Alan Gordon, LCSW is the creator of Pain Reprocessing Therapy, which is a therapy method for chronic pain management that has been proven by scientific study to relieve or completely eradicate neuroplastic pain. After reading AIan’s book, The Way Out, I had the opportunity to interview Alan. In this engaging conversation, we delve into the concept of neuroplastic pain as a real experience, exploring how the brain can misinterpret safe signals from the body as dangerous, leading to chronic pain. Alan shares his personal journey with chronic pain and we talk about the confusion and frustration that arises from conflicting medical opinions and the realization that many people with structural issues do not experience pain. Our conversation also touches on the psychological aspects of pain, including how stress and anxiety can amplify pain sensations. I hope you’ll learn as much as I did, and if you are one of the millions living with chronic pain, I think this conversation will bring you hope.
Here are other resources where you can learn more about neuroplastic pain and Pain Reprocessing Therapy:
- Pain Psychology Center (The Way Out book is available for order here.)
The following is the raw transcript of my conversation with Alan Gordon.
Neuroplastic Pain: Why Chronic Pain Isn’t Always Due to Structural Issues
0:00:00.000 — 00:00:04.800 · Emma McAdam
Well, thank you so much for being willing to be with us today. I know your time is really precious.
00:00:04.960 — 00:00:06.280 · Alan Gordon
Thank you for having me.
00:00:06.640 — 00:00:16.040 · Emma McAdam
Yeah, let’s just jump in. What’s neuroplastic pain like? How how can pain be a neural plastic response or nervous system response?
00:00:16.520 — 00:00:57.920 · Alan Gordon
It’s a good question. I first learned about neuroplastic pain when I developed chronic back pain myself. And this is in the mid 2000’s and I saw an orthopedic specialist. I got an MRI and he showed me my MRI scan. I had a five millimeter disc herniation with partial nerve root compression, and I saw three of the best orthopedist in Los Angeles and got three totally different diagnoses.
The first one said it’s definitely due to the disc herniation. The second one said, I actually don’t think it’s the disc herniation. I think it’s this disc degeneration that you have. And the third one, I just walked into his office. He looked me up and down and said, I think you have back pain because you’re just too tall.
00:00:58.360 — 00:00:59.800 · Emma McAdam
First, yeah.
00:01:00.140 — 00:01:13.419 · Alan Gordon
It’s very confusing when you’re getting all these conflicting opinions. I tried every treatment under the sun and nothing worked. And when I did a deep dive into the neuroscience of pain, I learned that the majority of people who have disc herniation and disc degeneration don’t have chronic pain. The New England Journal of Medicine did a study where they found 64% of people with these abnormalities in the back don’t have pain. They’re often just incidental findings. So the majority of chronic pain is actually due to the brain misinterpreting safe signals that are coming from the body as if they’re dangerous.
So all of these issues that we have going on in our body are real. They’re there, but lots of people have them. It’s just normal wear and tear. So what’s actually going on is there are safe signals that the body is sending to the brain. The brain is misinterpreting those signals as if they’re dangerous and generating pain.
The Science of Chronic Pain: How the Brain Misinterprets Signals
00:02:02.630 — 00:02:15.670 · Emma McAdam
And here’s the question. When I talk to people about this, they always reply, “But what are you saying? That my pain isn’t real? Like, are you saying it’s just in my head? Like, are you saying that my pain doesn’t exist? Because that’s impossible.”
00:02:16.310 — 00:03:14.009 · Alan Gordon
Yeah. I mean, there’s no such thing as imaginary pain. It’s a contract that I. It doesn’t even make sense. They actually did a study where I think it was at the University of Pennsylvania or something like that, where they took people in half of the subjects. They put a hot probe around their arm, and they were in an fMRI machine, and they were measuring what parts of the brain lit up, and they saw the pain centers of the brain light up.
Yeah. And then the other half of the participants, they just induced pain through hypnosis. A hypnotist there, it’s like, well, your arm is getting really hot. They saw the same areas of the brain light up. So what they’ve actually found is that pain is processed the same, whether or not it’s coming from a structural problem, the body, or whether the pain is neuroplasticity caused by the brain.
The pain is real. Either way, the brain experiences it the same way
00:03:15.610 — 00:03:16.370 · Alan Gordon
That is.
