Can My Chronic Pain Result from Traumatic Psychological Experiences?

When faced with chronic pain, the first reaction is often to seek quick remedies and later ask how it started. However, when medical diagnoses show no physical injuries, you may be left to wonder… Did trauma cause my pain? Can I heal from this at all?

It’s not an exaggeration to say that more than 50% of clients I see with chronic pain have had some sort of childhood trauma they lived through. Whether it’s emotional neglect, physical or psychological abuse, or living in an unsafe environment, traumas can have many shapes and forms and can be stored in the body for years until the mass of repressed emotions is too heavy to be kept hidden.

At this point, often, all the unresolved trauma starts to show up as unexplained medical symptoms, nagging sensations and pain, and can turn into chronic pain if left unchecked. This isn't just a theory - renowned trauma researcher Dr. Bessel van der Kolk has documented in his work 'The Body Keeps the Score' how our bodies literally hold onto traumatic experiences, affecting both our emotional and physical well-being.

Trauma-Induced Chronic Pain: Understanding the Mind-Body Connection

“Was it trauma or just some family drama?” you might ask.

Let’s clarify one thing first: going through trauma as a kid or adolescent might not look like “a big deal” to people around you. How we experience things and the way we feel as we go through life events is entirely subjective. There is no right or wrong; there is only your own personal way of experiencing life. Therefore, sometimes, an event that was traumatic for someone looked entirely ordinary for someone else who was in the same room. Even today, you might look back at some painful memories and have the instinct to rationalise them with phrases like “Well, that was not so tragic after all.” However, your inner child might still be hurting from it. It’s a defence mechanism. Just know that, sometimes, throughout the journey, it might occur to you that “Yes, I know right now it feels like it was not a big deal, but at the time, that actually felt completely devastating.”

I want you to know you don’t have to minimise what you felt when the traumatic experience occurred. If the memory is still so vividly present in your mind, chances are your subconscious is still playing that track over and over again… And it might be causing trouble in your body.

From clenching her teeth to incessant migraines

I’ll tell you a story of a fictitious client of mine. Elena was a sweet girl with long, dark, shiny hair. She grew up as an only child in a small town not far from the big city. Her mom was no more than a silent shadow at home, and her dad had become an ill-tempered, violent man since he had started drinking heavily. Her childhood had not always been that bad. Elena’s father had completely changed after he’d lost his job, and her mother had stopped trying to change him, choosing silence and submission over fights, insults, and, sometimes, even physical push-backs. 

The first years were the hardest. Elena was only 6 when her father changed his manners, and whenever she got home from school, happy and joyful for whatever reason, the darkness and heaviness of the home environment always swallowed her up entirely, leaving her lonely and confused in her room. 

As she grew up, Elena did her best to adjust to the circumstances. She stopped trying to share what made her smile throughout the day. She just got out of school, ate something along the way, and went straight to her room as soon as possible. Sometimes, she heard the screams through the door and tried to hide from them with headphones and loud music on. Other times, she could not avoid the fights. Perhaps they were at dinner, with her father reading the newspaper, and the wrong words from her mom were enough to make the man furious. Fists slammed on the table, and the next thing she knew was a dinner left unfinished, a tight knot in her throat and a mix of anger and hopelessness taking over her as she stared at the ceiling from her bedroom’s bed. 

By the time Elena entered college, she was used to clenching her teeth whenever she felt stressed or uncomfortable. It was like trying to keep in the words, the thoughts, and the feelings altogether. It was her best unconscious effort not to show how she felt inside. One day, however, after mid-term exams, sharp migraines started to take over her brain. Some days, she could not focus at all because the pain was too intense, and the more she tried to ignore it, the stronger it became. Sometimes, painkillers were enough to be able to finish her homework. Other times, any remedy felt like a drop in the bucket. Nothing worked. 

After a couple of years, Elena found her way to my practice. She was drained from her symptoms and had tried “all she could think about.” The doctors weren’t able to find anything “wrong with her”. And, no yoga or pilates session had managed to “fix her.” Her migraines were unpredictable. They felt like “unavoidable tornadoes,” swallowing up her days and will with such strength that it was disheartening.

