Chronic Pain and the Nervous System: A Recovery Guide

INTRODUCTION

If you are living with unexplained chronic pain, this blog is dedicated to you. Our team here at Living Proof has been in your shoes: we know how physically and emotionally gruelling chronic pain is. We also understand just how distressing and confusing it is when pain cannot be satisfactorily explained by tests and proves resistant to standard medical treatments.

We are here to validate your experience, explain the complexities of chronic pain in clear terms, and offer a new way to understand and treat chronic pain through the lens of the nervous system.

In this blog, we cover:

• key forms of chronic pain

• why understanding your particular form of chronic pain matters

• neuroscience insights: the role of the brain and nervous system in chronic pain 

• evidence-based approaches for treating chronic pain that are grounded in the latest pain science 

Whether your chronic pain is relatively new or you’ve been managing pain for years, our hope is that this article provides a sense of being truly seen as well as important insights on pain and the nervous system…

And most importantly, hope for healing. 

PART 1: What is Chronic Pain?

Chronic pain: the extent of the problem

Chronic pain is often called a silent epidemic: in the UK, this condition affects an estimated 28 million adults (43%). It is more common in women and becomes increasingly prevalent with age, impacting over half of adults aged 65 and older. People in socio-economically deprived areas and certain ethnic groups, such as black adults, report higher rates. Around 12% of adults experience high-impact chronic pain that significantly limits daily life.

So, what is chronic pain?

Clinically, chronic pain is defined as pain lasting longer than three months or beyond the expected healing time. But it is far more than a medical label. Chronic pain is highly individual and often isolating, altering everyday life in profound ways. Unlike acute pain, which signals injury or illness and eases with treatment and recovery time, chronic pain persists (long) after appropriate healing time and standard treatments - and may exist without an obvious cause. For those affected, life can become a continuous struggle of exhaustion, discouragement, and distress.

Types of chronic pain

Chronic pain is generally classified into secondary and primary types. Secondary pain has a clear underlying cause, such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, or nerve damage. Identifying and treating these conditions is crucial.

Primary pain, on the other hand, occurs without an identifiable medical cause. Examples might include fibromyalgia, migraines, and irritable bowel syndrome. Primary pain can appear in multiple body areas, including:

• muscles and joints

• the head (chronic migraine or tension headaches)

• abdomen (irritable bowel syndrome, for example)

• pelvis (vulvodynia, interstitial cystitis, etc)

• back, neck, shoulders or limbs

  
  

Pain may be localised or widespread as seen with fibromyalgia. It may move, spread, or fluctuate over time, often accompanied by fatigue, poor sleep, and difficulty concentrating.

The particular challenges of primary pain

This form of pain can be particularly distressing because its origins are unclear, which often means that we don’t know how to treat it. Humans are evolutionarily wired to equate pain with physical damage. When medical tests come back normal or show only minor ‘wear and tear’, it can be confusing and disheartening. Standard treatments— medications, physiotherapy, nerve blocks— may provide limited or temporary relief. Pain can also vary day-to-day, intensify unexpectedly, or be triggered by gentle activity or light touch, further increasing confusion.

It’s very important to understand, however, that none of this means unexplained persistent pain isn’t real: brain imaging research reveals observable changes in both brain structure and activity in individuals experiencing chronic pain.

The impact of chronic unexplained pain

The impact of this condition extends far beyond physical discomfort. It can severely affect work, sleep, exercise, social life and overall quality of life. Chronic pain is often closely linked to depression and anxiety, as ongoing discomfort can disrupt mood, sleep, and daily functioning, while emotional distress can worsen pain perception. The effects also ripple out to family and partners, who may struggle to support loved ones living with persistent pain.

In summary: Chronic pain is complex, distressing and debilitating; it can profoundly affect individuals and their loved ones. At Living Proof, we understand these struggles deeply. The positive news is that neuroscience research offers hope. In the next section, we will be taking a look at this neuroscience – and explain why viewing chronic pain through the lens of the nervous system offers useful insights, promising treatment pathways and real hope for healing.