00:03:16.410 — 00:03:22.890 · Emma McAdam
That is so interesting. And it makes sense on a fundamental level. Like if you were if you were paralyzed and there was something going on, like if you had no, no nerve communication from your lower body to your upper body, like you had a spinal cord injury and something was hurting your foot, you wouldn’t know that something was hurting your foot, because that information has to go through the brain in order to be interpreted and processed, right?
00:03:42.770 — 00:05:03.880 · Alan Gordon
Yeah. All pain is generated in the brain. So even if you’re, you know, going for a run and you sprain your ankle, the pain isn’t processed in your ankle. The nerve endings in your in the skin cells in your ankles are sending signals up to your brain. Your brain is saying danger, danger and generating pain, so you stop running on it at the exact same thing can happen even if there’s no structural injury.
There’s this famous case study from a few years ago in the UK, where there was a construction worker who was out at a job site. He was walking along and he stepped on a nail, and the nail went through his boot and out the other side he was in agony. He called the ambulance. The ambulance rushed him to the emergency room.
They needed to sedate him two different times. They wheeled him back to the E.R. they pried the boot off and they saw the nail had gone right in between his toes. Didn’t even cause a scratch. So it was happening. Is there were safe signals that were being sent from his foot to his brain. But when he looked down and he saw the nail, he was in a state of fire flight.
And so what happened is his brain was misinterpreting these safe signals as if they were dangerous and generating just as much pain as he would have had if the needle really was going through one of his toes.
The Link Between Stress, Anxiety, and Chronic Pain Management
00:05:04.920 — 00:05:21.840 · Emma McAdam
Yeah, so if I understand this correctly, you correct me if I’m wrong. When we interpret stimuli, sensations, signals from our body as being dangerous, then our brain amplifies those signals and it has a heightened response. And sometimes that gets interpreted as pain. Is that right?
00:05:22.040 — 00:05:50.000 · Alan Gordon
That’s exactly it. And it isn’t. Even when we’re consciously thinking that we’re in danger, that there’s something wrong with us. Yeah, a lot of times what could happen is there’s an overlap in the brain between the different systems that assess for threats. So sometimes when psychologically we don’t feel safe, when we’re feeling a lot of stress and we’re putting a lot of pressure on ourselves, when we’re in a chaotic situation,
00:05:51.520 — 00:06:35.740 · Alan Gordon
there is danger, but it’s psychological danger. But the brain cannot perfectly distinguish between psychological danger and physical danger. So sometimes in those situations, we’ll feel pain, even if there’s nothing wrong with us. In the same way that we might feel anxiety, which is another physical danger signal.
Right. You’re supposed to feel anxiety. If 100,000 years ago you’re walking through the woods, you’re on a hunt and you see a sabertooth tiger jump out from behind the bush. Your life is in danger. Right? You have a anxiety attack. You’re able to fight harder or run faster than under normal circumstances and increase your chances of survival.
But sometimes in our daily life, there’s a high stakes job interview. You know, you’re taking a a midterm that’s worth half your grade. You’re going on a first date that you’re really nervous about. Yeah. And what could happen is your brain is misinterpreting psychological danger for physical danger. And you have an anxiety attack.
It’s the same thing with pain. That’s why we can have physical pain, chronic pain, even in the absence of actual tissue damage.
00:07:03.110 — 00:07:39.590 · Emma McAdam
Or in the presence of actual tissue damage that isn’t actually sending those signals. Because like you said, I mean, I’d heard about this too, that you can pull 100 people off the street and a majority of them have something weird in their back, but majority of them are not experiencing back pain. So we often attribute like, oh, I’ve been given a diagnosis. I’ve been told that the cause of my pain is this or this or this or this or this and and still and sometimes there is damage or actual like physiological needs to protect that area. But a lot of times it’s like the meaning we attribute to it.
00:07:40.030 — 00:07:50.750 · Alan Gordon
When I was dealing with pain, I had lower back pain, upper back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain. And I can’t tell you how many memories I got.
