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This is an important question because once you’ve been in pain for a length of time (months or years) the problem usually involves your pain system. It’s no longer just a physical thing.
Most people in chronic pain are fixated on finding the physical cause of their pain and curing it. They spend all their time on physical treatments.
This means they miss out on where most exciting breakthroughs are made – in your pain system itself. Over the years, I’ve helped many people get out of chronic pain and back to fully engaged living. Here’s how:
You need to know how pain messages arise in your body and are interpreted by your brain, how they can be amplified or distorted – and how the pain you feel may not equal damage in your body.
This is the first and most important step – and if you skip it – nothing else will make sense or work.
Use this new knowledge to question the beliefs you may have about what’s wrong with your body (and what’s causing your pain.)
We’ve identified 3 separate chronic pain types, each with a different way of behaving. Step 2 is to find out which pain type you primarily are.
It’s then time to revisit your original diagnosis and reframe it using your new understanding.
When you do this, you’ll be able to set aside much of anxiety and negative beliefs that are unconsciously reinforcing your pain.
This powerful pathway can be awakened in your body and used to turn down pain. Discover NeuroMind practices – and how you can use these to control and down-regulate your pain. Over time, these work to return your pain system to normal.
This is the part where you answer for yourself the question: can central sensitization be reversed?
Using our NeuroMind library, you can find which techniques work best for you to turn down your pain, and start practicing them every day.
When you practice a NeuroMind technique daily, you make it an automatic habit. This habit will then replace the habit you’ve unconsciously used up till now – the habit of amplifying your pain.
This is where you take time to create a daily routine to practice your NeuroMind techniques in a way that works for your lifestyle.
It’s time to look at the physical side of things. Many people with chronic pain will also develop highly active trigger points. These micro-spasms in the muscle can create pain and tension, and will continue to do so until they’re released.
In this step, you find and treat your trigger points (if they are active) and monitor your breathing. Practice using diaphragmatic breathing instead of stress breathing.
Trigger points are a beautiful and gentle way to get fast pain relief. Treating them is acting on your pain system from a ‘bottom up’ way, while NeuroMind practices work ‘top down.’ Turning off your trigger points will also give you a new ease in your movement and allow you to explore activities which up until now were painful.
Diaphragmatic breathing is another technique many people find useful. It helps to reduce stress and provides a physical focus outside of your pain for your attention to latch onto.
Once you’re getting success using NeuroMind techniques, it’s time to start practicing natural movement.
Many people starting moving in a very unnatural way when they’re in pain. This is ok in the short term – but in the long term this unnatural movement can produce more pain.
Many people are surprised to find they’ve been using dysfunctional movement they were unaware of. As they explore natural movement, they’re able to reclaim the pain-free movement patterns they used to have.
Now it’s time to look into the subconscious and your personality, and see if chronic pain has a part to play in shielding you from repressed emotions.
Inside your brain, chronic pain is closely tied in with emotion. Over time, emotions can fuel pain, and vice versa, creating a self-sustaining cycle of pain and negative emotion.
Using NeuroMind techniques helps to break this cycle, however many people find that introspection is anther valuable tool to keep progressing and moving back into active living.
For some people, perfectionism and deep-seated beliefs have pushed them to the edge in the past – and their body has produced pain as an escape mechanism. However, the pain is usually worse than the problem they were originally facing. Learning how to explore and diffuse this connection is a powerful way to unwind chronic pain.
Step be step, it’s time to resume normal active living. Getting back to doing the things love takes the focus away from pain, and towards the direction you want to go.
This is where you need to keep the long view. Sometimes people get early success employing NeuroMind techniques – and then they stop doing them.
The important thing is to keep doing your practice things until it becomes habitual. All of these techniques will enrich your life. They work to get you out of pain – and they also work to help you handle stress and other life challenges. NeuroMind techniques are designed to easily integrate into your day so they become part of living a fuller, more deeply engaged life.
If you want help with following these steps – this is exactly what we do inside our flagship program on reversing pain sensitization. Here’s where to find out more >>>