PART 2: The Nervous System Lens

Understanding pain through the lens of the nervous system 

It’s commonly known that the nervous system responds to physical threats with pain. For example, when you cut your finger, sensors in the skin detect the damage and send signals through nerves to the spinal cord and brain. The brain interprets these signals as pain, triggers a reflex to pull your finger away, and initiates healing.

Less well known is that the nervous system can also generate pain in response to non-physical threats: to psycho-social and emotional dangers.

The mind-body connection is, in fact, experienced every day: tears when we are sad, blushing when embarrassed, ‘nervous’ tummy or tension headaches with a stressful day. In some cases, debilitating physical pain can also emerge as a mind-body response.

Research shows that emotional pain activates some of the same brain regions as physical pain, for example pain from injury. In particular, both types of pain involve areas of the brain that register and respond to feelings of threat and discomfort (such as the anterior cingulate cortex).

Pain that is generated in response to emotional danger might be referred to as ‘mind-body’. Another term that is regularly used is ‘neuroplastic pain’, which we explain in detail below.

The role of the nervous system

To make greater sense of mind-body symptoms, it’s helpful to remember that the primary role of the nervous system is to keep us safe. This system, which consists of a wide network of nerve cells throughout your brain and body, is constantly scanning our environment for potential threats— both physical and non-physical— and, for survival reasons, it tends to err on the side of caution, sometimes interpreting objectively safe situations as potentially dangerous.

It’s useful to have some understanding of ‘predictive processing’ when we consider how the nervous system assesses threat. Predictive processing explains how the brain makes predictions about what’s going on in the world and the body based on factors such as prior experiences, context, learning, beliefs and emotions as well as sensory input. This means that the brain is more likely to predict threat and generate pain if there is expectation, prior experience or an emotional context that suggests danger – even if tissue damage is minimal or absent.

When the nervous system senses threat, it sends out chemical signals that prepare us to fight, flee, or freeze. These same signals result in the potential for the predictive part of the nervous system responding to produce pain as well other symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, digestive problems and many more. This is considered likely to be a protective response.

Through the autonomic nervous system, the brain regulates nearly every system in the body, including the cardiovascular, immune, muscular, digestive, urinary, and skin systems. When activated by chronic stress, it can therefore activate cascades of chemical reactions to generate diverse pain symptoms such as muscle tension, inflammation, gut or urinary pain and skin soreness – and many more.   

Because the autonomic nervous system permeates the entire body— sending and receiving signals from our muscles, organs, and skin— pain can arise in many different locations and may even become widespread.

The nervous system and chronic pain

When pain becomes chronic, neuroscience shows that this is often linked to nervous system dysregulation. Chronic stress, past trauma (particularly in childhood), lack of proper rest, and overwhelming life experiences can keep the body stuck in a prolonged survival state, allowing protective responses such as pain to persist as long-term symptoms.

What’s more, the nervous system can learn pain just as it learns any other pattern—through repetition and experience. When pain signals are triggered repeatedly, especially in situations linked with stress, fear, or injury, the brain begins to associate certain sensations, movements or emotions with danger. Over time, these neural pathways become stronger and more efficient, meaning the brain can produce pain more easily and with less input.

Neuroscientists refer to this process as central sensitisation, where the brain and spinal cord become overly responsive to sensory input from our bodies and the world around us, turning up the volume on pain and sometimes producing it even when there is no ongoing tissue damage. This helps explain why gentle touch and ‘safe’ movements can feel intensely painful, or why symptoms may continue even when scans and tests appear normal.

It’s important to repeat here that none of this means the pain is ‘all in the mind’ nor is it a sign of weakness. Very real and debilitating pain can be sustained by learnt neural pathways and nervous system dysregulation, driven by the brain’s ongoing attempts to keep us safe - and errors in threat and danger processing. This type of pain is referred to as ‘neuroplastic’ as it relates to the nervous system (neuro) and its ability to learn pain (plastic/changeable).

Why all of this matters?