And every single time I would get these diagnoses, like with my back, I was told I had disc herniation, disc degeneration, moderate arthritis, and kyphosis of the spine from my shoulder. I had a partially torn rotator cuff. For my knee I had a partially torn meniscus. I was in my mid-20s and I’m thinking, “Do I have to live in a bubble? Like, how is there so much wrong with me?” But what I have since learned is that we all have general wear and tear, but most often it’s not causing the pain. There’s a guy that I worked with who got a motorcycle accident, and he broke every bone in his back, and 18 months later, he didn’t have pain anymore. The body’s really robust and resilient.
So what they found in chronic pain is very unnatural. So what they found is about 85 to 90% of chronic pain is actually neural plastic pain is real, but it’s due to the brain misinterpreting signals that are coming from the body rather than the actual structural issues that are happening that are just normal wear and tear.
00:08:57.220 — 00:09:01.780 · Emma McAdam
So how much pain do you experience day to day? Now, you personally.
00:09:04.020 — 00:09:23.860 · Alan Gordon
Yeah I generally don’t have pain. There are instances where if I’m putting too much pressure on myself then, you know, there was a few weeks ago where I was like working on something and I needed it by the next day, and it was like 17 hours straight and I wasn’t taking any breaks. And all of a sudden I was feeling it in my back and I was getting a little bit of a headache.
00:09:23.940 — 00:09:24.140 · Emma McAdam
Yeah.
What Fuels the Cycle of Chronic Pain?
00:09:24.180 — 00:10:11.520 · Alan Gordon
And at this point I no longer there was so there was like a really long time when I hated the pain. I just wanted it to be gone. I looked at it as my enemy, but when I got to a place where I didn’t have chronic pain anymore, it became way less scary. I realized there was nothing wrong with my body. Now I actually looked at it as like a friend or a helpful reminder that I’m putting too much pressure on myself, that I’m beating myself up too much, that I’m taking on too much stress.
And if you would have told me, you know, 15 years ago or whatever. Like one day you’ll look at the friend as, like a helpful little guide. I would be like, no, thanks, I’m not signing up for this. But you get to a point where when you’re able to overcome it, you actually see it’s your body’s way of letting you know that you’re not taking care of yourself in some way.
00:10:11.960 — 00:10:48.800 · Emma McAdam
And that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, I do a lot of work around anxiety and for me, like, I still experience anxiety, but when anxiety comes up, I don’t get anxiety around my anxiety. I’m not scared of anxiety. I don’t struggle against anxiety. Like, yeah, I’m like, hey, you’re here again, okay?
Is there something wrong or not? If there is, is there something I can do about it or not? And then I take that action, move on and like, have that relationship with those sensations or those thoughts in a way that it’s like it shows up, but it’s not as bothersome. You know, it just doesn’t impact my day.
00:10:49.400 — 00:10:50.840 · Alan Gordon
You’re not as afraid of it.
00:10:50.880 — 00:11:17.700 · Emma McAdam
That’s right. I’m not afraid of it. Yeah, yeah. And I think that takes us to kind of the points in your book, which are like, there’s some things that really cool this pain cycle. If I can remember, almost is meaning making, which is like, this is terrible, or this is because my back is ruined, or avoidance behaviors or fear, like pressuring yourself and criticizing yourself and thinking this will never go away.
Are those kind of some of the main things that fuel neuroplastic pain? Did I miss some?
00:11:18.260 — 00:12:17.150 · Alan Gordon
Yeah. So when people get neural plastic pain half the time it started with an injury and half the time it started out of nowhere. And in either case, you know, when you have an injury, it’s been a week, two weeks, three weeks. It’s still not better. Did I do something permanent? Is this ever going to go away when it comes out of nowhere?
You’re so confused about it. There’s so much uncertainty. Is this the rest of my life that is? We talked about earlier. Pain is a dangerous signal. And so when there’s an enormous amount of fear, when there’s a lot of panic, when there’s frustration around it, When there’s. You’re constantly preoccupied with it.
You know, when I had chronic pain, it was the first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning. And the last thing I thought about before I went to sleep. I remember I would wake up in the morning and I didn’t have any pain, and I would think, oh, okay, I’m pain free. When’s it gonna come? When’s it gonna come?
And in five seconds it was there on my back. I was like, my day is ruined.
00:12:17.190 — 00:12:17.710 · Emma McAdam
Yeah.
