Chronic Pain? 3 reasons brain re-training might not help

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Hey, it's Dr. Fannistell at bouldermindbody medicine.com. If you're dealing with chronic pain and you're doing some brain retraining to try to rewire your pain circuits, good on you.

[00:00:10]This is the cure for most chronic pain.

[00:00:12]But if you're not having as much success as you would like and it's taking longer or you feel like you're stuck, let me just talk today about three reasons why your brain retraining program might not be working. Reason number one, you're working too hard. I see a lot of people who come to me for an individual visit or they take my class and they say, "This is so simple. I did some other programs and I just couldn't get up to 20 minutes of meditation twice a day or I couldn't do all the exercises that they wanted me to do. I felt overwhelmed." This doesn't take hours a day. Brains retrain gradually. Your brain learns by doing little things every day and then it gets better at those things. It happens gradually over time. So you can do this in a few moments with a few minutes a day repeated often. So the brain retraining that I like that I teach in my classes and that I usually recommend to people when they start off with brain retraining involves just a few minutes a day. A few moments here, a few moments there, a few moments there and relax into the process and see if your brain doesn't start changing over a few weeks.

[00:01:20]So reason number one is working too hard. The reason number two why your brain retraining program might not be working for you is that your underlying beliefs really haven't changed. Are you retraining a brain and trying to give it messages of safety when you don't really think you're safe? I often say that mindbody medicine we're going to use the conscious mind to change some of the seemingly automatic processes that are going on in the subconscious brain or in the body. But we can't do that if your conscious mind is still worried. A lot of times I use the parent brain, child brain analogy. And we're using the parent brain to give the child brain, the primitive survival brain, messages of safety. We're doing this in a different way than than just saying it.

[00:02:03]If the primitive brain doesn't understand the English language, you can't just say I'm safe. I'm safe. It doesn't hear you. It hears when you say everything's okay. I'm safe. I'm safe.

[00:02:13]We use body language. We use different tools. We use the tools of mindbody medicine and somatic tracking and turning towards difficult emotions. We use guided imagery. We use a whole bunch of different things to give our brain this message of safety. But we can't give it in any language if the conscious mind doesn't think that we're safe. So are you still holding on to the concept that you're broken, that there's something wrong with you, that every time you get a twinge in your back, that means that that joint might break or something is going to happen, that you're in danger. If you still think that that area is actually damaged or that every pain signal potentially represents some sort of dangerous problem in that area, you may need to do a little more education about just how common neuroplastic pain is. It's super common. It's the most common cause of pain that has lasted three months, six months, six years. And so if your pain's lasted that long, you do have some neural circuits. Educate yourself about this. work with a coach, work with me, find a class, start learning this new approach. So anyway, that's reason number two why a brain training program might not be working. Reason number one, working too hard. Doesn't take hours a day. It's a few minutes a day. Reason number two, you still have that underlying belief and worry that you're broken. And you don't have to be 100% certain, but you need to be 80% bought into this idea that you're rewiring brain circuits. uh you'll maybe get to 100% when you get 100% better, but you do need to start working towards this idea that you're okay. Okay. Reason number three, and this is a really important one and a really big one and a really difficult one for a lot of people, is your underlying attitude hasn't really changed. You're still approaching every pain signal with, even if intellectually, you know, it's neuroplastic. I'm 100% convinced. I can even say it. There's nothing wrong with my back. I get that.

[00:04:05]But every time the signal comes in, you're so afraid of the pain itself. And that's understandable. Who wants pain?

[00:04:12]Pain has screwed up your life. And of course, you're kind of afraid of it or maybe very afraid of it. But the attitude I see that doesn't help people get better with brain training is the attitude that I'm waiting to get better so that I can live my life. People tell me, you know, once I feel better, I can get on with that old life I used to have or I can get back to doing the things I love. or just show me the tools that will take the pain away because it's impossible to change my attitude until the pain goes away. The pain is so overwhelming that I I can't change the attitude. My experience is that you can.

[00:04:45]It's difficult. It may sound crazy, but the people who get better, what I hear over and over again from them is I started changing my attitude about the pain. I changed the way I was thinking about it, the way I was reacting to it.

