How to Rewire Your Brain for Healing

Most people see pain as a problem, and I get that. I really do. When I had a lot of pain, all I wanted was for it to end. Even now, if pain shows up, I just want it to stop. But I do see pain differently now because I see it actually as a gift, which sounds kind of funny. My friend Darren Meissman calls it a gift in strange packaging, and it really is because it's actually here to awaken you to something that's missing in our lives.

In this post, I'm going to share with you how to see pain in a different way, what the neuroscience teaches us about letting go of pain, and how pain is actually a call to love. I'll also guide you through a powerful practice you can use to help release pain.

My Journey: From Pain to Understanding

I kind of knew from my own story and experience that my pain, which came on suddenly, was related to an extremely stressful year I had had. So I kind of knew that it had to be connected to emotions. I didn't accept that my body just suddenly wasn't working and decided to turn on pain for no reason at all, and that I needed to take meds for the rest of my life to cover it up. I just didn't want to accept that.

I actually came to see that my body wasn't broken. It was actually just protecting me from what it perceived as danger. And when I did that, everything changed. I saw pain in a new way: that it was happening for me, not to me. And that it was calling me to awaken to seeing myself in a new light and actually to loving myself again. Because I realized I hadn't really loved myself for a long time, perhaps my whole life even.

Pain as Protection: What the Neuroscience Tells Us

Think about what our brain's job is. Our brain is designed to keep us safe. It's constantly perceiving the world around us through our senses, through our feelings, and then interpreting that and deciding how to respond in the body.

If the brain perceives danger (whether it's real danger or imagined danger), it will create protection for you. And one form of protection is pain. This could be physical danger, emotional danger, or energetic danger. We've got this body that senses, this physical body that's in here, in this world, perceiving through things we're seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling.

Here's the thing: our brain can't tell the difference between taxes and tigers. It can't tell the difference between stress that's non-life threatening and life threatening. It perceives anything that's triggering our stress response as life threatening, especially when it goes on for a long period of time.

When we're in protection mode (the sympathetic response of the nervous system), the brain thinks we've got to protect against life-threatening dangers. So it stops prioritizing:

• Digestion (not important when life is endangered)
• Immune responses (a long-term response for long-term dangers)
• The endocrine system (for sleeping, digesting, reproducing...all on the back burner)

Instead, it keeps us ready to fight or flight.

These responses could also show up as what I call behaviors of protection. Behaviors that probably come from childhood programming. They might include:

• People pleasing: being small and pleasing everyone to be accepted
• Perfectionism: because that's the only way to be good enough
• Being overly polite: never expressing yourself
• Hyper independence: thinking no one is there to support you, so you do everything yourself
• Hyper vigilance: always scanning and interpreting relationships (Do they like me? Are they happy with me?)

These behaviors develop when we don't feel good enough in this world. And a basic survival instinct is being accepted by our tribe (our family and the people important to us). If our brain perceives that maybe we're not being accepted, then it perceives that as a life-threatening event.

If these behaviors go on long enough, they can even turn into pain. I love these emotional connections: if you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders (maybe you're hyper independent, taking care of everything yourself), you might have shoulder pain. The brain goes, "Okay, she's got the weight of the world on her shoulders. If I turn on some pain, then she's not going to be able to carry that weight and she'll be safer."

Same thing if we're not speaking our truth: not speaking up when things happen that we don't like, or not speaking up for ourselves. That could show up as thyroid problems, pain in the neck, tinnitus, or jaw problems like TMJ.

Once these pain pathways get turned on, they become neural circuits in the brain. These pathways keep getting wired, and then it becomes chronic because the pathway is easily learned.

Another thing that can happen: when we feel pain, especially if it's affecting our ability to live life the way we want, we start having fear about our future. This is a perfectly normal response. But does the brain feel safe if you're afraid for your future? Absolutely not. So then it goes, "Whoa, I got to turn on more pain."