The very positive news is that if the nervous system can learn pain, it can also unlearn it. We can harness the power of neuroplasticity – the remarkable capacity of the nervous system to change, learn and adapt - in order to reduce and resolve chronic pain. 

Neuroplasticity offers hope. Through neuroscience learning and gentle retraining (much of which can do ourselves with high-quality resources), we can each influence the direction of neuroplastic change. This is, of course, greatly empowering and encouraging news for people living with pain that has so far proven tough to relieve.

An understanding of the nervous system also helps us to see how some of our very natural responses to pain can actually perpetuate symptoms by reinforcing a sense of danger within the nervous system. This includes constant worrying, hyperfocus on symptoms, spending large chunks of our day trying to figure out and fix our symptoms and shrinking our lives to try to avoid the pain. Only when we bring compassionate awareness to these very human reactions to pain, can we begin to shift towards more helpful responses that support healing.

Where’s the evidence?

A comprehensive list of research within the field of mind-body medicine has been collated by our colleagues at the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms.

Recent studies have advanced this research by providing evidence of the effectiveness of neuroplastic treatment approaches for chronic pain. One example is the Boulder Back Pain Study, a 2021 randomised clinical trial at the University of Colorado Boulder focused on Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT - a psychological treatment approach for chronic pain), In this study, two thirds of the study participants who received PRT became pain free or nearly pain free after 4 weeks of treatment. Most of them still had relief a year later.  

To learn more about the research supporting the neuroplastic approach, head to the evidence page of our website.

PART 3: The Road to Recovery from Chronic Neuroplastic Pain

Getting Started  

If you are new to pain neuroscience and it is offering hope, your next natural question might be, how do I know if this science applies to MY symptoms – and how can I use it to support healing?   

Whilst each person’s roadmap to recovery looks somewhat different, there are common steps, which we outline here.

Assessment

The first step is always to rule out structural and organic causes for your symptoms with your doctors. This might include a fracture, tumour or infection, for example. If definitive causes for your pain have not been found, you can explore whether your symptoms might be neuroplastic in collaboration with your doctor.

There are various self-assessment tools available to help you consider this question; these include:

• Living Proof’s self-assessment quiz

• 12-question quiz from the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms

• Dr Howard Schubiner’s ‘FIT’ criteria

These tools can help you to:

• connect the dots because stress, emotions, trauma, your nervous system and your pain

• explore how your symptoms behave

• consider whether your pain patterns make sense with a neuroplastic explanation

Signs that your pain could be neuroplastic include:

• The pain has not been explained (satisfactorily) by medical investigations

• The pain began at a stressful time: stress puts the brain on high alert and more likely to trigger a danger alarm

• Pain or symptoms came on without an injury: no clear structural explanation

• If there was an injury, pain continued after appropriate healing time and treatment

• Symptoms are inconsistent: they go up and down, change in quality, move around the body, particularly if they become symmetrical

• History of multiple puzzling chronic symptoms: the nervous system could be what links them all

• Pain responds to stress: it increases during or following stress, and decreases when relaxed or pleasantly distracted

• Symptoms are triggered by things that have nothing to do with the body such as time of day or weather

• Delayed onset for pain: it appears sometime after an activity not during

• History of childhood adversity which can dysregulate the nervous system: this does not have to be significant trauma; it can be more subtle stresses that accumulate.

• Personality traits that create inner pressure – perfectionism, people pleasing, excessive worrying, self-criticising, self-pressure, etc.

To help you further in connecting the dots, you might also create a timeline of stressful or significant events across your life and times you’ve experienced chronic symptoms.  Significant events might include being bullied at school, being in a toxic work environment, a stressful house move, getting married, getting divorced, becoming a parent, etc. 

As you make connections between stress/emotions/life experiences and your symptoms, it can help to write an evidence list. Add to this list, any evidence you find of your symptoms behaving in neuroplastic ways, for example responding to stress or moving from one side of the body to another. Revisit this list frequently and stay on the look-out for more clues of neuroplasticity as this will increase your sense of safety over time along with your confidence that you can recover.