Elena's life changed only when she realised there was actually nothing wrong with her brain, marking the beginning of her trauma recovery journey as she began to unlearn the pain process. The power to heal was in her very own hands and thoughts. She had the power to change how to approach each situation.

Can trauma really cause chronic pain? 

Let me explain to you what happened to Elena with the simplest words. As she grew up, something happened that shook up her survival system. Everything was fine at first, and then it wasn’t anymore. She went through shock, and her brain recorded a very unsafe set of events. All the emotions she was feeling were telling her body that she was not safe. She was not safe physically, and she was not safe emotionally. She had to watch out for the slightest signal of danger and had to always be on the lookout for ways to avoid conflict. 

In other words, Elena’s body learned to live in survival mode. She was constantly stressed, and her system overflowed with stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones are responsible for linking emotional experiences, such as traumas, with physical reactions in the body. The next time someone says, sceptically or in a sarcastic way, “How can simple thoughts or feelings alter the way your body physically responds?” you can think of this. It’s hormones.

So, even though many cases of chronic pain are medically defined as “pain having no physical cause,” it doesn’t mean that it is unexplainable. More and more research is shedding light on the tight links between our emotional and psychological spheres and the development of physical symptoms in the body. Lumley & Schubiner's work on central pain sensitivity (published in Rheumatic Disease Clinics, 2019) shows that addressing the emotional aspect of pain can create real, physical relief. The two big players in this scenario are your brain and your nervous system.

In Elena’s case, the traumatic events were used to activate her body’s stress response. However, even when Elena was no longer in danger, her brain kept reactivating the same pathways. Pain surged, and, as a result, the same stress responses were activated. Like a vicious cycle, stress led to pain, and pain led to further stress. Her nervous system had become overly sensitive to stress hormones, and even the slightest signal of danger now activated the same old survival patterns. It was like her brain was still blindly screaming, “We’re NOT safe!” as if responding to some kind of broken record. 

This phenomenon is known as the nervous system’s central sensitisation, also called neuroplastic pain. Even further, we now know that areas responsible for processing pain and emotions in the brain can be physically changed through traumatic experiences. These changes might be even more profound if the trauma happened at a vulnerable age, intensifying the way you feel when you recall the traumatic event or experience pain in the present. This is a common example of trauma-induced chronic pain (sometimes also called psychosomatic), where psychological experiences manifest as physical symptoms.

Rewiring your brain to safety with Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)

In cases like Elena’s, nothing will change unless she recognises the role of her traumas and helps her nervous system go back to a place of safety. She has lived in the “danger zone” for years, and Pain Reprocessing Therapy is an excellent technique for restoring peace in the present and achieving a deep mind-body connection.  

It is an evidence-based treatment approach specifically designed for chronic pain conditions related to psychological trauma. And here's something encouraging: a recent study published in one of the most respected medical journals showed that many people experiencing chronic pain found significant relief through PRT, often within just a few weeks of treatment (Ashar et al., JAMA Psychiatry 2022).

The first pillar of PRT is education. Since the brain is central to the pain experience, particularly in cases of neuroplastic pain, it’s essential to acknowledge its role in fixing the root cause. Clients are often surprised when I tell them we have to start by understanding pain, as it is rarely discussed in medical or traditional settings. However, pain is typically largely misunderstood.

Pain is a signal. Your brain uses it to tell you that something is dangerous or currently hurting you. If you touch a rose’s thorn, it will hurt. Your instincts will make you retract your hand very quickly to avoid getting hurt again. If you didn’t feel pain, you would perhaps try eating the rose, thus hurting yourself even more. Do you see the way pain serves a fundamental survival purpose? 

However, sometimes, the brain simply interprets some signals wrong, leading to neuroplastic pain - a condition where pain persists due to learned neural pathways rather than actual tissue damage. 

It’s like you were watching a movie with the same rose and thorns, and the brain could not spot the difference between fiction and reality. The same neural pathways are activated, and your body goes entirely into alert mode, no matter what’s real and what isn’t. This is what happens with PTSD, for example. Someone who’s been in very dangerous environments might react with a panic attack even by hearing sounds that remind them of the traumatic events they went through.