00:12:17.870 — 00:12:56.290 · Alan Gordon
Yeah. And so it’s like that is really the goal is when you recognize that when you have neoplastic pain, it is the fear and the incessant preoccupation and the worrying about it. And you know, how am I ever going to be able to have kids if I can’t even lift them? And if you’re invited to a party, are they going to have comfortable chairs there?
Everything is about the pain, and it’s that fear and preoccupation that keeps your brain interpreting it through a lens of danger, which just keeps it alive. Yeah. So yeah, it’s like essentially breaking that fear and preoccupation cycle. Teaching your brain that this is actually safe is how you pull yourself out of it.
How Tinnitus Relates to Neuroplastic Pain
00:12:56.850 — 00:13:38.410 · Emma McAdam
And I want to I want to get to that. I just want to share a story. I feel like this is like the example that resonates with me. My neighbor is a music composition instructor at a university, and he and his kids went and did this like it’s called the Heber Creeper. It’s this little train ride and it’s like 45 minutes.
But once you get on the train, maybe it’s longer, an hour and a half. It just slowly goes along. The train tracks out like five miles, and then it goes back. And while you’re on the train, you cannot escape. Turns out he accidentally got on the train on a day. Like sometimes they have, like, hot chocolate rides and Harry Potter rides, right?
He accidentally got on the train when it was like extremely loud dance party time.
So he’s trapped on this train with extremely loud music and he can’t escape. He gets ringing in his ears afterwards, and then he starts to think, oh my gosh, will this ringing ever go away? This is the most painful experience. This is terrible. And then he starts to think like, what if I can’t do my job anymore?
And so then he’s constantly scanning for this tinnitus, constantly scanning, constantly scanning at every day like his defended his back. Is is it there? Will I be able to work. And he’s doing all these avoidance behaviors. I need my kids to be quiet. I need the house to be quiet. I can’t do anything that triggers the tinnitus.
And now, at this point, like his brain has made these associations, his tinnitus is worse than ever. And oh, and like chronic pain, tinnitus, from what I understand. Are you familiar with this?
00:14:24.900 — 00:14:29.860 · Alan Gordon
Like I had it? Yeah, yeah, it was one of the 22 symptoms that I had.
00:14:29.900 — 00:14:43.420 · Emma McAdam
Yeah. Like does tinnitus fit? It fits in the category right of like this. Your brain scans for it. It can be contributed to by stuff going on in your ear. But we all have a little bit of tinnitus. And then it like when we scan for it, it just becomes louder and louder and louder.
00:14:43.860 — 00:15:52.860 · Alan Gordon
I was always so scared of it because, you know, I’d heard of people who had it. And I just I remember reading an article about it once, and I was always worried that I was going to get it. I remember one day I was in my room and all of a sudden I heard someone blowing a dog whistle outside of my window, and I opened my window and no one was there.
And I was like, oh, no. So for three days I had this ringing in my ear. But then I just treated it the same way that I treated everything else. I could think about it. Neural plastic pain is the brain interpreting physical sensations through a lens of danger. Tinnitus is just the brain interpreting sounds through a lens of danger.
If you think about it right now in the background, there is going to be some buzzing, some humming, the hum of the refrigerator, the air conditioner, the traffic going on outside. But it’s background noise. You’re not worried about it. You’re not preoccupied with it. It’s just there, right? The same way that right now you’re sitting and your feet are on the floor, and there’s pressure on the bottom of your feet.
But it isn’t bothersome. It’s just normal pressure.
00:15:52.940 — 00:15:53.620 · Emma McAdam
Yeah.
00:15:53.740 — 00:16:21.340 · Alan Gordon
It’s when, you know, you start interpreting those every sound, every hum, every buzz through a lens of danger. It amplifies it. It starts becoming bothersome. So the cure for your neighbor is the same cure for people who have neuroplastic pain, which is, when you reduce the fear and the preoccupation, you get your brain to start interpreting those sounds through a lens of safety instead of a lens of danger.
It deactivates the signal altogether.
How Pain Reprocessing Therapy Rewires the Brain
00:16:21.500 — 00:16:57.670 · Emma McAdam
Yeah. And that’s that’s pain reprocessing therapy. Like. And I and I just wanted to point out that, like, I think the reason why my neighbor had such a spiral with this tinnitus is because it felt so scary. What if I can’t do my job because of this tinnitus? My hearing is the most important part of me.