Neuro-education

The foundation for healing chronic neuroplastic pain is neuroscience education. This is because learning about pain science sends strong safety signals to the brain, reassuring the brain that our pain does not indicate harm - and can be reversed.

Through neuroscience education, we learn about:

• the role of the brain and nervous system in chronic pain

• how and why pain is generated (in response to psycho-social and emotional threats as well as physical ones) 

• how pain can become chronic in the absence of structural damage or illness (as a result of nervous-system changes and dysregulation)

• how our (understandably) fearful responses to our pain can unintentionally reinforce the danger signal – and how shifting our responses can help deactivate this signal 

• mind-body tools and techniques we can use to support recovery

Thankfully there is a wealth of evidence-based resources available to help us here: books, podcasts, films, apps, etc., many of which are listed on our website. If you are looking for some excellent places to start, we would love to share a few recommendations:

• What is Pain - video series by Dr Howard Schubiner explaining chronic pain

• Taming the Beast – pain scientist, Lorimer Moseley’s short video explaining

• The Way Out (book) and Tell Me About Your Pain (podcast) from Alan Gordon, LCSW 

• Unlearn your Pain (book), Dr Howard Schubiner

• They Can’t Find Anything Wrong (book), Dr David Clarke

• Chronic Pain – Your Key to Recovery (book) by Georgie Oldfield

• Nicole Sach’s book, Mind Your Body and her podcast, The Cure for Chronic Pain

• The Science behind the Symptoms (podcast) from the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms (ATNS) all about the neuroscience explaining chronic symptoms

Often we need to repeat and reinforce our learning using a range of resources so that the science and messages of safety truly land and provide deep reassurance and confidence that healing is possible. Over time, this learning integrates and unwinds the fear and sense of danger that keeps chronic neuroplastic pain alive. This is the first step to unlearning your pain.

Implement the science  

Once you understand the neuroscience, the next step is to implement it. It’s easy to get stuck at the research stage of healing but recovery requires us to bring the science to life using mind-body approaches that soothe the nervous system, retrain the brain and allow us to safely express and process our emotions. Detailed explanations of this mind-body ‘work’ are provided below.

a)    Soothing the nervous system

Neuroplastic pain stems from a hyper-activated nervous system that is stuck in threat mode. Recovery involves supporting the nervous system to find greater balance and regulation to increase our felt sense of safety.

Here we can use a variety of mind-body practices such as breathwork; mindfulness and meditation; somatic techniques like grounding and orienting; gentle movement, stretching yoga or tai chi. By building pauses into your day when you centre and soothe your nervous system, you help your system register safety and find balance.

The first step here is learning to simply tune into the nervous system and understand how you are feeling (for example, a little activated or shutdown) and discovering what steps you might need to take to feel a little safer. This might include things like actively slowing down, letting your body move in particular ways, taking items off your to-do list or building in pauses for peace and stillness.    

Healing may also require lifestyle shifts that reduce both external stress and internal pressures – such as perfectionism, people-pleasing, and self-criticism that can place strain on the nervous system – and increase ease, comfort and pleasure. Part of this process is understanding why we might have adapted these internal pressures (often in response to life experiences) - and slowly retrain our brain to feel safe without them.

b)    Retraining Your Brain

We naturally respond to chronic pain with fear, worry, and constant attempts to ‘fix’ symptoms. This is completely understandable – and human – but unfortunately, these reactions signal danger to the brain and can intensify neuroplastic symptoms, which are driven by stress responses.

Healing involves retraining the brain away from fear and pain monitoring and toward safety and reassurance.

Brain training might sound like a complex and intimidating process but, at its essence, the process is simply about:

• noticing fearful thoughts about your pain: worry, catastrophic thinking, trying to problem-solve the pain (all of which signals danger to the brain)

• meeting these thoughts with compassion (they are natural)

• re-directing yourself towards a more supportive thought – a safety message, a snippet of neuroscience or even a pleasant visualisation or other pressure-free activity

• doing this on repeat with gentle consistency

With regular practice, this process rewires the neural pathways that sustain chronic pain. 

c)     Processing Your Emotions

Unprocessed emotions — whether rooted in past or present experiences — can keep the nervous system in a state of heightened alert.

