If you feel pain or physical symptoms in your body, naturally, you think:
“Something’s wrong with my body”
And you ask:
“What can I do to physically heal?”
Until recently, our medical culture assumed chronic pain and symptoms were caused by damage or disease in the body. However, a growing body of research and neuroscience shows us that many forms of chronic pain and symptoms can be neuroplastic in nature.
Neuroplastic pain/symptoms are caused and amplified by sensitization in the brain and nervous system, not due to disease or structural damage in the body.1,2,3,4,5 The brain becomes overprotective, producing pain/symptoms when it senses danger.
The good news? Neuroplastic pain/symptoms are reversible using the step-by-step, evidence-based healing system we provide in the Desensitize app.
Now, if you’re experiencing chronic pain and symptoms, we’re not suggesting you automatically start viewing your symptoms as neuroplastic. We don’t want to jump too quickly to this conclusion.
The purpose of this post is to help you understand the signs of neuroplastic pain/symptoms. A strong assessment is always the first step.
An important note: You don’t need to fit every criteria below for your pain or symptoms to be neuroplastic.
The criteria for neuroplastic pain and symptoms are split into two main categories:
- It’s Not Making Physical Sense
- Sensitization Factors
Category 1: It’s Not Making Physical Sense
When you’re assessing for neuroplastic pain & symptoms, you’re like a detective looking for clues. Consider how the symptoms are acting strange, confusing, or physically hard to explain.
1.1 Symptoms Developed During an Emotional Time
For many clients, symptoms appear or worsen around the time of a particularly stressful or emotional event. Examples could include a wedding, divorce, new baby, family illness or death, beginning university, financial difficulties, career stressors, along with many others. It’s not about the event itself, but the level of nervous system dysregulation experienced; even events that seem small can trigger neuroplastic pain.2,3
1.2 Symptoms Emerged Without An Injury
Pain/symptoms often occur without a clear injury.2,3
“I woke up with the pain/symptoms” or “It just got worse over time”
If you are injured, pain/symptoms are appropriate at first. However, most injuries heal within a few weeks to a few months. Your body evolved to heal! If the symptoms emerge without injury, or persist long past the typical time of healing, it could be a sign it’s neuroplastic.
1.3 Symptoms are Influenced by Your Emotions
Problems in relationships, difficulties at work, and systemic stressors like loneliness, poverty, racism, gendered oppression or sexuality-based oppression can cause increases in pain/symptoms. If your pain/symptoms worsen when stress and emotional difficulty are high, and reduce when you feel safe and calm, it’s a sign they are neuroplastic.2,3
1.4 Pain/Symptoms are Triggered by Things That Shouldn’t Cause Problems
Stimuli and activities like weather, smells, foods, workplaces, noises, or lighting can become unexpected triggers for pain/symptoms. If your brain has associated certain stimuli with danger, to protect you from the danger, it will generate neuroplastic pain/symptoms – and this reinforces the sense that the stimuli is indeed dangerous. If you’re noticing triggers you wouldn’t expect to harm you are causing physical pain/symptoms, it could mean your symptoms are neuroplastic.2
1.5 Inconsistency
Structural injuries, damage, and diseases in the body typically behave quite consistently. In contrast, with neuroplastic pain/symptoms, your symptoms may change day-to-day. Sometimes it’s quite confusing, as there’s no clear sense of why it feels better or worse. Quicker, confusing, or more spontaneous shifts in symptom location and intensity suggest they are neuroplastic.2,3
1.6 Spread and Movement
The spread of symptoms often causes fear, confusion, and frustration, but on the bright side, it can suggest your pain/symptom is neuroplastic and treatable with a mind-body approach. Structural pain/symptoms are typically localized to injury sites or structural problems in the body. If your symptoms have migrated around the body over time, or become symmetrical, this suggests they may be neuroplastic rather than structural.2,3
1.7 Multiple Symptoms
If there are multiple symptoms occurring in your body that are difficult to explain, sensitization in the brain and nervous system may be the common explanation. While multiple chronic pain/symptoms could be coming from injuries or systemic disorders, when medical assessment finds no structural cause or cure, it suggests a sensitized brain is the central cause.2 This can look like:
- Having 3 or more chronic pains/symptoms
- A history of serial symptoms (one after another)
1.8 Delayed Onset
Sometimes we engage in a physical activity or task and it feels ok in the moment, only for pain/symptoms to flare up later. Structural pain/symptoms don’t typically behave this way. Injurious movements/stimuli should cause symptoms while they are happening. Pain/symptoms emerging after exposure to a movement, activity, or stimuli are often neuroplastic, not structural.2
- Example: I go for a bike ride and experience higher pain the next day
- Example: I feel dizzy after a busy day
1.9 Unsuccessful Physical Diagnosis or Treatment
If you’ve had various scans, tests and assessments, and physicians/specialists are unable to find a structural problem to accurately explain your symptoms, it can suggest they are neuroplastic. Furthermore, many of our clients have been given a structural diagnosis, yet their symptoms are neuroplastic.
