What is Pain Reprocessing Therapy?

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is a relatively new psychological treatment that offers an innovative, evidence-based approach to help people overcome chronic pain or symptoms by retraining the brain’s response to pain signals.

We now know that most chronic pain is neuroplastic in nature—that it is caused by learned neural pathways in the brain. Essentially, the brain has learned over time to become very good at sending pain signals—even when these are no longer required. Indeed, the brain can create and amplify any sensations in the body giving rise not only to pain but to chronic symptoms such as burning, tingling or extreme sensitivity and more.

What Does Pain Reprocessing Therapy Involve?

All pain is real and all pain is created in the brain. But if the brain can learn pain, it can also unlearn it. Pain Reprocessing Therapy is a talk-based therapy which uses psychological techniques to help the brain build new neural pathways, ones without pain.

PRT helps people understand and respond to pain or chronic symptoms in a different way, which changes how the brain processes them. Key elements of treatment include:

Assessment — It’s important to determine whether your pain is neuroplastic in nature and if it’s likely to respond to this type of treatment. This involves ruling out a structural or direct physical cause for the symptoms, then exploring any evidence that supports a neuroplastic diagnosis. If you work with a PRT practitioner or therapist, they will consider your medical history, symptom presentation, triggers, and any predispositions such as childhood adversity or personality traits.

Psychoeducation — Learning the role of the brain and understanding that chronic pain is often due to learned neural pathways is key to treatment. Pain is a protector and it is not always an indicator of structural damage or injury, but rather a false alarm. Put simply, when pain becomes persistent, the brain has become stuck and is making a mistake.

Treatment Techniques — Patients learn tools and techniques, such as Somatic Tracking, to enable them respond to pain differently, helping the brain feel safe, thereby reducing the natural fear, worry and anxiety or stress that can keep pain going.

Thoughts and Emotions — How we think and what we feel can also influence pain so it’s important to explore thoughts and express emotions that could be contributing to keeping the body/brain on high alert.

Practice — Practising these techniques and new behaviours while gradually increasing physical activities helps strengthen these new, ‘neutral response’ neural pathways thereby reducing fear and fading pain over time.

Does Pain Reprocessing Therapy Really Work?

PRT was tested in a ground-breaking study at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2021. The study found that 66% of participants with chronic back pain became pain-free or nearly pain-free after just four weeks of PRT, and 98% had some level of pain reduction.

Who Can Benefit?

PRT is particularly effective for chronic pain conditions with no clear structural cause, such as:

• Back pain
• Fibromyalgia
• Migraines
• Neck pain
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
• Other persistent pain syndromes

A Paradigm Shift in Science for Chronic Pain

New research is changing the thinking around persistent pain and chronic symptoms, with neuroscience now showing how the brain can often be misinterpreting signals from the body.

When we retrain the brain by changing our response to pain, relief and even recovery is possible.

Watch the short video below from the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms (ATNS) and visit their website to see more resources.

Find Out More About Pain Reprocessing Therapy

A good introduction to Pain Reprocessing Therapy is this book: The Way Out: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Heal Chronic Pain by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv.

It explains the concepts and key exercises, along with the stories and case studies of people who have successfully eliminated their pain or symptoms by following the PRT methods.

If you’d like to know more and discuss your chronic pain or symptoms to see if Pain Reprocessing Therapy could help you, then get in touch to arrange a free 30-minute consultation.

References:

Ashar et al ‘Effect of Pain Reprocessing Therapy vs Placebo and Usual Care for Patients With Chronic Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial’ JAMA Psychiatry, 2022.

Anne Glennie is a Chronic Pain Therapist, certified in Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Coaching. She is a member of the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms (ATNS) and the National Council for Integrative Psychotherapists (NCIP)