Frustration Required

One of the things I love the most about teaching my clients Pain Reprocessing Therapy is how quickly the PRT toolkit can positively impact their pain experience.

Routinely, clients report significant progress in just the first few sessions -- they learn how to interrupt their pain cycle and bring pain down drastically once it's started, they feel confident enough to not use their go-to methods for coping with their pain as regularly, or movements they've previously avoided begin to feel safer & more accessible.

Then, the work begins.

Ups & downs with symptoms happen. Flares & setbacks come along. Or the pain gets better but just hasn't quite gone away yet.

And, of course, frustration comes along. (Especially when things were going so well!)

One of the favorite refrains in the PRT world is "trust the process." It's true, you need to do that. And I know first-hand how frustrating even just hearing that can be.

So, let's talk a bit about why frustration is required, and actually a really, really good sign of progress.

As I’ve mentioned previously, solving chronic pain often requires changing & relearning some core life habits we've developed over the years. And for most folks, learning PRT -- and especially how to authentically view pain & other symptoms as "safe" or "curious" -- is a radically new perspective on things.

That kind of tangible, embodied shift in your way of Being does not take place overnight or by simply "knowing" that's the solution. It takes place through a series of lived experiences, bit by bit by bit.

It's truly a learning process. And anytime you're learning something new it's going to go well at times, poorly others, and feel frustrating....a LOT.

"Learning" = neuroplasticity

Learning something new & cool & life-changing is neuroplasticity's positive side.

(I recognize that the pervasive use of the phrase "neuroplastic pain" -- including here on my website and in my blogs -- can encourage folks to believe that "neuroplasticity" means something negative is happening. But neuroplasticity is simply learning, and that works in both positive and negative directions!)

And, thanks to modern neuroscience, we now know that making mistakes, feeling frustrated and uncomfortable, sticking with it, and correcting again and again is exactly what triggers the neurochemical precursors to neuroplasticity in the brain. You can nerd out on that a bit here with Andrew Huberman if you like!

As our friend Andrew says in that clip, "the signal that generates the plasticity is the making of errors; it's the reaches and failures that signal to the nervous system that this is not working, and therefore the shifts start to take place."

In a nutshell, as you're taking a crack at your new PRT skills, you'll get it right some and probably wrong a LOT. When you get it wrong (the "error"), it most definitely does not feel good. That's the frustration. But that not-good feeling state is exactly what tells your brain, "hey, change something here!" That's when neuroplastic learning gets triggered.

How cool is that??

Folks, the basic aim with this process is to aim right at the place where you end up feeling frustrated and keep going.

This is where mindset comes in -- if you're feeling frustrated and can pivot your thinking to some version of "I'm learning something new and it's tricky right now...great!" you are perfectly on-track!

This is author of "The Way Out" Alan Gordon's admonition to say "bring it on!" when you feel your pain.

In the exact way you need to feel & experience your pain in order to reprocess it in your brain, you need to make mistakes and feel & experience frustration along the way to signal to your brain that learning needs to take place.

This flips all the switches in the right direction in your brain and moves the ball forward in the direction you want to go.

So, enjoy being a beginner again my friends! You're right on track.