If the diagnosis just isn’t making sense, or you’ve tried many different physical treatments and medications with little success, it can suggest that you’re trying to heal problems in the wrong place.
We always recommend extensive physical assessment from a skilled medical provider. However, if structural problems can’t be accurately diagnosed and treated, it may be time to shift your treatment focus from the body to the brain and nervous system.2,3
Category 2: Sensitization Factors
Difficult life experiences and events causing prolonged nervous system dysregulation can make your environment, relationships, emotions, and body feel more dangerous.
Consider how brain and nervous system sensitization may have led to the development of neuroplastic pain/symptoms
2.1 Chronic Nervous System Dysregulation
Pain and symptoms are designed to protect us. So is entering a nervous system state of fight, flight, fawn, or freeze/shutdown. Bodies are designed to move in and out of danger, but becoming stuck in states of dysregulation can sensitize and trigger neuroplastic pain.
2.2 Childhood Adversity
Experiences of neglect, trauma, bullying, and accidents in childhood can lead to feeling unsafe in your body and relationships. Research shows strong connections between childhood adversity and developing chronic pain/symptoms. A brain that feels chronically unsafe is more at risk of developing neuroplastic pain and symptoms.2,4,5,6,7
2.3 Trauma
Survivors of physical, sexual, and psychological trauma are much more likely to develop chronic pain/symptoms. In fact, research shows between 10% and 50% of individuals diagnosed with PTSD report chronic pain.8 Adults are 2.7 times more likely to have chronic widespread pain, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, or IBS, following trauma in childhood or adulthood.4 Furthermore, higher rates of dizziness/vestibular concerns were found with veterans who have PTSD compared to veterans who didn’t have PTSD.9
2.4 Sensitization or Medical Trauma
While not always considered, the experiences and life impacts of chronic pain/symptoms can also cause trauma. Sensitization trauma is prolonged dysregulation caused by the onset and progression of chronic pain/symptoms. Medical trauma is prolonged dysregulation caused by medical procedures, experiences, or treatments.10,11 Trauma that is not processed and healed can lead to the development and amplification of neuroplastic pain/symptoms.
2.5 Social Danger
Chronically dangerous or oppressive social factors that cause individuals to feel unsafe in their world and relationships can cause pain/symptoms. Studies show social factors such as poverty, abusive relationships, racism, bullying, and being part of the LGBTQ+ community can significantly increase the likelihood of experiencing chronic pain and symptoms.5,12,13,14 Pain/symptoms can be viewed as meaningful messages; the brain is signalling danger in an attempt to protect.
2.6 Pathological Views of the Body
Through attempts to understand and fix the problem, individuals with chronic pain/symptoms often develop pathological beliefs about their bodies. Through interactions with various health professionals, forums, and online research, many concerning physical conditions may be learned. While structural diagnosis is meant to help, when the symptom is actually neuroplastic, pathological labels can create increased fear, confusion, frustration, and despair. Viewing the body as broken, abnormal, or unable to heal increases fear, changes behaviour, and amplifies neuroplastic pain/symptoms.
If you think your chronic pain/symptoms could be neuroplastic, take your biggest healing step today! Sign up for the Desensitize app and access a comprehensive, step-by-step system to help you understand your symptoms, regulate your nervous system, and retrain your brain out of chronic pain and symptoms.