo woo but it can work.
I found that when I started not focusing on chronic pain and replaced it with gratitude the pain of 30+years went away. I used a few qwerky practices to help that process (see previous posts about Trixie), but you could develop your own.
There are a lot of resources out there. One I like is a interview with Dan Buglio: You are not broken podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/our-power-is-within-heal-chronic-illness-pain/id1668678950?i=1000597134954
Let me know if this is helpful.

Hello @bkaycoth, welcome to Connect. Thank you for your comment. Your being stunned at the thought of making pain disappear by wishing it away is completely valid! I felt the same in the beginning of my journey. I'm sorry if you're faced with chronic pain and conditions that you struggle with.

To be clear, I still have pain and will live with it chronically for the rest of my life, but my overall management of symptoms has gotten better and yes, some of the symptoms have quelled or been lessened. Acceptance of that was the first big challenge. I feel like the misunderstanding may be that it's more than just retraining your brain regarding thoughts, it's also important to retrain your brain regarding the overall package of physical , social , emotional , behavioral and chemical. There are many working components to help manage symptoms more successfully.

I understand why it seems so wild for you to think that if we just change our thoughts it'll make everything all better. I live in a real world too and trying to wish things away doesn't work that simply. I feel that what is lost is the amount of effort required to help ourselves by changing mindset and overall perspective of how we choose to look at our obstacles. That doesn't happen overnight it takes real work - real work on the body as a whole. Not every one is up for that work, but small steps can lead to positive change.

Understanding how the brain is one of the largest most powerful tools we have, it just depends on how we choose to use it. How we choose to organize our thoughts about pain or anything negative in general for that matter. There are scientific studies that prove this theory, not only with pain but in overall happiness of life and living longer.

Okay enough of my sermon..
for now. 🙃 Bkaycoth, if comfortable, would you care to share more about your chronic challenges?

Dr Howard Schubiner has an animated video series on his website unlearnyourpain.com. I thought it might be helpful in explaining Pain Reprocessing Therapy ...