So many of us suppress our emotions, particularly those we find ‘unpleasant’ such as anger, shame, jealousy, loneliness, etc. Unfortunately, when we treat emotions as threats, our nervous system responds by activating our threat physiology, which can include pain.

For many people, an important part of healing is learning how to safely express these emotions rather than suppressing them. This might be done, for example, through expressive writing practices (journalling) or somatic practices (emotional embodiment). Professional support or counselling may be needed here, especially when working with trauma.

d)    Making lifestyle changes

Healing also involves shaping a lifestyle that supports the nervous system. This means lowering stress and pressure, and increasing joy and ease.

Recovery asks us to widen our world again — re-discovering pleasure, creativity, connection with others and a sense of self that is not defined by pain. We might need to go slowly here but these experiences communicate safety to the nervous system and play an essential role in the healing process.

Find Support and Community

Whilst mind-body healing requires much inner work you don’t have to figure it all out on your own! There are a number of online programmes and apps that offer a guided roadmap for healing, bringing together neuroscience lessons with evidence-based mind-body practices. A list of options is provided on the resources page of our website - and includes:

• The Curable app

• Freeme

• Nervana

We have chosen to collaborate with these particular apps as affiliates because we truly believe in their products: they are rooted in the latest neuroscience and use techniques that we ourselves employed to recover. If you use the links above the try these products, you will also be supporting our not-for-profit organisation as all affiliate income is re-invested in our mission.

Wonderful support also exists within the mind-body healing community, from people who have used neuroplastic approaches to heal their own symptoms. This includes free and low-cost support such as Facebook communities, webinars and in-person meet ups. We would like to highlight a few free supportive online communities:

• Stories of Hope Online – Living Proof’s series of free webinars where we bring you inspiring conversations with recoverees and experts in pain science. Every session includes Q&A where you can ask our panel of recoverees your questions about healing chronic pain and symptoms – and receive insightful support and encouragement. Sessions are advertised here.

• Pain Café - a safe & supportive virtual space designed for people living with persistent pain. Pain Café provides education, hope and community, with a focus on empowering individuals to relieve their pain using mind-body approaches. Sessions are free to attend, held monthly and are advertised by Mapcoach (Narinder Sheena) here. 

• Recovery Road - a free online community and safe space where you can connect with others on mind-body healing journeys. Through this platform, you can find conversation, connection, encouragement and insights from people who truly 'get' what it's like to live with chronic symptoms - and to use mind-body approaches to heal.

We know that the nervous system heals best in connection with other supportive humans – so reach out and lean in!

Consider Working with a Coach

You may also wish to consider working with a professional mind-body coach as you heal. A coach can help by:

• explaining the science in ways that truly resonate with you and providing personalised insights that can help to unlock healing

• helping you to understand how your thoughts, emotions and patterns influence your nervous system – and to make shifts that actually stick

• provide practical tools to soothe the nervous system, retrain the brain, process emotions and reduce stress

• help you maintain a recovery-focused mindset through expert support and encouragement

You can find a list of practitioners who have completed SIRPA’s CPD training in mind-body approaches here (primarily UK-based and online).  

The Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms also provides a practitioner and coach directory.

Or you might look for a practitioner trained in Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), an evidence based psychological approach to pain recovery, in this directory.

PART 4: RECOVERY IS POSSIBLE: SUCCESS STORIES

What Recovery Looks Like

As mentioned above, the recovery road will look different for each person. This is because we all bring different circumstances, beliefs, life experiences and challenges to the journey. For some people, healing happens fairly swiftly (within weeks or months) using neuro-education and a number of mind-body techniques such as journalling. For others, the journey can be extended and require us to use the full tool box of mind-body practices.  

The path is rarely linear: there may be healing plateaus, hurdles and setbacks along the way but often when we take a step back, we can see the upward trajectory of healing.