[00:05:00]I started to live my life with the pain, even if I was only able to do so for a few moments here and there throughout the day. But I started to change my relationship with the pain. And as that attitude and my understanding of it changed and I started having a few new behaviors of actually doing things with pain and working towards some things instead of just trying to get away from pain all day. Then I started getting better and then my pain started reducing. So they didn't wait for their pain to go away before they started living their life. They were able somehow to live a little bit of their life. Not their whole life. not everything they wanted, but do a little bit every day. And this is a really important concept for people. Almost everyone I see, it happens jointly. The improvement in what they're doing in life with the reduction in pain. They both improve together. It's not like I need to get rid of the pain before I can do these things. In fact, I had a recent email from a woman named Jane. She had 37 years of pain after a car accident in her 20s. Went around to a million doctors, couldn't find relief. She said, "One day I Googled fear of chronic pain.

[00:06:10]the concept of neuroplastic pain popped up and she'd never heard of this before.

[00:06:14]Later down the road, she read Alan Gordon's book. She did pain reprocessing therapy with a therapist. She did summatic tracking and some EA. And after 37 years, she said it took just a few months and her pain started getting better. She said, "Three years later, I'm totally transformed, living a life free of chronic symptoms and filled with joy." So, I actually sent her an email back and said, "Hey, I might reach out in the future if I want a good story from somebody about uh living their best life because I think that's part of getting better." Um, and I know it can be difficult, but often the attitude and the behavioral shift of living your best life has to occur before the pain is completely gone. So I asked her, I'm wondering if if that in any way was part of your experience that an attitude shift preceded significant pain reduction or was the attitude able to change only after your pain had gone away? And she emails back and she says, "Oh yes, my attitude and behavior started changing as soon as I understood what neuroplastic pain meant because all of a sudden I understood that I had nothing to be afraid of. that this pain wasn't a sign of my body still being worse and worse damaged over 37 years.

[00:07:24]Look, I've been alive 37 years with this thing. If it had been getting damaged every single year, I would have turned into a complete, you know, I would be dead by now. And yet, I wasn't. I was living at basically the same level, some ups and downs of misery all the time.

[00:07:38]And once she realized, oh, these are pain signals. My body can heal. Uh, then she started doing things. And as she started doing things, the pain started getting better. And she described just gradually increasing the distance she would bike or kayak. And these were things she couldn't do at all for 37 years. Um, but as she gradually did these with just this different attitude that yes, it hurts, but I know I'm not damaging anything. And using the tools she was learning from coaches and stuff, uh, and from books, she was able to rewire. And now, as she said, she's, you know, living her best life. So her story emphasizes this is all about the fear. It's not about body tissue damage for most people. I don't know you. I don't know your situation. I can just tell you after 30 years as a primary care doc, the vast majority of chronic long-term pain that I saw was due to neural circuitry rather than ongoing tissue damage in the body that wouldn't heal for 37 years. These are neural circuits.

[00:08:37]The neural circuitry may be holding muscles tense. uh maybe holding you in an awkward position, maybe sending pain signals, maybe spasming parts of your body. All that can be true, but it's all coming from the nervous system. And it's all because your nervous system is still hypervigilant and too worried. So if your brain retraining isn't working a lot of the time, it's because that underlying attitude is still, I need this to work so I can get on with my life. And this is a nuance discussion.

[00:09:05]It's different for everybody, but we want to start living your life again before all the pain goes away. And that might happen in little tiny increments.

[00:09:14]This could be I'm so miserable. How could I live any of my life? Can you find any joy? This entire program, this entire concept of treating chronic pain and it's the same for treating PTSD or severe anxiety. This is about teaching your primitive survival brain, which is running your body, teaching it that the body is actually safe right now. It doesn't feel safe, but it is safe.

[00:09:39]There's no lion about to eat you.

[00:09:41]There's no 6'8 guy with a baseball bat right in front of you right now in this room. You're safe.

[00:09:48]Can you start delivering messages of safety to your brain? Even on days when you feel like crap, I've got chronic fatigue. It's level 10 all the time. I can't even get off the couch. Has there been zero moments in the last week?

[00:10:01]Zero, where you felt good enough to get off the couch? Did you have a bowl of ice cream? Did that taste good? Savor it. Pay attention to how good that ice cream tastes. Oh man, this tastes good.

