Pain Reprocessing Therapy

If you are living with an illness or chronic physical symptoms—like pain, fatigue, hypermobility, insomnia, etc.—seeing a social worker may not seem intuitive. Understandably so. Pain is usually what tells us to go to the doctor. However, there is compelling research that reworks the common cause-and-effect understanding of how pain is experienced in the body. We’ve learned that there are 2 kinds of pain, and we often have both:

1. “structural” pain sends signals from the site of the pain to the brain, for example damaged tissue

2. “neuroplastic” aka “neurophysiological” pain sends signals from the brain to the site of the pain

Its a matter of direction. Either way, you are definitely feeling the pain. But when the signals are sent from the brain and not the body, that creates other treatment options. In fact, this actually relocates pain management specifically to the domain of mental health providers and coaches.