It isn’t helpful to compare your path to others’ as this can raise doubt and fear, which are counterproductive in neuroplastic healing. Instead, it’s helpful to remember that recovery takes time because you are:  

• Shifting long-standing beliefs, habits and patterns

• Regulating a nervous system that may have been dysregulated for years

• Rewiring well-worn neural pathways to actually reduce and resolve symptoms (not just manage them)

For some of our team, full recovery took several years. However, improvements in symptoms and quality of life were seen earlier and this spurred us on. 

Success Stories

At Living Proof, we share success stories to inspire, reassure and raise hope that healing chronic pain and symptoms is possible using mind-body approaches.

If you visit our recovery wall, you will find an inspiring sea of recoveree faces – people who have healed various forms of chronic pain (as well as other persistent symptoms) and reclaimed their lives.

This includes:

• Dan’s story – recovery from chronic back pain

Dan suffered from debilitating back pain and sciatica for 15 years - and was told he had degenerative disc disease that might require surgery. After discovering the mind-body approach, he shifted from purely physical treatments to understanding how stress, fear, and repressed emotions were contributing to his symptoms. Through education about pain science, journaling and gradually returning to activity in a structured and safety-focused way, his pain steadily resolved. He ultimately became pain-free and went on to complete a Half Ironman.

• Lara’s story – healing from myofascial pain syndrome

Lara endured years of debilitating chronic myofascial pain syndrome and a host of other persistent symptoms that conventional medicine couldn’t resolve. After discovering the neuroplastic approach, she began to understand how stress, repressed emotions, and learned neural patterns were driving her symptoms. By reframing her understanding of her pain and making mindset, behavioural and lifestyle shifts, Lara has been able to achieve significant healing.

• Tanja’s story – recovery from fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis, irritable bowel syndrome

Tanja struggled for years with multiple debilitating conditions — including fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis (IC), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic pain, burnout, insomnia, and anxiety — with countless diagnoses and failed treatments that left her hopeless and unable to function normally. She eventually discovered a mind-body medicine, learning that chronic symptoms can be driven by stress, unresolved emotions, and nervous system patterns. Through consistent nervous system work, emotional expression, radical rest and somatic practices, she gradually rebuilt safety and trust in her body, became largely pain-free, resumed all the activities she loved and regained her life and vitality.

• Jean’s story – recovery from chronic back and neck pain

Jean lived with debilitating back, neck, and sciatic pain, trying many medical and alternative treatments without relief and growing increasingly hopeless. His turning point came when he discovered Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) through Alan Gordon’s book, ‘They Way Out’, which reframed his pain as learnt and reversible. Using pain reprocessing techniques, Jean was able to return to an active, rewarding life, which he once though was impossible.

There are hundreds of mind-body healing stories across the web – and there is something to learn from each and every journey. Here are few other places where recovery stories are collected:

• Success stories from SIRPA

• ATNS Podcast - the Story Behind the Symptoms

As you explore success stories, here a few key things to remember: 

• Each story represents just one path to recovery; trust in your own path and pace. Avoid comparing your journey with anyone else’s. Each journey will be unique because we all bring unique histories, circumstances and beliefs to it.

• You do not need to find a recoveree with your exact pain presentation to know that healing neuroplastic pain is possible. The autonomic nervous system permeates the entire body and interacts with the other systems of the body, such as the immune and muscular systems. As a result, pain (for example, from inflammation or muscle tension) may be experienced in almost any part of the body.

PART 5: COMMON QUESTIONS

Does the neuroplastic approach imply that my pain is ‘all in my head’?

Absolutely not. All pain is real. It is never ‘imaginary’ or ‘all in your head’. People with neuroplastic pain experience genuine and often severe physical pain. 

Remember that all pain is created in the brain, whether in response to tissue damage or psychological and emotional threats. Structural and neuroplastic pain are equally real but have different origins and require very different treatment approaches.

Can I really recover from chronic pain?

