Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT):
Restoring Mind-Body Connection with Talk Therapy for Chronic Pain & Illness
Is pain draining your energy or lowering your mood? When pain or a serious illness starts to impact quality of life, it becomes emotionally and mentally exhausting. It may impact work, relationships or intimacy. Pain reprocessing therapy (PRT) is an evidence-based neuroplasticity therapy that gently breaks the cycle of chronic pain.
I trained and practiced as a licensed clinical social worker at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital, for over a half-decade. In psychosocial oncology, I learned the importance of a holistic approach to health - tending to the social, emotional and existential parts of healing as well as the physical.
A psychotherapist can be an integral part of your treatment team for chronic pain or functional disorders. Pain reprocessing therapy (PRT) is a talk therapy that uses somatic tracking, mindfulness and deep emotional processing to reduce and even eliminate chronic pain. It maps out new neural pathways towards safety and relief.
In a clinical study:
98% of chronic back pain sufferers reported improvements following PRT (Ashar et al, 2021).
66% were pain-free or nearly pain-free (Ashar et al, 2021).
These outcomes were largely maintained long-term (Ashar et al, 2025).
Pain can get dismissed in mainstream healthcare. Neuroplastic pain is what shows up outside structural pain or damage - such as:
Pain persisting far beyond the expected recovery period
Delayed or inconsistent pain
Pain that worsens with stress
Pain that moves around the body
Physical symptoms or fatigue that don’t function in a way standard medicine can interpret
I take all pain seriously. Emerging research shows that pain interacts with our biology, cell metabolism and immune system functioning in sophisticated and powerful ways. PRT honors chronic pain and illness through compassionate inquiry of your experience.
In its essence, therapy can move chronic pain from struggle towards safety.
PRT can also improve quality of life and reduce symptom burden in other chronic conditions such as vertigo, IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), fibromyalgia, tinnitus, insomnia, long COVID, and CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome), for example.
You should always consult with a physician and other healthcare professionals, as necessary.
While PRT can’t reverse structural pain or nerve damage, it can help address the emotional and neurological parts of “mixed pain” syndromes in cancer, MS, fibroids and osteoarthritis.
If you are wondering whether PRT could help, schedule a free consultation call with me.