A Life Without Chronic Pain

Break free from the vicious cycle of chronic pain. - What's the difference between neuroplastic and structural pain? - How can you break free from the cycle of chronic pain? - What should you do if the pain returns? A MEDICAL METHOD, VERIFIED BY RESEARCH AND CONFIRMED BY PRACTICE, FOR BREAKING THE VICIOUS CYCLE OF CHRONIC PAIN During his postgraduate studies, Alan Gordon began to experience pain that gradually became chronic and completely took over his life. He visited several doctors and received many diagnoses, but none of the treatments he tried helped. Frustrated with conventional medicine, he developed Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), which eliminated his own chronic pain and has changed the lives of thousands of his patients since. PRT is rooted in neuroscience, which has shown through numerous research projects, experiments, and studies that while chronic pain feels like it's coming from the body, in most cases it's generated by faulty connections in the brain. PRT is a system of psychological techniques that retrain the brain to break out of the cycle of chronic pain. The book is designed as a practical guide. After an introduction to the issue of pain and chronic pain, and a presentation of interesting research and experiments, it lays out a step-by-step guide to eliminating pain, offering numerous variations so that every reader (patient) can find what works for them. The author states that the book itself won't cure us; it only provides an effective and functional tool, but everyone must find their own specific path. The book is written in a very light, readable style, which is due, among other things, to the large number of real-life stories and the use of intelligent humour. Why is chronic pain a problem? Millions of people around the world suffer from chronic pain. These desperate people are told time and again that there is no cure for chronic pain. The treatment scenario is usually the same. After trying conventional treatments – injections, surgery, physiotherapy – the patient is kept relatively pain-free with the help of addictive opiates. Chronic pain is an epidemic. Moreover, its treatment is immensely expensive. Neuroplastic pain, which is the cause of chronic pain, is essentially a false alarm that spreads because the human brain misinterprets safe signals from the body as threatening. The body is fine, but the brain still creates pain, which is, however, very real. How does PRT work? The starting point for treating chronic pain with PRT is determining whether the pain is truly chronic (often referred to in the book as neuroplastic) or structural (physical, real, etc.). To this end, PRT provides a set of questions to determine the origin and type of pain. It is also based on the premise that since chronic pain is learned, it can also be unlearned. Fear plays a significant role in the development of chronic pain, so many techniques focus on breaking the vicious cycle of fear – pain – fear. The core technique of Gordon's method is somatic tracking, for which the book provides methodical guidance. Other common techniques that appear in the book include: corrective experience, fear exposure, avoidance behaviour, sending messages of safety (calming the brain), uncovering threats, looking for exceptions, gathering evidence, capturing fears, and more. The author also addresses the fact that pain can return after some time (relapse). An entire, very reassuring chapter is devoted to this phenomenon. Who is this book for? - For doctors who want to help their patients. - For psychotherapists whose patients are experiencing pain. - For people who feel pain and want to resolve it or want to help people around them.