Yes, when pain is neuroplastic, recovery is absolutely possible through neuroscience education, nervous system and brain re-training, emotional discovery and processing, and lifestyle changes that support nervous system health. Thousands of people across the world have used mindbody approaches to recover.

How long will recovery take?

Length of recovery can vary widely. A small minority of people recover rapidly after reading about the science of neuroplasticity and realising it explains their pain. This is rare, however. For most of us, the process takes months to years (although improvements can be seen much earlier). This is because recovery involves shifting long-standing beliefs, habits and patterns and learning to live in ways that support nervous system health. Neural pathways rewire over time through repetition of our learning and recovery practices. Trust in your own pace.

What if I've tried everything?

It can be hard to have hope for any new approach when your pain has remained stubbornly difficult to treat. However, once we understand that in many cases, chronic pain is neuroplastic, new evidence-based treatment paths become available. The neuroplastic approach is grounded in neuroscience and targets the nervous system changes and dysregulation that keep chronic pain alive. It’s very different to other approaches that seek to ‘manage’ symptoms or help you to ‘live well’ with your pain.

CONCLUSION

To summarise, chronic pain is rarely driven primarily by ongoing tissue damage: it is often rooted in learned patterns in the brain and nervous system. When the nervous system stays in a prolonged state of threat or stress, it can become overprotective, continuing to produce debilitating pain even after the original injury or infection has healed. This pain is very real, but its source lies in altered neural pathways and nervous system dysregulation rather than structural harm.

A nervous-system–based treatment approach can make a huge difference because it addresses the root causes of neuroplastic pain. By soothing the nervous system and retraining the brain’s interpretation of safety and danger, this approach reduces the fear, tension and hypervigilance that keep pain cycles active.

Recovery from neuroplastic pain is possible because the brain is changeable (plastic). Just as pain pathways can be learned, they can be unlearned. With consistent support and practice, the nervous system can find balance, allowing pain to decrease - or resolve entirely.

If you are living with chronic pain that has not been satisfactorily explained by your doctors and this blog has inspired you, head to our self-assessment quiz so that you can start connecting dots between your own pain, stress and the nervous system – and take your first steps towards recovery (the neuroplastic way!). 

References

Macfarlane, G.J., et al. (2016). Epidemiology of chronic pain in the UK: a systematic review. PMC – Reports that around 43% of UK adults experience chronic pain, with prevalence increasing with age and higher in women.

Arthitis UK (2021). Chronic pain in England: Unseen, Unequal, Unfair - states that approximately 12% of adults have high-impact chronic pain that significantly limits daily activities, and notes higher prevalence in deprived areas.

Scottish Government (2022). Scottish Health Survey 2022: summary report - highlights how chronic pain prevalence rises with age and is linked to socioeconomic deprivation.

NICE (2021). Chronic pain (primary and secondary) in over 16s: assessment of all chronic pain and management of chronic primary pain (NICE Guideline NG193) — defines chronic pain as pain lasting more than 3 months.  

Bair, M.J., Robinson, R.L., Katon, W., & Kroenke, K. (2003). Depression and anxiety disorders in patients with chronic pain: a review. JAMA Network Open – Highlights that up to 40% of adults with chronic pain experience clinically significant symptoms of depression and anxiety, showing the strong link between long-term pain and mental health.

Zeng X., Sun Y., Zhiying Z., Hua L., & Yuan Z. (2025). Chronic pain‑induced functional and structural alterations in the brain: a multi‑modal meta‑analysis. The Journal of Pain. Pub Med – meta-analysis finding that chronic pain consistently alters brain structure and connectivity, especially in the insular cortex and frontal networks.

Kross, E., Berman, et al (2011). Social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain. PNAS – fMRI study showing that social rejection and physical pain activate overlapping brain regions, including the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.

Ashar YK, Gordon A, Schubiner H, et al. (2022). Effect of Pain Reprocessing Therapy vs Placebo and Usual Care for Patients With Chronic Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry – evidenced the effectiveness of Pain Reprocessing Therapy for chronic back pain