How Brain Programming Causes Chronic Pain | Pain Science Physical Therapy 

Mindfulness will help and over time the repeated exposure should lessen the impact. Having tools in place to address the "fight, flight, freeze" response in the moment is key-- this is why the mindfulness can be helpful. The body produces sensations and the brain interprets them. If them brain interprets them as threat then there is a resultant cascade of hormones to keep the system running. If the brain perceives them at non-threat then it doesn't have the same hormone response.

Lol-- appreciate the humor. Thanks!

I am sooo sorry to hear how much you are struggling. I am assuming that you had a trauma in a car and this is why you have become so hypervigilant in a car. First thing I would say is that you are not alone and I appreciate you have shared your difficulties. Second-- if you haven't done this yet I would recommend looking into working with a therapist who specializes in working with patients who have been through trauma-- some will even specialize in car accidents! Helping get your trauma response under control will help a lot. Then working with a provider who specializes in graded exposure to activity will be helpful. There are PTs who work via telehealth (like the ones in my clinic) who you could work with so that you don't have to go out to the clinic until you are ready. Hope this is helpful. Let me know.

Yes it is very hard. But the good news is that it is possible to do!

​@@PainSciencePhysicalTherapyany resources you can point to?

@@412JFury there are SO many-- try curable health app, just had a patient recommend lin.health which looks like it might have some good resources. Working with a PT who specializes in using neuroscience to treat pain would be good. There are a lot of books as well. Too many to write here.

@@PainSciencePhysicalTherapy yeah I tried curable with no success. I went down the way of thinking of things being somatic rather than structural and now I have arms that don't work anymore. I had a surgery that failed and made things worse as well.

@@412JFury Sounds like you probably would benefit from working 1:1 with a PT who specializes in treating persistent pain so the treatment can be more targeted. Have you tried choosept.com? You can go on that site and look up PTs by specialization and location. It is just for the US so if you are out of the country then you would need a different resource.

Yep this is true.

Hi. The purpose of the video was to educate but not discuss treatment. However, the research supports education as a part of treatment for patients with persistent pain. Treating pain is complicated. There is no "one-size fits all" approach. So it is hard to create a video that talks about treatment. In my attempt to fill that gap I have lots of other videos on treatment.

It’s complicated is your advice and sadly this is what they are teaching in school now. Is it true that chronic pain screws with the brain, yes. Does it help a client get out of that chronic pain pattern no. I was told last week by a PT that studies show if he cares about my pain and talks to me then it will go down by 40%. What use is he? I can talk to my mother, there is no skill involved and this takes away the chase for skill.

Super good question- in terms of time it is patient (and programming) specific. That being said with repeated exposure and changing the mindset it will "break" the programming so that you can put in new programming and change the way the nervous system responds. For example-- when you go to buy yogurt you sing a song or think of a happy memory and then work on helping the brain get flooded with happy hormones. Doing this over and over can change the response. Just one example.