We can get stuck in this pain-fear cycle, which is a perfectly sensible response for your brain. But I want you to see it in this different light because it helps motivate you to take action. We can't keep repeating the same patterns and expect a different result. That's the definition of insanity. We have to change the pattern to change the result.

Coming Back to Love

Let me talk about love for a moment. Often, this programming we get as children means we may not feel loved. We may not even love ourselves. When people are asked in studies, "Do you love yourself?" very few say yes. Isn't that kind of sad?

If you don't love yourself wholeheartedly, then on some level, your brain and nervous system don't feel safe. So a big part of letting go of pain is learning to love yourself, truly learning to love yourself and knowing that you are lovable.

In fact, we all come into the world believing we're lovable. We only learn from our environment and the people around us that there's some part of us that's not lovable. And then we form a belief about that (thoughts we think over and over again). Especially before the age of seven, they become programs in our subconscious mind, like a filter through which we see and perceive the world.

We want to change that filter to see and perceive yourself as being lovable. And here's a funny little thing: it doesn't even matter what other people believe, as long as we love ourselves. That will actually change how other people perceive us.

What we know from neuroscience is that the brain and the nervous system are neuroplastic, which means they can learn. We can create new neural networks that replace the old neural networks, and we can rewire for safety. We replace fear with love and resistance with compassion.

Is Your Pain Neuroplastic?

Let me be clear first: sometimes people think when I talk about the brain and pain that there's some implication that your pain is not real, that it's just in your head. That couldn't be further from the truth. Any pain you feel is real pain because all pain actually comes from the brain, even pain that has a physical source.

Here are some ways to tell whether the pain you're experiencing is the brain's protection mechanism:

• Pain that moves around different places in your body
• Pain that flares with stress
• Pain that lingers after tissues have healed (maybe an MRI shows no reason for pain)
• Sensitivities to light, sound, food, stress, weather, or other people's moods
• Pain that lessens when you're relaxing, on vacation, laughing, having time with friends, or feeling peaceful

Here's something important: just because there's a structural change doesn't mean you necessarily have pain from that. For example, there are loads of people with arthritis. If you did an MRI scan of the general population with no pain, you would find arthritis in their joints, but they don't have pain.

The same goes for disc abnormalities in the back (bulged discs, degenerative discs), yet many people have no pain. Same thing with rotator cuff tears and torn meniscus in knees. There are lots of studies on this.

If other people experience these conditions and don't have pain, then you can also experience them and not have pain.

Seeing Pain in a Different Light

Let's see pain not as your body betraying you (that's how I felt, like my body was letting me down), but as your body communicating with you. Pain is saying, "Please see me, please love me." Not the pain, but you. It's really a compassionate call for help.

It's a calling from your soul as well. The real you is pure love. If you're experiencing this type of pain, it's a sign that message has gotten tangled or distorted somehow. If you can see yourself as you truly are (as a loving being, here to love you and love others, and this body is to be loved), then things can begin to shift for you.

Rewiring the Brain: Practical Steps

What we know is that when the nervous system feels safe, it can shift from protection to business as normal. And business as normal is repair. That parasympathetic state of rest, digest, and repair.

If your body is in pain, we need to shift into that mode. That's how your body will repair itself naturally. But if we're in that fight, flight, fear state, that stress response, it can't repair. So if we want to shift our body into a healing state, we have to keep practicing safety.

Here are the things you can do:

• Self-Compassion and Forgiveness: Maybe you look back over your life at past things where you can say, "I did the best I could with what I knew at the time," and forgive yourself. Or maybe it's an interaction with another person you're finding hard to forgive. If we never face it, it's like trying to keep a beach ball below the surface. It takes so much effort, and eventually it's going to pop up in the form of pain or illness.
• Calm Breathing: A lot of people with pain are breathing rapidly in their upper chest or holding their breath. What we want to do is shift to slower breath work. We need to take full breaths low down into our lungs (belly breathing) to activate the vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic response. Practice it with consistency, and over time you'll notice you're belly breathing most of the time.
• Gentle Movement: Things like chi gong, walking, or gentle stretching can be really helpful.
• Gratitude Practice: If you feel gratitude for what you have in your life and your body right now, you can't feel gratitude and fear at the same time. You can't feel gratitude and lack at the same time.