After understanding pain comes the collection of evidence. This is where I work closely with the client to help them gather as much proof as they can to reinforce what they’ve learned in the first phase. For example, Elena might realise her migraines start whenever she gets a little stressed. This is an important signal that tells her nothing is physically wrong with her; it is mainly about her brain interpreting external cues. 

At this point, PRT involves looking at pain sensations through a different lens: the one of safety.

One technique that is often used in this phase is called somatic tracking, and it includes mindfulness, safety reappraisal, and positive affect induction, which I will explain in a moment.

Mindfulness helps explore pain sensations

Somatic tracking begins with objectively looking at pain. Here, I help you explore pain sensations with curiosity rather than judgment. We don’t try to alter the pain; we simply observe it. I ask you questions like the ones below, and we go on an exploration of the sensation journey together:

“How would you describe the sensation?”

“Where is it localised in the body?”

“What shape, colour, texture does it have at this moment?”

Safety reappraisal reminds you what pain really is

Understanding that pain comes from misinterpretation is one thing, but altering the reaction to the physical sensation takes some time. Safety reappraisals help you remind yourself that you are safe. The therapist might say something like:

“Even if it’s a burning sensation, we know it is safe.”

“We’ve collected enough evidence, and your body is perfectly healthy.”

“Right now, your brain is simply misinterpreting signals because it wants to keep you safe.”

Positive affect induction changes the way you relate to pain

Sometimes, even humour or lightness are handy tools to guide the brain in the right direction. In opposition to the heaviness we might have created and reinforced with complaining or feeling hopeless for some time, it’s important to lighten the mood to help the brain rewire its patterns. 

Although other techniques are often employed along with these, what we’ve just seen are the pillars of PRT. According to the individual background, story, and concerns, I always use a mix of techniques to guide the client from their current state to mind-body connection and, ultimately, healing.

I often use Feldenkrais hands-on practice to help my clients’ nervous system reset and remind their brain what being comfortable in their body actually feels like. Sometimes, it takes a few months to go from hurting to feeling completely free and safe in your own body. However, improvements are often felt within the first few sessions. This is the power of the brain. Although you might have been in a vicious cycle for years, you can rest assured knowing that it might only take a few sessions to see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

You might wonder if all of this is just theory, but it's not. Researchers like Dr. Peter Levine have spent decades studying how our bodies naturally process and release trauma. Their work shows what I see in my practice every day: when we help your body feel safe again, healing becomes possible.

A Return to Safety and Freedom

As for Elena, after three months of working together, her migraines became less frequent until they nearly disappeared. She developed a new relationship with her body - one based on understanding rather than fear. When tension began to build, she now recognised it as her body's early warning system and had tools to respond differently.

Your chronic pain story doesn't have to be a life sentence either. Here's what I hope you take away from this article:

• Trauma can be stored in the body for years, often manifesting as physical pain

• Your brain might be misinterpreting signals, creating pain where no injury exists

• Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Feldenkrais practice can help retrain your nervous system to feel safe again

• Healing is possible, and many people can experience a significant relief in just a few sessions

  
  

The journey from constant pain to freedom might feel overwhelming at first, but remember - your nervous system can learn new patterns just as it learned the old ones. The body's wisdom often surprises us with how quickly it can adapt once it understands it's no longer in danger.

MindfulBody in Luxembourg

Understanding that your pain may be neuroplastic in nature is often the first step toward recovery. At MindfulBody, our goal is to help you unlearn your pain, reconnect with your body, and discover–or rediscover–the freedom of pain-free movement. 

We specialise in treating neuroplastic pain through a combination of mind-body re-education, somatic bodywork (the Feldenkrais Method), and a range of pain therapy techniques (including PRT and EAET). We do this trauma-informed individual work at our practice in Luxembourg City.

If you wish to have a chat, discuss any specific health concerns with me, or look into the ways in which I could support you on your healing journey, feel free to drop me a message at iryna@mindfulbody.lu or book your one-to-one Introductory Session to get the first experience of this work directly.