Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is the form of treatment that has demonstrated strong and persistent effects on the treatment of chronic pain (Ashar et al, 2021). Traditionally, therapy has been aimed at helping patients live with pain, but in PRT the goal is to get rid of the pain through therapeutic work.

The psychologist helps the client distinguish between what is pain caused by physical damage (structural pain) and what is pain caused by psychological causes (neuroplastic pain). In working with chronic pain, traditional pain management (medicines, surgery, exercise, etc.) shows little effect over time. Researchers are now leaning more towards the fact that chronic pain may have a psychological cause, and should be treated psychologically.

That the pain is psychologically conditioned or neuroplastic does not mean that the pain is imagined, but that it is no longer a physical injury that is the main cause of the pain. By working with the psychological factors that maintain and partly create pain, the client will learn powerful techniques and tools that they can use during and between classes, and be able to overcome the pain.

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