Treatment for Chronic Pain
Chronic pain affects approximately 50 million adults in the U.S. While pain often begins with an injury, it can frequently persist long after the body has healed.
What is Treatment for Chronic Pain at Light Street?
Chronic pain affects approximately 50 million adults in the U.S. While pain often begins with an injury, it can frequently persist long after the body has healed. At Light Street Psychotherapy, we specialize in treating Neuroplastic Pain—real, physical pain generated or amplified by the brain’s neural pathways in response to psychological stress, trauma, or emotional conflict.
The Mind-Body Connection
Pain is a danger signal. While it is vital for protecting us from physical injury, the brain can misinterpret emotional distress or past trauma as a physical threat. This creates a pain-fear cycle: the brain generates pain to protect you, the pain creates fear, and that fear reinforces the neural pathways, making the pain chronic. Even when pain is driven by psychological processes, it is 100% real. The good news is that just as the brain can “learn” pain, it can also “unlearn” it through targeted therapeutic intervention.
Clinical Approach
Using an integrated approach that includes Mindfulness, Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), CBT, and Psychodynamic therapies, we help you:
- Identify the Root: Understand the specific connection between your emotional stressors and physical symptoms
- Break the Cycle: Recognize how fear and learned neural pathways maintain the pain response
- Process Underlying Conflict: Develop awareness of the emotions, childhood traumas, or "suppressed" feelings linked to your physical distress
- Unlearn the Pain: Use psycho-education and mindfulness to retrain the brain's response to pain signals
- Restore Autonomy: Develop a new relationship with your body to transform the healing process
Who Can Benefit?
- Unexplained Chronic Pain: Individuals with persistent symptoms that haven't responded to traditional medical interventions, injections, or surgeries
- Stress-Linked Symptoms: People whose pain flares up during times of high emotional distress or life transitions
- Trauma-Related Pain: Individuals where PTSD or past traumatic experiences have manifested as physical discomfort
- The Emotional Toll: Those struggling with depression, anxiety, and hopelessness that often accompany long-term physical suffering