Chronic pain is one of the most widespread and costly health conditions in the United States. An estimated 50 million American adults live with chronic pain, and nearly 20 million experience high-impact chronic pain that significantly limits daily activities.¹ It is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide and a major driver of healthcare utilization.²
Chronic pain doesn’t just affect the body. It impacts sleep, mood, work, relationships, and overall quality of life. Over time, it can erode hope.
If you’ve tried multiple forms of chronic pain treatment without lasting relief, you are not alone.
The Frustration of Traditional Chronic Pain Management
Conventional chronic pain management often includes:
Physical therapy
Anti-inflammatory medications
Muscle relaxers
Steroid injections
Opioid medications
Nerve ablations
Spinal surgery
While these treatments can be helpful in certain cases — particularly in the acute injury phase — outcomes for persistent or long-standing pain are often mixed.
For example, spinal surgeries frequently show variable long-term results, with many patients continuing to experience pain post-operatively.³ Opioid medications may provide short-term relief but come with significant risks including tolerance, dependence, and side effects.⁴ Injections and interventional procedures often demonstrate modest or short-lived benefits in long-term studies.⁵
It can be deeply discouraging to move from one specialist to another — each offering a different chronic pain therapy, each with potential side effects, costs, and recovery periods, but no clear or lasting resolution.
At some point, many people begin to wonder:
Why isn’t anything working?
Will I ever get back to my old self?
Is this just my life now?
I get it. I’ve been there. But no, you don’t have to be in pain for the rest of your life.
If structural causes have been ruled out — or if treatments targeting tissue damage haven’t resolved the pain — it may be time to consider a different model of chronic pain treatment.
What Is Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)?
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is an evidence-based chronic pain therapy backed by modern neuroscience.
Decades of research now show that many forms of chronic pain — especially pain that persists beyond normal healing time — are driven by neural pathways in the brain rather than ongoing tissue damage. This does not mean the pain is imaginary. The pain is very real. But it may be generated and maintained by learned brain patterns. (This is NOT your fault!)
PRT builds on earlier work by physicians like John Sarno, who first proposed that many cases of persistent pain have mind-body components. Pain Reprocessing Therapy expands on this foundation with brain imaging research and randomized clinical trials.
Unlike surgery or medication, PRT has no medical side effects. There is no recovery period and no risk of dependency. Instead, it works by retraining the brain to reinterpret and reduce pain signals by targeting fear, avoidance behaviors, and conditioned neural responses.
The 2021 Boulder Back Pain Study
In 2021, researchers right here at our own University of Colorado Boulder published a landmark randomized clinical trial in JAMA Psychiatry.⁶
The study focused on chronic back pain, but its implications extend more broadly to chronic pain conditions that are driven by similar brain-based mechanisms.
Participants were randomized to receive:
Pain Reprocessing Therapy
An open-label placebo
Usual care
After just 8 weeks:
66% of participants receiving PRT were pain-free or nearly pain-free
20% improved in the placebo group
10% improved with usual care
Brain imaging demonstrated measurable changes in neural pain processing circuits.
At the one-year follow-up, most participants maintained their pain relief.⁷
Although the study specifically examined back pain, the core mechanism targeted by PRT — learned neural pain pathways — is now understood to underlie many forms of chronic pain. This suggests that the benefits of PRT may extend well beyond spinal conditions.
Lasting Chronic Pain Relief: The 5-Year Follow-Up
More recent long-term follow-up data has continued to support the durability of Pain Reprocessing Therapy.
Five-year outcome findings indicate that many participants sustained significant reductions in pain over time, reinforcing that this approach does not simply offer temporary symptom relief — it helps rewire the brain’s pain processing system in lasting ways.⁸
For individuals who have spent years cycling through different chronic pain management strategies, this represents a fundamentally different path forward.
Ready to Heal Your Chronic Pain?
If you’ve been living with chronic pain and feel discouraged by traditional treatment options, don’t give up, there is hope.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy offers a science-based, side-effect-free approach to chronic pain treatment that addresses the brain mechanisms driving persistent pain.
I am formally trained in Pain Reprocessing Therapy, and I integrate it into my work with clients who are ready for a way out of their chronic pain.
This work is also personal for me. I used to struggle with chronic pain myself. I tried the conventional routes. I searched for body-based explanations. And like many people, I felt frustrated and discouraged when nothing created lasting relief.
When I finally tried Pain Reprocessing Therapy, my pain resolved within weeks.
That experience changed not only my health, but the direction of my professional work. I’ve seen firsthand how powerful this approach can be — both personally and with clients.
If you’re not ready to schedule a consult yet, you can read more about PRT, how I integrate it into my work with client, and see if chronic pain therapy might be right for you.
But if you are ready to explore what’s possible, I offer free consultation calls where we can talk about your pain history and whether Pain Reprocessing Therapy could help you significantly reduce — or even eliminate — your chronic pain.
You do not have to live in constant fear of your body.
Healing is possible.
References
CDC – Prevalence of Chronic Pain and High-Impact Chronic Pain
Global Burden of Disease Study – Chronic Pain and Disability Data
Systematic reviews of spinal surgery outcomes for chronic pain
CDC guidelines on long-term opioid therapy risks
Research reviews on interventional pain procedures
Ashar et al., 2021 – Randomized Clinical Trial of Pain Reprocessing Therapy, JAMA Psychiatry
One-year follow-up data from Boulder PRT trial
Five-year follow-up findings on PRT participants