[00:10:15]Do a little mindful eating, maybe. These are things I like to talk to people about to teach people. Enjoy a few bites really slowly. How does that chocolate ice cream taste on your tongue? That is a message of safety to the brain. That's a message to the brain that man, my body is a good thing. It's giving me some good vibes here. And really pay attention to it. Sink into that. Oh, that tastes so good. Maybe that's a bad example for some people. I'm overweight.

[00:10:41]You just give a terrible example. I don't want to eat more ice cream. Can you find some sun on your shoulders? As miserable as you feel, have you ever felt good with the sun hitting your should? Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. Has that ever felt good to you? Get out there. Let the sun hit your shoulders on a nice warm day or your face or whatever feels good to you.

[00:11:05]Man, that feels nice. How does the breeze feel? Maybe maybe it's too hot for the sun. That's not a good example.

[00:11:12]Can you find anything that feels good?

[00:11:14]Does a warm bath feel good?

[00:11:16]Take the warm bath and don't take it going, "God, it's the only time I feel good." Take the warm bath going, "My [sighs] body feels nice right now with all this warmth. This feels really good."

[00:11:29]Different things for different people.

[00:11:30]And some people say, "Well, so what? I found 10 minutes of kind of feeling good. What good is that going to do me?

[00:11:35]The rest of my life is screwed up."

[00:11:37]Neurons that fire together wire together. We're just trying to fire neurons of joy, neurons of body comfort.

[00:11:46]And this can happen a whole bunch of different ways. But can you find a few moments every day to put yourself in a place of joy and comfort? How do you find joy? That's an important question.

[00:11:56]And is there a way you can give yourself a little bit of it every day and then relax into the program? Be patient and see if those neurons, those joy and connection neurons, the neurons of safety, start building a little bit day by day. They will. I like to say that the neuroscience of mind body medicine can't not work.

[00:12:17]It has to work. Based on what we know about brain development and brain circuitry, brains can rewire at any age.

[00:12:25]You can rewire your brain. I don't think every circuit can be 100% rewired. I think we all have circuits that are probably going to stay with us forever.

[00:12:35]But the chronic pain circuit is usually not one of them. That's a changeable circuit. There are other things. I've got some circuits that probably I'm going to die with, and I've been working on them a long time. I'm accepting of that. It's who I am. I might want to change a little bit this direction and I can't quite seem to get there as much as I'd like, but I'm working towards it.

[00:12:56]And that's maybe my job this time around on the planet. I don't know. It's something that I want to work towards.

[00:13:01]It's okay that I'm not there. This also, you're working towards something and it's okay today if you're not there today. Show your brain that today is okay. Live for today. Oh, I found some joy today. And you don't have to compare yourself to your former self or something you wish you could be in the future. Comparison is the thief of joy.

[00:13:24]Whether you're comparing yourself to somebody else or to your former self or to some vision of yourself that you wish you had live for today. What's happening today? I'm feeling pretty miserable. H [clears throat] how can I find a few moments of joy? I think I can do that.

[00:13:39]The rest of the day I had to spend on the couch. Pat yourself on the back. All right. found a few moments of joy today.

[00:13:46]All right, let me just see if I can keep doing that every day. All right, so I've got my three three things uh that can keep your brain retraining program from not working. One, you're working too hard. Two, you haven't changed your belief that you really can get better and that each pain signal isn't really the sign of something super dangerous.

[00:14:03]And then that underlying attitude that you're waiting for the pain to get better before you live your life. And people need to often reverse that. I'm gonna try to find some way to live a little bit of my best life today, even if it's not perfect. And recognize that's super useful. Okay, you can do this. I've seen hundreds of people do this. Stick with the program. My classes come up several times a year. I'd love to see you there. Uh I love working with people one-on-one. There are other coaches out there. There are other programs if those sound good to you. Uh go check this out. Immerse yourself in the mind body world because this is what's curing chronic pain, chronic anxiety, a lot of other chronic hard to treat problems. And here's a video I've got about how to talk to your brain if that's interesting to you. I've got lots of other videos. Check them out and hit the subscribe button. Keeps me going.

[00:14:50]Share this with somebody if you think it would be interesting to them. I'm Dr. Brad Fannon at bouldermindbody.com.

[00:14:56]Thanks for watching. And I'll see you next time.