Your pain is real, just as all pain is real. You're NOT weak, sick, crazy, imagining this pain, or consciously deciding for it to happen! 

All pain is created in the brain, either in the immediate response to a physical injury, or in the case of chronic pain, because of over-active neural circuits in the brain. It is not your fault.

The great news is that brain-generated pain is learned, which means it can also be unlearned. 

So were we, and so were almost all of our clients. This is a common thing that doctors tell people, but most structural problems are 'incidental', which means that they actually have nothing to do with the pain itself.

While it’s important to get a physical examination to rule out fractures, tumors, infections, etc., blaming chronic pain on a structural abnormality is often like blaming migraines on grey hairs.

In fact, in a recent study of back pain sufferers, 98% had a spinal 'abnormality' on their MRI, but only in 12% of cases were these abnormalities actually causing the pain! The other 88% of sufferers had pain caused by neural circuits.

Consider also that 30% of 20-somethings without any back pain have herniated discs. 84% of 80-somethings without any back pain have herniated discs! 

We know that genetics can play an (often small) role in certain chronic pain conditions. However, these are predisposing factors - they do not cause the symptom onset.

Symptom onset occurs when those genes are activated or triggered, generally through fear, anxiety, chronic stress, or injury. It's far more likely for the child of a back pain sufferer to have back pain NOT because of genetic predisposition, but because the exposure to a trusted figure with pain conditions predisposes the child to adopt very specific beliefs (e.g. the back is "weak" or certain physical activities are dangerous). This conditioning (based on very strong expectations) is 'priming the pump' for pain to occur later in life.

We also know that although genetic evolution can take thousands of years, we can alter gene expression in a short amount of time. For example, studies show that meditation can alter your gene expression in a positive way in a very short amount of time. This means that genes that are activated can be deactivated. And chronic pain symptoms are often reversible because the neural-circuits causing pain can be deactivated. 

You had a bad injury years ago - but it may not be why you still have pain TODAY. Accidents and injuries occur. However, the human body has an incredible ability to heal - from broken bones, ligament tears, etc.

Consider that the biggest bone in the body, the femur, can heal - and actually become stronger than before the fracture - in just 8 weeks!

What often happens is an injury can transition from being 'acute' to 'chronic' through fear, worry, and the activation of neural circuits.

If we took an MRI of your brain right after your accident, it would show pain in the brain regions associated with bodily feeling. However, after a certain number of weeks, when pain persists, other brain regions light up - ones associated with emotions, learning, and memory! The pain then becomes learned - like a bad habit.

Here's an interesting fact: despite an average number of car accidents, whiplash doesn't exist in Lithuania! Studies have also found that neck pain can be generated by a simulated car accident - just because the person's brain is 'fooled' into thinking it's been damaged!

Pain is often not due to ongoing injury from an accident that happened years ago, but neural circuits driven by fear, anxiety, and worry. And these neural circuits can be turned off, no matter how long you've been in pain. 

This is very common. In the case of chronic pain, these areas of muscle tension are generally caused by a build up of emotional tension. They are a symptom of pain, rather than the primary cause of pain.

Just think about this: if you're stressed and tense, then the body is going to tense up. This is a normal response that equips us to deal with emergency and high pressure situations. However, if we are unable to relax after the stress is over, than we may keep holding on to this tension.

As the nervous system is calmed through neural circuit retraining, these areas of muscle tightness go away, along with the pain. 

This is also very common. Many people have pain or symptoms that are generated by movement, activity, weather, heat, cold, light, sound, certain people, foods, or pressures. In each case, these are triggers not causes of chronic pain.

Like Pavlov, who taught his dogs to salivate by ringing a bell without food, your brain learns to associate symptoms with these activities. This is conditioned, and can be unlearned. These triggers also generate symptoms outside of our conscious awareness.

Research shows that most decisions are made subconsciously, and we make subconscious associations all the time. Consider that you are more likely to rate someone's behavior as disagreeable if you are exposed to a strong smell, and you're more likely to say someone is likable if you're holding a warm cup of liquid.

In the same way, you don't need to be consciously aware of these triggers (e.g. that the weather has changed or that you've moved in a certain way) in order to experience conditioned neuroplastic pain.