On the path to healing chronic pain, sometimes our brains will mess with us. In fact, it’s a feature of our biology — when our situations change for the better, our brains have the habit of redefining what it classifies as a "problem." We instinctively move the goalposts, which can mask that things are, in fact, improving. The same applies for solving chronic pain & other symptoms, and so part of recovery will be to overcome your brain's built-in biases (we all have 'em!) that work to keep our perceptions basically the same over time. Read on to learn more about this feature of our brains and how to help your perception shift in the right direction.

Your brain is constantly trying to make life easier for you. It does this by predicting what’s about to happen -- what you'll feel (including pain!), see, hear, and need -- so you don’t have to consciously process everything in real time. This creates efficiency in the nervous system, which our brains really like as a way to get through our day-to-day lives. Sometimes though, the brain gets these predictions wrong, especially when it comes to chronic neuroplastic pain. So how can you help your brain overcome this largely subconscious process? Read on to learn six key ways to rewire your brain’s pain predictions.

Imagine your brain not as a passive observer of reality, but as a prediction machine -- constantly making its best guess about what’s happening in your body and environment, and adjusting based on those guesses. Emotions and sensations like pain aren’t hardwired reactions that live in specific parts of your brain like we've long assumed. Instead, they’re constructed experiences. Your brain draws on your past history, context, and sensory input to make meaning and experience, and pain is one of those experiences. Keep reading to learn more about what leading-edge neuroscience has taught us about how the brain creates pain.