Chronic Pain – Can you reverse it?

I’ve always assumed that pain happens in my physical body – like when I have burned myself when cooking (the oven bites me all too often!), I’ve assumed that the pain I felt was located at the burn site. However, here’s a (possibly) new concept for you: Our brains generates all of our internal experiences, including pain. In my case, the nerves at the burn site send messages to the brain, and the brain then “creates” the experience of pain. The pain isn’t actually at the burn site. Researchers have seen that sometimes there is good reason for pain (an obvious physical injury), however, the brain does not register it. And sometimes there is absolutely no structural reason for pain, yet the brain does register it. Consider “phantom limb pain” – that is the most obvious example of a pain experience where all would agree, there is no actual physical injury causing the pain.

The pain that is generated in the absence of an injury is just as real as the pain generated by an injury. However, it is a message trying to let you know there is an emotional problem you need to attend to, not a bodily problem. When that problem is tended to, the pain abates. I’ve seen this in my practice – clients with chronic pain or other ailments (IBS, anxiety, depression) surprised to notice how their pain/symptoms reduce as we work together to examine and clarify their emotional life. They notice that when they make decisions about their life that emotionally feel right, their body feels better.

If this intrigues you, you may be interested in watching this 20 minute video by Dr. Howard Schubiner, as he talks about this phenomenon and the possibility of healing pain and other disorders by resolving emotional issues: