Sometimes when people are told that pain is generated by their brain they take that to mean that it's all in their head. This is a common misunderstanding about the neuroscience of pain. Pain is real but… it’s more complicated than a simple read out of tissue damage.

Chronic pain is defined as "pain lasting longer than the expected healing time after an injury or illness". Unfortunately the brain pathways that get activated with an injury can stay stuck on and keep producing pain long after an injury has healed. The good news is that brain pathways can be changed and chronic pain can be resolved.

Here is my main insight from week 4 of my pain reprocessing therapy training. The energy behind treatments for chronic pain is just as important as the treatments themselves. If you approach your chronic pain care with urgency and intensity that can put your brain on high alert and perpetuate your pain.

This is week 3 of my pain reprocessing therapy training. My key insight from the training this week is how your overall sense of safety in life can influence your experience of pain. For some people, finding ways to feel safer in their life and in their body is the most important thing they can do to alleviate their pain.

I'm in week 2 of my pain reprocessing therapy training and honestly, it's blowing my mind. My highlight from this week is a deeper understanding of neuroplastic pain. The short version is that your brain can start misinterpreting normal, healthy signals from your body as if they're dangerous and create pain to alert you about the danger.

The bio-psycho-social-spiritual model of chronic pain acknowledges that chronic pain is much more than just a read out of tissue damage. Stress, trauma, emotions and relationships can contribute to chronic pain just as much as injuries and inflammation.

Over 50 million adults in the U.S. live in chronic pain. It's the leading cause of disability and the financial burden of chronic pain is greater than cancer, heart disease and diabetes combined. As staggering as these statistics are, the true heartbreak around chronic pain lays in the day to day impacts on real people's lives.

This is the first video in a series on chronic pain. To start off this series I wanted to expand your understanding of what pain actually is. You may be surprised to learn that modern neuroscientists have discovered that pain is more than just a signal from your body about an injury. Pain is an alarm signal, created by your brain to alert you when it perceives some danger or threat.