My Story & About This Resource List:
I have recovered from 30+ years of on-and-off chronic pain and symptoms that ranged all over my body. My non-extensive list includes: tension headache, migraine, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, back spasms, neck pain, repetitive strain in my wrists, neuralgia in my foot, hip pain, scoliosis, skin rashes/reactivity, debilitating leg pain that prevented me from walking much more than a block...
It has been a long, frustrating, and costly journey. I felt very alone and very broken through most of it. Some things seemed to work a little bit, or for a little while, some things immediately made things worse. I could never seem to break free and feel well and "normal". I tried everything I could think of that was within my means—from traditional western medicine (scans, Physical Therapy) to alternative medicine and wellness (many kinds of bodywork, massage, chiropractic, acupuncture, meditations, energy healing, diets, psychotherapy, coaching, etc).
I wish this was the information and resource list I could have been given many years ago. I hope it can be a jumping off place for anyone who is stuck with chronic pain or symptoms of any kind.
Pain neuroscience and clinical research have come a long way since the '90s. I believe all bodyworkers and medical providers are responsible for staying current on what we actually know about pain and know how to share resources about resolving—not just managing—chronic pain.
Educate yourself.
Ask your doctors and care team if your symptoms might be neuroplastic. If they don't know what that means, send them here too.
I no longer have chronic pain and have largely healed my IBS. My quality of life, relationships, and mental/emotional worlds are transformed for it. I went from barely walking to dancing, hiking, lifting weights, and moving without fear in less than 6 months. I hope this helps you too.
WHAT ARE CHRONIC/PERSISTENT PAIN (& SYMPTOMS)?
Pain and many of the body's symptoms are protective signals from your brain and nervous system. They tell us to slow down, be more gentle or careful, or stop doing something.
But our unconscious brain (I'm not talking about the conscious mind yet!) can make mistakes and create or keep sending protective pain/signals long after biological healing has completed, or sometimes even without clear injury. This happens especially when the nervous system is stuck in a threat mode or long-term/frequent fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
Nearly everyone has experienced a headache after a stressful day. So we know that stress can create a physical response. But when it goes on longer than we expected, or keeps coming back unexplainably, we can start to worry about the physical body/structure itself. Our medical model is built upon this kind of examination. The neck hurts, examine the neck. But we often lose sight of the understanding we already have that stress and the state of the nervous system can play a role.
Here's where we bridge the gap.
"According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), about 20.4% of U.S. adults have chronic pain. That means approximately 50 million people have chronic pain in the United States alone. Chronic pain affects more Americans than cancer, heart disease and diabetes combined.” (Mayo Clinic)
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT PAIN (and some myth-busting):
- The body can experience pain (inflammation, tension, spasm, etc) even in the absence of physical damage or structural problems.
- Even “abnormal” findings on an MRI don’t usually line up with the physical symptoms: 64% of people with NO back pain have disc bulges, protrusions, herniations or disc degeneration. Structural changes/wear and tear are expected with age and are usually unrelated to pain ("wrinkles on the inside").
- Surgeries for chronic pain are often ineffective and are, in many cases, no better than placebo surgeries.
- The unconscious brain is what decides whether we experience pain or not. The body is constantly sending sensory information to the brain, and the brain decides whether it is dangerous (threat=create alarm bells of pain/sensations/symptoms) or not (okay=no need for pain/sensations/symptoms).
- Neuroplastic pain is when the neverous system learns to keep the “alarm bells” on long after structurally-caused pain should have healed/subsided. fMRIs show that pain from injuries show up in a specific part of the brain, but that when pain becomes chronic, it shifts to parts of the brain associated with learning and memory.
- Fear, anxiety, and threat states (fight, flight, fear, fawn) fuel pain: Dozens of studies show that the more fear/anxiety/frustration around the pain/symptom, the more likely the pain/symptom is to continue. This can include general hypervigilance; fear of more pain; fear of movements, activities, and behaviors; fear of losing jobs, relationships, experiences, ability to function; etc.
- People with challenging childhood experiences, trauma, or personalities that are more hypervigilant, perfectionistic, self-critical or put pressure around performance/control, and/or who suppress/avoid emotions, are much more likely to develop chronic pain. The more internalized stress/pressure/intensity, the more heightened the nervous system's default mode tends to be, and the lower the threshold for alarm bells, including pain.
- Curiously (and revealingly), people of different ages, gender, location, and cultures have dramatically different rates of chronic pain and experiences of pain in general.
What about other chronic symptoms? I will often use the term "pain" on this page for simplicity sake, but many other symptoms have been effectively explained and treated using these same methods. Go here for more information about symptoms ranging from fatigue, anxiety, long covid, fibromyalgia, dizziness, POTS, headache, spasms, repetitive stress injuries, etc (or see below for list).
*Feel free to reach out for citations, studies and more info!
Criteria for Evaluating if Your Pain/Symptoms are Neuroplastic:
Whether you have been evaluated and diagnosed with a structural abnormality or disease or not, use this list to determine if your symptom has a neuroplastic component.
- The body can experience pain (inflammation, tension, spasm, etc) even in the absence of physical damage or structural problems.
Curable:
Click here for a free 6-week trial of the Curable app!
The #1 App for Chronic Pain:
Shown to be effective in an independent randomized controlled trial.
Ranked #1 highest quality app for persistent pain in a large-scale peer reviewed study.Curable is an online program and app designed to help people with persistent pain reduce their symptoms and calm their nervous system, based on Pain Reprocessing Therapy.
Pain is a multifactorial experience, which is why Curable takes a biopsychosocial approach to helping people heal. Curable helps people with pain identify and address the “missing pieces” that are often excluded from treatment plans, including the role of the brain and conditioning of the nervous system.
The Curable program guides users through engaging audio lessons about modern pain science and teaches them how to apply a wide range of science-backed techniques to reduce their symptoms, including: somatic tracking, graded motor imagery, cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, guided meditations, pain reduction visualizations, expressive writing techniques, and more.
I do not receive compensation for sharing—I just found this app very helpful in my own learning and healing.