My ability to listen and perceive music is the most important part of me. So that fear became so loud that then he’s constantly scanning. The brain learns, oh, these. These signals must be super important. I’m going to pay more attention to them. I’m going to make them louder because my person keeps like showing me this is life threatening.
Basically.
00:16:59.150 — 00:17:42.190 · Alan Gordon
The brain is brilliant and its goal is to bring you to this place of fear and preoccupation. So it’s very common that runners are most likely to get knee pain or foot. Okay, there was a script, there was a screenwriter that I worked with who got wrist pain, and it’s like, you’re going to be much more likely to be terrified and preoccupied with these painful sensations.
There was a musician that I worked with who played the guitar, who started getting chronic finger pain. Right? And it’s the same thing. It’s like the brain is going to be more likely to choose something that will have the ability to scare you and bring you to that place of preoccupation in order to kind of keep that preoccupation alive.
00:17:42.350 — 00:17:50.310 · Emma McAdam
Yeah. So what do we do about it? What is like, how does one reverse that cycle of neuroplastic pain?
The Way Out Book: A Resource to Address Neuroplastic Pain
00:17:50.630 — 00:18:02.250 · Alan Gordon
Well, let me ask you first. I know that you read the book. Um, have you been dealing with pain yourself, or were you just kind of curious about the topic? How did you get into it?
00:18:02.290 — 00:18:29.890 · Emma McAdam
I generally don’t have, um, cycles of, of pain or chronic pain. My editor and writer and project manager had been having back pain for a year and a half. She is also an accountant. She told me she spent $3,577 on chiropractors, medicine, lots of hours at appointments, everything. So she’s like trying to figure out this back pain for a year and a half.
She read the book. She did your 12, um, thing checklist.
00:18:29.930 — 00:18:32.410 · Alan Gordon
The criteria to see if your pain is neuroplasticity.
00:18:32.450 — 00:18:48.930 · Emma McAdam
Yes. Yeah. Your checklist to see if your pain is neuroplastic. I think she had ten out of 12. And then she started doing the somatic tracking exercise and some of the other stuff, like she thought about the other stuff and avoidance and things like that. And within a few weeks, her back pain was gone.
00:18:48.970 — 00:18:49.570 · Alan Gordon
Wow.
00:18:50.460 — 00:18:59.180 · Emma McAdam
So she said, “You gotta read this book.” And I’m like, “Okay, maybe. How about you just write it and I’ll just record it?” She’s like, “No, Emma, you gotta read this book.” And I read it and I loved it.
00:18:59.220 — 00:20:58.900 · Alan Gordon
That’s so amazing. Oh, wow. Um, first of all, it’s so amazing that she remembered $3,577. But it’s even more amazing that you remembered that, and it wasn’t even you. I think that’s really common. I remember when I first developed it, back pain, I had insurance, I had good insurance. But you’re so desperate for these interventions that my grandfather had just passed away and left me $10,000, and it was gone in three months.
Right. Like biofeedback injections, co-pays. And so, you know, chronic pain is so expensive. We did this big study at the University of Colorado Boulder, where we treated patients with pain reprocessing therapy. And these were patients who had chronic pain, on average for 11 years going into the study, and by the end of it, after four weeks, 66% of them were out of pain.
And the most remarkable thing to me is there were a number of patients in the study who’d had chronic pain every day for 30 or 40 years, and they were even better by the end of it. And it was the first time that I saw. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in pain, once you break that cycle of reinforcement and you’re no longer fueling it, it will go away.
So they answer your question. The goal is to systematically teach your brain that these signals that are coming from your body are actually safe, right? Let’s say you have back pain and it hurts every time you say it. And every time you walk and every time you stand, it makes sense to think it’s the walking in the sitting and the standing that’s causing the pain.
So you start avoiding these chairs. You start avoiding waiting in line. I, I think I went two and a half years without going to the post office because I was so terrified of that, like 20 minute line.
00:20:59.300 — 00:20:59.980 · Emma McAdam
Yeah.
