Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) FAQ

What is “neuroplastic pain”?

Recent studies have shown that chronic back pain, neck pain, fibromyalgia symptoms, repetitive strain injury, headaches, and other forms of chronic pain are often not the result of structural causes, but of psychophysiologic processes that can be reversed. This is known as neuroplastic pain.

Pain is a danger signal. Normally when we injure ourselves, the body sends signals to the brain informing us of tissue damage, and we feel pain. But sometimes, the brain can make a mistake! Neuroplastic pain results from the brain misinterpreting safe messages from the body as if they were dangerous. In other words, neuroplastic pain is a false alarm.

Though the pain can be addressed psychologically, this does not imply that the pain is imaginary. In fact, brain imaging studies have demonstrated that the pain is quite real. Recent research has shown that pain is often the result of learned neural pathways in the brain. And just as pain can be learned, it can also be unlearned.

What is Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)?

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is a system of psychological techniques that retrains the brain to interpret and respond to signals from the body properly, subsequently breaking the cycle of chronic pain. Pain Reprocessing Therapy has five main components: 1) education about the brain origins and reversibility of pain, 2) gathering and reinforcing personalized evidence for the brain origins and reversibility of pain, 3) attending to and appraising pain sensations through a lens of safety, 4) addressing other emotional threats, and 5) gravitating to positive feelings and sensations. See the treatment outline for Pain Reprocessing Therapy here.

A randomized controlled study at the University of Colorado Boulder validated Pain Reprocessing Therapy as the most effective current treatment for chronic pain. In the study, there were 100 chronic back pain patients. Half of them received PRT twice a week for four weeks, and half of them received treatment as usual. In the PRT group, 98% of patients improved and 66% of patients were pain-free or nearly pain-free at the end of treatment. These outcomes were largely maintained one year later.