What is Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)?
What is Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)?
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is an evidence based treatment designed to retrain your nervous system and break the cycle of chronic pain. It’s built on the understanding that many chronic pain conditions aren’t the result of ongoing injury, but of the brain/nervous system misinterpreting harmless signals as threats, causing a pain response long after your body no longer needs protection.
How Pain Reprocessing Therapy Works:
PRT combines powerful cognitive, somatic, and psychological techniques like mindfulness, somatic awareness, emotional regulation, and pain education to help you reframe your relationship with pain and address the factors keeping it alive. By addressing the underlying causes of nervous system hypersensitivity and chronic symptoms, PRT helps you shift your pain experience and reclaim control over your body and mind.
Key Elements of PRT Include:
Neuroplasticity: Your brain has the incredible ability to rewire itself. PRT taps into this natural process, retraining your nervous system to respond differently to threat signals—breaking the cycle of chronic pain.
Pain Education: By understanding the nervous systems role in pain, you can reduce fear, anxiety, and the sense of helplessness that often accompanies chronic pain. Knowing that pain can become ingrained in the nervous system helps you regain a sense of empowerment and makes change possible.
Mindfulness and Somatic Awareness: Through mindfulness, you learn to tune into your body and sensations in a way that reduces the brain's threat response, helping you reduce symptom responses.
Gradual Exposure: PRT incorporates gradual exposure to movements or activities you may have been avoiding due to pain. By reintroducing these experiences safely, you teach your brain that they’re no longer dangerous, helping to reduce fear and pain.
How Online Coaching Works in PRT:
PRT treatment is about you finding a path to recovery. Through online coaching you can explore the factors that are maintaining your pain, and develop a tailored plan to action in your daily life. Online coaching is a flexible platform that creates a comfortable environment to share your questions, concerns, at a time and place that suits you. This is a safe and supportive environment to talk openly, and work together to find solutions that work for you.
If you’re ready to learn more about Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and how it could be part of your recovery, reach out to ben@painplan.co.nz.