How can Therapy help with Chronic Pain?

The mind-body connection is real, and in therapy, I see the mental and physical as one in the same. And no, this does not mean “the pain is all in your head"- your pain is very real! Pain is a very complex phenomenon that not only lives in our body, but is very closely tied to our brain and our emotions. This isn’t an entirely new concept- Have you ever been anxious and it turned into an upset stomach? Or how about getting a headache from feeling stressed? In these ways, it is already widely understood that emotional and physical pain are closely interconnected.

Pain is not only a medical problem, it is a Bio-Psycho-Social problem, meaning that our emotions, environment, and past experiences affect our perception of pain. And while a medical workup is essential, many people with chronic pain & illness do not find long-term relief through medical interventions alone. That is, we need to be working with all three aspects of pain: Biology, Psychology, and our Social Environment. Modern medicine has taught us that pain can only be resolved through medical interventions that target the physical body, but this is just one-third of the problem.

The Brain Science

The brain science proves this: Pain filters through the amygdala, which is part of the the Limbic System. In fact, our brain receives the message from the body- for example when we get an injury, it sends pain signals back to notify us that we are in pain. This is all underneath our conscious awareness, and happens completely automatically.

Pain is manufactured by the brain. We know this because of phantom limb syndrome: that our brains can create a pain response for a body part that no longer exists. Similarly, when we take pain medications, they target the pain receptors in the brain in order for our pain to dampen down. Therefore, the brain has the power both to increase pain, as well as reduce pain.

Pain's only job is to protect us. It serves as an alarm system to make sure we get the help we need, and that we don't push through the pain and further injure ourselves. However, when it becomes chronic (lasting 3 months or more), that's when it no longer serves the same function. In fact, a recent study (Lee et al., 2026) made a groundbreaking discovery: that there. is a separate and distinct brain mechanism involved in chronic pain vs. acute pain. When this part of the brain was activated, mice misinterpreted a gentle touch as painful, even when there was no injury to the body.

This phenomenon is known as central sensitization, meaning: chronic pain exacerbates stress responses, and the neural pathways become stronger and more sensitive to pain inputs. After a while, the very same thing that may have caused us less pain in the past, we become more sensitive to. In other words, chronic pain hijacks our survival brain and sets off a false alarm that becomes habitual over time. This is where therapy can help.

The Fear-Pain Cycle

First, we have to understand that there is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is a subconscious phenomenon that involves our brain detecting and signaling pain, as described above. Suffering, on the other hand, involves the more conscious parts of our brain, including the prefrontal cortex and the thalamus. Suffering is the result of added interpretations, beliefs, and expectations, perceiving pain signals as dangerous, and invoking the fight-or-flight response of the autonomic nervous system.

You may notice a cycle that occurs when the pain (or other uncomfortable sensations) shows up, triggering a fear response that causes panic, dread, or anxiety. In turn, this leads to an increase in body tension, inflammatory stress response, and avoidant behaviors such as isolation. Afterwards, the pain often becomes more intense, leading to this pattern repeating itself all over again. It can look different for everyone, so learning about your individual fear-pain cycle is the first step to healing it.

How Therapy can Help

Through therapy, a safe space is cultivated to truly learn how to feel and process the emotions and pain symptoms in a healthy way. Chronic pain and chronic illness can be a very lonely and isolating experience, so talking to someone who gets it is hugely beneficial. If you live with chronic pain and illness, you have likely endured trauma, invalidation, and downplaying of your symptoms from the medical system. I am here to listen with compassion and understanding, because I know on a personal level how difficult it can be to suffer with long term health symptoms.

My job is to also help you understand your pain triggers and the fear-pain cycle that may contribute to added suffering. Once this is understood, you can learn more helpful coping skills that decrease the suffering from pain, and help rebuild your life again.

This might look like:

• Learning how to communicate your emotions and set boundaries

• Processing and working through past traumas that kept you hypervigilant

• Showing up more authentically and live a life more aligned to your values

• “Befriending” the pain and trying to find out what it is trying to tell you

• Learning practical coping tools for grounding and stress-management

Through these methods, I have seen clients experience fewer health symptoms and less pain- of course, in conjunction with appropriate medical care under a physician.

I too have suffered through years of chronic pain and illness; I have worked hard to get to the other side of healing, and I believe you can too.