Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)
What is Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)?
Pain Reprocessing Therapy is an alternative approach to chronic pain treatment. PRT is based on pain neuroscience and focuses on the brain as the source of chronic pain. When the brain perceives danger, the brain’s alert system turns on and sends signals to the rest of the body. Some of the physical symptoms of the stress response are muscle tension, shallow breathing, tightness in the chest, a faster heart rate, and more. When the brain is in this state of danger often, we begin to experience chronic stress. Chronic stress can lead to physical symptoms in the body, especially chronic pain. Pain itself can be a stressor, so the more pain we feel, the more fear and frustration we have, and then the more pain we then feel on top of that. This cycle repeats and becomes a habit for the brain. Even if your pain started with an injury, after the injury has healed, pain can continue due to the neural pathways in the brain.
Our thoughts and emotions also impact how we perceive pain. So perhaps you have a very stressful week at work and in response, your muscles tighten up. And then you begin to experience neck pain. The more neck pain you feel, the more frustrated you become, and that triggers even more pain. The next time you have a busy period at work, your brain remembers the neck pain from the last time and can create the sensation of pain based on your past experience. Now, this process becomes a habit.
PRT works by teaching you how to interpret pain signals without fear or frustration, thus breaking the cycle of pain. Medication, surgery, and other procedures can cause side effects. PRT is an alternative treatment that focuses on thoughts and behaviors around pain.
Pain reprocessing therapy helps to “retrain your brain” to relate to the pain without fear or other intense emotions, like frustration or anger. Seeing the pain as safe and non-threatening helps your body respond to the stressor with more calm and ease.
Chronic pain can impact your quality of life, making many daily tasks feel almost impossible. Our specialized approach to PRT helps you naturally ease your pain so you can feel relief and enjoy your life again.
Your pain is very real. Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is not based on the idea that pain is made up or imagined. All pain is real, and you are certainly feeling it, but it comes from your brain, rather than a structural problem in the body. Many things can trigger the brain, including a movement, a thought, an emotion, food, or another stressor. The brain then sets off a variety of physical responses in the body, particularly pain. Then pain can become a cycle because you feel the pain and respond with more stress or fear.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy changes how the brain receives the pain signal by changing the narrative and using emotional regulation techniques. Through repetition, you create a new association for your brain: “this pain is dangerous” becomes “this pain is just a sensation, and my body is not in danger.” Once your brain perceives the pain as safe and non-threatening, it can start to let go of the pain signals. In time, the pain gets better because the brain lets go of the neural pathways associated with pain.
With Calm Your Brain, Heal Your Pain, provided by a PRT-certified therapist, you receive twenty-seven tools and exercises to dig deep into how you specifically think about your pain, experience your pain, and work through setbacks in your chronic pain treatment. By understanding your unique mind-body connection, you can finally address the root cause of your chronic pain and find lasting relief.
What Is the Mind-Body Connection?
The mind-body connection is all about understanding the link between your thoughts, behaviors, and habits to what happens physically in your body. What we feel in our body can also impact how we feel emotionally, like a feedback loop.
Conditioned responses also play a large role in chronic pain. Like Pavlov’s salivating dog (a dog hears a bell and starts salivating without food present), the brain perceives a threat or danger from a stressor and the brain sends pain signals out of habit. This creates what is called a neural pathway.
Our certified pain reprocessing therapists help you change your relationship to the stressors and resulting pain, thus changing neural pathways in the brain. We want to help you get to the root of your chronic pain: your brain. And when you can focus on the brain as the cause of pain, rather than a structural problem in the body, pain can finally reduce.
See Results with PRT Treatment
At DC Metro Therapy, we provide a course on Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) called Calm Your Brain, Heal Your Pain. It is a self-guided online course with weekly modules that fit into your busy schedule and complements your regular pain management practices. We validate your experience of pain and healing, and we want to provide you with tools and exercises that can help. Choose the tools that work best with your personality, routine, and learning style. By allowing your healing to be self-guided, you can finally start seeing results in your pain and apply these tools to other areas of your life. If you are not seeing results after 30 days, we provide a full refund.
The PRT course was created by our therapist, Annie Miller, who suffered from chronic pain for years before finding healing through Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT). Annie has used PRT in her own healing journey and combines this experience with a variety of other therapeutic tools. She was able to heal and live pain-free and wants to teach others how to do the same.
DC Metro Sleep & Psychotherapy is a therapeutic practice focused on healing chronic pain, insomnia, and trauma. We serve adults and teenagers with approved therapeutic practices such as Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-i), Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP). We have over 15 years of experience, and we look forward to becoming a partner in your healing journey.
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