Retraining the Brain to Treat Chronic Pain: how simple, micro habits can make all the difference!
If you’ve been learning about TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) or neuroplastic symptoms, you’ve probably heard people mention brain rewiring and healing the body through the power of neuroplasticity.
You might think this sounds like a long, complicated process—or perhaps you’re skeptical that it works at all. Whatever your thoughts, in this article I aim to make these concepts simple to understand and implement.
One thing I can promise though: if you do understand the essence behind the brain rewiring process and embody small, micro-habits into your daily life, you might just discover the fastest and most effective solution to overcoming all your chronic symptoms!
How Mindbody Symptoms Begin
Mindbody or neuroplastic symptoms often arise when we experience some form of internal distress. This can come in the guise of:
Increased pressure in life (at work or at home)
Loss, grief, or major life changes (such as getting promoted, or having a baby)
Interpersonal conflicts or dissatisfaction with an aspect of your life that feels important to you
All of these experiences can create a cocktail of repressed or semi-suppressed emotions that are expressed somatically through pain or discomfort.
Because we’re not taught how this connection works, our natural reaction when the pain hits is to assume that we’re ill or injured. And the moment we start to fear that our body is broken, we unknowingly add more stress and anxiety into the system.
Not only do we feel stressed with whatever is happening in our personal lives — if we are aware of it at all, but that’s another matter — but we also start getting heavily consumed by our symptoms: how do we prevent them? how shall we treat them? could they get worse over time? what if we’re permanently damaged?
And then we start to do all sorts of things to try to manage them.
But it all backfires. Because, I hate to break it to you, but mindbody symptoms are reinforced every time you try to prevent them!
The Conditioning Loop: Why Neuroplastic Symptoms Persist
Now think about it: how many things do you do in your day to day to try and manage, relieve or prevent your pain? If you’re a seasoned chronic pain sufferer, probably dozens of things daily! And all of these ‘strategies’ are actually making your symptoms worse. This happens because of a process called conditioning.
When we associate certain movements, activities, or sensations with pain or danger, our brain starts to “learn” these associations. This is how the conditioning takes place—and it means the brain gets better at generating the very symptoms that we fear. Essentially, this is brain rewiring in action, but not the kind of rewiring you’d like to take place. Emotions like fear or dread can help the brain get better at recreating pain or discomfort, creating real changes in the brain that do not serve us. This is why activities or movements that are shouldn’t hurt actually start to hurt.
All of this isn’t your fault. The brain’s main goal is to protect you. If your brain believes certain activities are unsafe, it may reproduce the same symptoms whenever you engage in them, even if your body is physically fine. This happens through the reinforcement of specific neural pathways (due to the emotions we generate), and it takes place because the brain (mistakenly) thinks it needs to stop you from doing the activity in question.
And so, the cycle of pain and fear continues.
The next flare up you dread? It can be your opp0rtunity!
So how do you get out of this cycle? How do you retrain the brain to believe that you’re safe, and that your body is ok? The answer lies in your response to symptoms.
When we understand the mindbody connection, we realize you have a choice between two modes of perceiving the situation:
Seeing symptoms as enemies that make life hard or unbearable; or
Getting curious about what your symptoms might be trying to communicate, and using them as a chance to grow emotionally.
You can’t always control your first reaction—that initial surge of fear, frustration, or panic are automatic, and we need to accept that. But you can slowly start detaching from this reactive part of you. And one of the ways to do this is to observe - to get curious about your own reaction.
Imagine you could step out of your body and see yourself standing or sitting there, getting upset or scared of your symptoms? I get it, the picture still doesn’t look nice at all, but it helps to see yourself from an outsider’s point of view. It helps create the detachment needed to start shifting out of fear and frustration into a more curious and neutral state.
This shift from fear to curiosity and detachment is where the more positive brain rewiring process that we’re after truly begins.
How Brain Rewiring Works
When you become a detached observer of your symptoms, you teach your brain that they might not be as dangerous as it once assumed. That’s because you’re no longer getting totally consumed by negative emotions. Over time, your brain takes in this new information and gradually turns down the alarm.
As the brain relaxes its threat response, symptoms begin to fade—and, eventually, they can disappear entirely.
I’ve seen this happen over and over again. It’s not magic—it’s neuroplasticity in action.
Practical Ways to Support Brain Rewiring
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You don’t need to be rigid or “perfect” in this process. In fact, trying too hard can increase tension and slow progress. What helps most is a flexible daily approach with small, consistent habits that signal safety to your brain. I like to call these micro-habits.
Here are some simple ways to start:
Ask your symptoms what they’re trying to tell you.
This invites curiosity instead of fear and can reveal underlying emotional themes. As you explore these emotions, you get closer to the root cause of your issues, instead of staying stuck with the symptoms (P.S. There are tools, such as expressive writing, that can really help with this process!)Move confidently and avoid overly-restricting activities.
Show your brain that your body is strong and trustworthy by moving with a more confident stride and being less hesitant as you go about specific movements. If you’re going to move anyway, move with more flow and don’t overthink your movements!Notice ALL fear-based thoughts and assumptions without buying into them.
Be mindful of how other people’s warnings or medical suggestions may have influenced your beliefs (this is the nocebo effect). If you want to heal mindbody symptoms, you cannot afford to keep buying into these fears!Practice curiosity through meditation or pain reprocessing.
These practices help you engage with sensations from a place of safety, and dial down that fear.Let go of fear-based habits and treatments.
Aids, supports, or “preventative” strategies that treat your body as fragile can reinforce mistrust in the body. Your brain cannot rewire itself to be pain free if it believes that you need all these ‘extra’ measures to stay safe.
Yes, brain rewiring works for chronic pain, but it requires consistent repetition
Brain rewiring isn’t about forcing change—it’s about teaching your brain, gently and consistently, that symptoms are not as harmful as you thought and that you can trust your body again.
This process takes repetition, so be patient with yourself. Over and over, you have to notice your responses, detach yourself slightly from them, and engage in healthy micro habits that promote the brain rewiring process.
One day that overwhelming fear that you have when you feel your symptoms will become just a mere flicker, that you’ll be able to extinguish in a second. Your symptoms will behave accordingly, mellowing down until one morning, you’ll notice that they’ve completely gone away. Enjoy the process as best you can: it may be the most difficult yet the most rewarding thing you’ll ever do in your life.
References
Qingbiao Song, Sihan E, Zhiyu Zhang, Yingxia Liang. Neuroplasticity in the transition from acute to chronic pain, Neurotherapeutics, Vol. 21, Issue 6, (2024).
Ashar YK, Gordon A, Schubiner H, Uipi C, Knight K, Anderson Z, Carlisle J, Polisky L, Geuter S, Flood TF, Kragel PA, Dimidjian S, Lumley MA, Wager TD. Effect of Pain Reprocessing Therapy vs Placebo and Usual Care for Patients With Chronic Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 2021.
Melissa Lyne, New Chronic Pain Therapy Retrains the Brain to Process Emotions, UNSW Syndey, 2025.
Norman-Nott N, Briggs NE, Hesam-Shariati N, et al. Online Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Emotion Dysregulation in People With Chronic Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(5):e256908. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.6908