Chronic Pain Recovery Coach Certified in Pain Reprocessing Therapy
Kristen V. Pierce
50 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. The back pain industry is a multi-billion-dollar production. Common treatments, such as back surgery, physical therapy, and steroid injections, often fail to alleviate chronic pain. Opioids are frequently prescribed unnecessarily for chronic pain, leading to an increase in drug overdose deaths. It’s a public health crisis! Chronic pain that does not respond to any treatment affects billions of people globally. The reason for the treatment failure is that doctors are only focusing on treating the body.
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Let me show you a different way of treating chronic pain that fixes the brain instead of the body. Imagine getting out of your chronic pain without drugs, surgery, or any other medical procedures or therapies that only treat the body. Is it so hard to believe that you’ve held the power to completely rid yourself of pain this whole time?
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Let’s face it, what you’re doing now isn’t working. And if what you are doing now isn’t working, why not try a different approach? If you’ve hit rock bottom, then what do you have to lose? The worst that can happen is that it doesn’t work…..but what if it does?
Pain Reprocessing Therapy
Are you saying my pain is all in my head?
No, that is not what I am saying exactly. Trust me, I know what pain feels like. I suffered from neck pain for sixteen years. Pain can burn, stab, ache, move, shoot down, feel heavy, and it’s tiring! The pain IS being generated by your brain, but the pain is very real. It’s just that the pain is most likely not coming from any real structural damage to your body, like the doctors told you. In actuality, your brain is creating real physical symptoms, and FEAR is the catalyst. Being in a state of tension, fear, and chronic stress can actually create real physical symptoms in the body. When this happens, sometimes the brain can
learn to be in pain.
Bulging and herniated discs, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, arthritis, etc., are considered normal abnormalities and a natural part of aging. Our spines degenerate over time. In fact, most of us, after the age of thirty, have spinal abnormalities. It’s just that the people who don’t experience pain don’t have a reason to get an MRI. It’s been noted that 52% of those who are asymptomatic (pain-free) and in their 30s have disc degeneration, and 30% have bulging discs. In asymptomatic (pain-free) 50-year-olds, 80 % have disc degeneration, 60% have bulging discs, and 30% have herniated discs. ​These numbers continue to go up as we age. These normal abnormalities couldn’t affect the nerves and produce the kind of pain that people claim because they are only small changes that most likely existed long before the pain ever started. So then, why do some people with these diagnoses have pain and others do not? It’s because the chronic pain sufferer’s brain is working a little differently. The pain is caused by the brain misinterpreting signals. We call it Neuroplastic Pain.
My approach
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What is Neuroplastic Pain?
Neuroplastic pain is pain that feels like it’s coming from the body,
but in most cases, it’s coming from misfiring pain circuits in the brain. Neuroplastic pain is brain-generated pain. It’s caused by the brain misinterpreting safe signals from the body as if they were dangerous. If you put your hand on a hot stove, the pain lets you know to move your hand so that you don’t injure yourself any further.
But sometimes, these danger signals can get activated even in the absence of structural damage. We feel pain even when there is no damage to the body. If the brain thinks there’s damage to the body, then it will respond as if there actually is.
Some people have pain that comes out of nowhere, whereas others’ pain stems from an original accident. Healing after an actual injury has a timeline that shouldn’t take any longer than three months to heal. It’s when the pain lingers outside of that timeline that it’s considered to be chronic neuroplastic pain. Our brains have pain memory.​
The brain can memorize neural pathways that can create pain and other psychosomatic responses in the body. Essentially, the brain learns to be in pain. As these neurons wire together, the neural pathways become stronger over time, which can make the pain and flare-ups worse and more difficult to get out of.
People who have long-term pain start building learned associations and certain behaviors around their pain that help soothe it, including avoidance, routines, or medicine. When you start to build a whole relationship with the pain, it becomes a toxic relationship. Let me help you address the toxic relationship you have with your pain so that you can recognize the power that you have over it. I want to help you disempower the fear over your pain by sending your brain messages of safety so you can understand your pain to be neuroplastic.
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What is PRT, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, and how does it differ from regular biomedical types of pain therapy?
PRT is a Mind-Body Program rooted in neuroscience. PRT is a
system of psychological techniques that rewire the brain to breakout of the cycle of chronic pain without drugs or surgery. Biomedical types of therapy, like physical therapy or surgery, treat only the body. However, if your brain is creating the pain and the body is not, then by solely treating the body, the pain will eventually return... hence the cycle of chronic pain.
PRT uses messages of safety and soothing techniques to teach the brain that the pain is actually safe and not to be feared. Clients learn that being fully present and engaged in the full enjoyment of life first will then lead to pain relief instead of the other way around.
PRT utilizes exposure therapy to help clients return to living by safely confronting their triggers. You have to get out of the mindset that your pain is caused by something physically wrong with you. Once you can get out of that mindset and start to see your pain as safe, temporary, and fixable, that is when the real healing begins.
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When will I be out of pain?
Once you stop caring! The pain will eventually go away once you stop fearing, agonizing over, worrying about, feeling anxious about, feeling annoyed by, reuminating over, and being preoccupied with your pain. I will give you the skills and tools to do this. It seems easier said than done, but with practice and repetition, your brain will eventually forget the pain and form new neural pathways.
Treating the symptoms of pain by treating only the body is not addressing the root cause of the problem. It is like putting a bandage on a wound without treating the underlying injury. The more activities and therapies you are engaging in to try to eliminate your pain, the more you may be reinforcing the pain by strengthening those neural pathways. This is because you are continuously telling your brain that something is structurally wrong with you. You are essentially feeding the pain, acknowledging it, and giving it life to grow.
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Have you ever had an eye twitch, an itch, or hiccups that lasted way too long? The more you focused on the issue, the worse it got. Once you stopped worrying about the problem when it came on and weren’t focusing on it anymore, it finally went away. Sound familiar? Dealing with chronic pain is similar. Our objective is to, at first, let the pain come on without fear or worry by sending your brain messages of safety. When pain is no longer a concern, understanding it's psychological rather than structural, the nervous system can regulate, allowing the pain to start diminishing. “When the mind is fully at peace, it is impossible for pain to get in.” I should know I’ve been pain-free for eight years now after sixteen years of debilitating chronic pain .....read my story in About Me.
Who do I treat?
I assist individuals who suffer from chronic pain and may find themselves having hit rock bottom. Many of my clients have received an undetermined diagnosis from medical practitioners. Others may have received a diagnosis that includes non-structural issues.
My clients not only suffer from spinal issues, but also other chronic conditions, which can include Fibromyalgia, migraines, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, anxiety, depression, and gastrointestinal problems, to name a few. It is important to note that my services are available ONLY to those who have undergone a thorough medical examination and have been cleared of any serious conditions or structural issues in the body. This is a mind-body approach to living a pain-free life.
This type of coaching is not considered an alternative to psychological or psychiatric therapy. If needed, I will refer clients to another qualified professional. All information shared between the client and the coach will be kept private. If a conflict should arise, we will work together to resolve it. However, if a solution cannot be found, the coaching agreement will be terminated, and a referral to another professional will be made.
Contact Me
I understand the impact that chronic pain can have on daily life, and I am here to help. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) or if you are interested in scheduling a session to begin your journey towards recovery. You can also find me on the painreprocessingtherapy.com website under their list of practitioners with advanced application.
California, United States
Tel: 949 689 0846