Somatic Tracking: A Key Tool for Pain Management
00:21:00.500 — 00:23:22.450 · Alan Gordon
And so what the goal is, is to actually get exposure to these physical positions and activities that you associate with the pain and teach your brain that these signals are actually safe. So what we do is we do something called somatic tracking, where if you have pain when you walk. What happens is, you know, you’re walking, you have the pain, it hurts, you hate it.
You want it to go away. You’re frustrated by it. You’re scared of it. So what I would do as a therapist, as I would literally go on a walk with someone. This technique called somatic tracking that you mentioned, is a way of paying attention to the pain through a new lens, right? So, for example, let’s say you have a three out of ten pain and it’s on the left side of your back and it’s always in the same place.
I would ask you, you know, let’s really look at the pain. Let’s explore it. How far to the left is it go. How far to the right does it go? Is it widespread? Is it localized? What’s the quality of the pain? Right. And you’re telling me like, oh, it’s a burning sensation, right? The problem isn’t the sensation.
The problem is that your brain is interpreting it through a lens of danger, because burning itself is not inherently bad. Like, if you have ever taken a really hot shower or gotten into a Jacuzzi when it’s really cold outside, it’s a burning feeling, but it feels really nice. And let’s say it’s a stabby feeling.
Yeah. Have you ever got an acupuncture? They’re literally stabbing you with needles, but it feels really good. So the goal is to pay attention to that sensation. Reinforce that this isn’t dangerous. There’s nothing wrong with my body. All of my muscles and my nerves and my ligaments are all fine. Everything’s firing on all cylinders.
My brain is simply misinterpreting these signals as dangerous when they’re safe. And it can free you up to explore the sensation in a safe way. And you can be like, oh, this is so interesting. It still feels like a burning sensation, but it doesn’t hurt. I’ve done somatic tracking exercises with people before, but they’ll say it’s so strange.
It’s still a three out of ten, but it’s not on the negative scale. It actually is on the positive scale.
00:23:22.450 — 00:23:23.810 · Emma McAdam
So interesting.
00:23:23.850 — 00:24:10.420 · Alan Gordon
The goal is not to get rid of the sensation or change the sensation, because if you’re trying to get rid of something, you’re just reinforcing to your brain that it’s dangerous. Why would you try to get rid of something that’s safe? But when you’re able to attend to it in a new way, in a curious way, objectively curious, and you’re just kind of assessing it and noticing it and teaching your brain that it’s safe.
It could change and you could still feel the sensation. You go from a burning feeling to a tingly feeling to a buzzy feeling. And of it’s when you’re no longer scared of it. It’s just a sensation and you’re not worried about it. You’re not preoccupied with it anymore. And the 2 or 3 days go by and it’s not even there, and you didn’t even realize it anymore.
00:24:11.540 — 00:24:30.500 · Emma McAdam
I’ve seen this work with people, and it’s your brain is good at rewiring and reassessing. Like, our brains are inherently learning machines. And so if we constantly tell them this sensation is dangerous, it’s going to have a loud response to that. And if we show it through experience, this is a sensation. Let’s be really curious about it. Your brain would be like, oh, actually, this isn’t dangerous to me. And it is, right.
Diagnosing the Root Cause: Is it Injury or Neuroplastic Pain?
00:24:36.020 — 00:25:13.840 · Alan Gordon
People have said to me before they actually had a physical injury. I, uh, ruptured a ligament in my wrist, or I had a second degree muscle strain in my back. Can we do pain reprocessing therapy to make the pain go away? And I’m like, oh, this doesn’t work if it’s an accurate reflection of danger. It only works if it’s a misinterpretation.
So we’re not able to heal pain that is actually due to a structural cause. But luckily, you know, 85 to 90% of chronic pain is neuroplastic. So the majority of people fall in this bucket.
00:25:14.200 — 00:25:20.040 · Emma McAdam
Yeah, that was my next question. When you have a physical source of pain, can pain reprocessing therapy still help?
00:25:21.240 — 00:25:24.520 · Alan Gordon
No. I actually did rupture a ligament in my wrist, and I treated it as if it was neuroplastic for three months. I was like, oh, this is just your brain is amplifying this. And finally, I saw a doctor, and they did exploratory surgery, and they were like, it’s not completely ruptured, but it was hanging on by a thread. Yeah. And I needed to get surgery and it fixed it.
