Lihi Lisser
The path to healing is personal and doesn’t have a “standard schedule.”
Some people will recover simply by reading books about MBS and the pain mechanism. Others need to do more focused work on changing and reducing the fear that has become tied to the physical symptoms. However, in many cases, the source of the pain is stress and emotions connected to the past; that is, to an early trauma or childhood harm that was not processed and was never given space.
In such cases, emotional work is needed to raise awareness of the harm we experienced in the past while finding new ways to experience those emotions safely.
This type of work generally takes more time, and it’s more effective to do it in a therapeutic setting or a group setting facilitated by a therapist who specializes in MBS.
Yes!
For some people, this is absolutely possible. Others may need guidance, support, and more specific direction to pave the way out of the pain cycle.
There are a number of treatment programs available online and through books, as well as groups that can support you through the process (see the section on “Additional resources.”)
However, it’s important to emphasize that when the symptoms stem from significant emotional trauma from the past or present, I strongly recommend against relying only on such programs; instead, it’s best to seek focused help from a mental health professional who specializes in treating trauma and MBS.
No!
Correct treatment begins with correctly diagnosing the source of the problem.
MBS is a medical diagnosis in every respect. Only a doctor can differentiate between pain caused by physical harm or tissue damage and neuroplastic pain.
After a structural cause has been ruled out, you can move to the second stage of the diagnosis, which involves examining whether the pain corresponds to the other characteristics of MBS pain
(see the section on diagnosis).
Dr. Sarno would answer this with an unequivocal yes. If the problem is not physical, the treatment should not focus on the body, but rather on the mind and cognitive factors that awaken the symptoms. If I may, however, my opinion is a little less extreme. I think anything that can give a message to the brain that it has nothing to fear anymore, that you are okay and safe and there is no danger — can and should be included in your treatment. That is, if you are currently taking medication or doing acupuncture or physical therapy that calms you and gives you a feeling of safety, relief, and calm — that’s great. If, however, you are approaching these treatments from the perspective that something in you is “broken” and you are “sick” and need to be “fixed,” it’s probably worth stopping them and starting to send different messages to your system. What’s important is the message or the perspective you’re coming from and not the decision to continue one treatment or another.
Yes!
This is because it incorporates tools that are taken from different psychological approaches (psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral) together with specific knowledge about the pain mechanism.
The therapy focuses on raising awareness of factors connected to your inner world (emotions, thoughts, etc.) that feed into the brain’s danger response system.
Therefore, regardless of the therapist’s basic training, it’s important to ensure that they speak a language that connects between body and mind, are aware of current research on pain, and have received specific training in treating it.
It is a natural human instinct to dismiss and suspect new information, especially when it contradicts the Western medical model we’ve all been raised with.
This model, which sees pain as a direct expression of the level of physical damage, is still dominant in medical institutions. Despite the evidence that pain is a phenomenon that combines emotional and social factors, most doctors and therapists still haven’t changed their stance.Dr. Pavel Goldstein, from the School of Public Medicine at Haifa University, says that it’s a change, a sort of quiet revolution happening in the world of medicine: “Adopting new paradigms takes time, but it has incredible potential to completely transform the way we treat pain.” (Epoch Magazine, 2021)
Yes!
Life with ongoing pain is stressful in and of itself, but we often don’t label it that way. Most people who suffer from long-term pain understand this well.There is no area of life that isn’t affected by pain: day-to-day functioning, relationships, emotional breakdowns. Pain sucks up resources, time, and mental focus. Regardless of its original source, life with chronic pain, over time, becomes a stressor in and of itself that continues to trigger the brain's danger response system to create pain. Therefore, one of the most important aspects of therapy is starting to understand what in your current response to the pain is contributing to maintaining the cycle, and changing it. In other words, decreasing the arousal level of the brain’s danger response system by feeding it with messages of safety and decreasing the fear of the symptoms themselves.