So yeah, you know, if you actually have a structural problem, it needs to be addressed structurally. The tricky thing is that oftentimes things appear structural because MRI scans will show something, but it’s incorrectly attributed as the cause, when in truth it actually is neuroplastic.
00:26:01.100 — 00:26:06.740 · Emma McAdam
And I mentioned that 12 question checklist to see if your pain is neuroplastic.
00:26:07.260 — 00:26:55.630 · Alan Gordon
Yeah. So in the appendix of our book we have 12 different things to look for to assess whether or not your pain is neuroplastic or structural. Did the pain come on during a time of stress. Is it inconsistent? Right. Like sometimes you sit and it’s a seven out of ten. Sometimes you sit and it’s a two out of ten.
Is it worse on weekends than during the week or vice versa? Is it worse or better in the morning than at night? And there’s a lot of different things that we look for. Did the pain just suddenly come out of nowhere? Right. There was no injury or anything. One day you didn’t have pain, the next day you did. So there’s a lot of things that we look for to assess because we don’t want to just assume everything is neoplastic or we want to be scientific about it.
This is not a faith-based approach. It’s an evidence based approach, you know?
00:26:55.670 — 00:27:20.910 · Emma McAdam
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. I’ve injured my shoulder. And then I did physical therapy and then my shoulder got better. Like I injured my hand and I did I, I did different techniques and eventually my hand was able to heal and it just doesn’t come back. It hasn’t been chronic. So I think it’s important to validate, like some things require medical treatment. But when it’s neuroplastic, medical treatment you can do treatment over and over and over again and nothing helps.
The Timeline for Pain Reprocessing Therapy
00:27:21.110 — 00:28:08.130 · Alan Gordon
Yeah. Yeah. And so once you determine that it’s neuroplastic, it’s unbelievable how quickly I mean, people oftentimes when they reach out the first thing they’ll say is how long is it going to take for me to get better. Yeah. And the answer is however long it takes you to neutralize the fear and preoccupation around your symptoms, some people can do it in three days, some people take some month or two, you know.
Through exposure and through practice, lowering that fear, it’s really hard to wrap your mind around because we’re so conditioned to thinking there’s something physically wrong with us, because everything we’ve ever learned about cause and effect is telling us that’s what it is. There was a woman in that study that I told you about, and she had pain every time she sat for six years, like without fail.
00:28:08.370 — 00:28:08.930 · Emma McAdam
Yeah.
00:28:09.210 — 00:28:57.340 · Alan Gordon
So at the very first session, she sits down and she says, I know you’re going to tell me that this pain is coming from my brain, and I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it. And I was like, okay, let’s let’s just take it slow, see how it goes. Whatever happens, happens. No pressure. And I did a somatic tracking exercise with her during that first session.
And after ten minutes I said, how are you feeling? She said, I pain is completely gone. And so I was feeling kind of like smug and arrogant, and I look and I was like, well, what do you think now? And she looks at me for a few moments and says, I still don’t believe it. So it’s even in the face of evidence. It’s so hard to wrap your mind around.
It’s like embracing a perspective that is inherently counterintuitive. Yeah. Like, where is it taking in information through our senses?
Hope for Chronic Pain Management: You Can Get Better
00:28:58.740 — 00:29:10.460 · Emma McAdam
Yeah. Um, you know, I encourage people to check out your book, and then we will be publishing your somatic tracking exercise to access a lot of good resources out there. So thank you. Thank you so much.
00:29:10.620 — 00:29:35.820 · Alan Gordon
Thank you for helping to get the word out there about this. I think there’s like 70 million people in this country with chronic pain, and 60 million of them don’t have to be. And 59 million of them don’t even know that they have to. Don’t have to be. You know, so the goal is to really spread the word and let those people know who have chronic pain.
There is a very good chance that you can get better, that you don’t need to live this way your entire life. Mhm.
00:29:35.980 — 00:29:41.460 · Emma McAdam
Mhm. So important. So important. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the work you’ve done and appreciate your time today.
00:29:41.500 — 00:29:45.540 · Alan Gordon
Thank you. Thank you so much for helping to spread the word.