Here's an example that helped me: when I was frustrated with my hands because they hurt so much and my joints were getting swollen, I remembered that someone with no hands would gladly take my hands even with the pain. If there's a part of your body that's in pain right now, aren't you grateful to have it even as it is?

As John Kabat-Zinn, the father of mindfulness-based stress reduction, said: "As long as you're alive, there's a whole lot more right with you than wrong with you." Isn't that beautiful?

The Four A's for Rewiring Your Brain

Here are four steps for rewiring your brain and nervous system for safety:

1. Awareness: Notice sensations in your body, even if it's the pain, but try to do this without judgment. Just have awareness without judgment.
2. Acceptance: Say thank you. "Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for sending me this signal to let me know that you need help."
3. Affection: Send love and warmth to the part that hurts. Thank the area: "Thank you for all that you do for me. Thank you for the movement that you give me." When you do this, you're sending love. Sometimes I even talk to my brain and say, "Send blood and nutrients to this area, whatever it needs." Dr. Sue Morter said that anytime we have pain, it's simply that the brain isn't prioritizing that area. When we focus our loving attention and affection on the area, we're telling the brain to prioritize it.
4. Action: Repeat it. Repeat these safety signals every day. We can't just do this once in a while. We need to keep doing this because we've developed a pattern over time (it could be our lifetime) that's created pain in our body. If we want to create a different outcome, we have to change the pattern. Our brain and nervous system learn through repetition.

A Guided Practice for You

Here's a simple practice you can do right now (find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for about five minutes):

1. Sit or lie down and get really comfortable. Feel free to shift your body anytime or use a blanket to feel warm and cozy.
2. Close your eyes and begin to notice your breath. You don't need to change it, just notice it.
3. Notice that you're supported. Whether sitting or lying down, notice the support underneath you where your body contacts the surface. It's always there for you.
4. Notice one area that's giving you discomfort right now, just one area.
5. Take a slow breath in, imagining you're pulling the breath into that area (imagine the area has a nose so you could breathe into it). Then take a long exhale, letting it be longer than the inhale. Repeat this three times.
6. Place one or both hands over your heart and say to yourself:
   
• "I am safe."
• "I am love."
• "My body is protecting me because it loves me."
7. Repeat this.
8. Visualize light or warmth spreading from your heart, letting it spread to the area giving you discomfort. Let that light soften the area.
9. Feel gratitude for your body's devotion to keeping you safe. "Thank you for keeping me safe. I am safe."
10. Affirm: "Every calm breath teaches my brain and body that I am safe." Repeat this.
11. Take one last slow inhale and an even slower exhale.
12. Bring your attention to the support beneath you. Thank it for the support.
13. When you're ready, slowly and gently open your eyes.
    

Notice: has that area softened at all? Maybe you've noticed a little less tension, a little less pain. But no matter what, you've created a little moment of calm.

The Key: Repetition

Here's the thing: repetition. Come back to this practice and keep repeating because this is how our brain and nervous system learn. Through repetition, we need to keep telling it a different story. The story of "I'm safe, all is well, I am fine."

We give the brain a different experience of pain. Instead of pain and fear, it's getting an experience of pain and safe. Then it can begin to calm the nervous system and shift into that repair state.

You can't hate the body into healing. You can only love it into safety. Keep reaffirming safety as much as you can. Remind yourself that you are love. You are completely lovable. Anything else (any belief other than that) is just something that was someone else's idea or your interpretation, and it wasn't true.

Any thought that's not true will feel heavy, will hurt. Thoughts that are true feel loving and light and expansive. This is the truth.

One Thing You Can Do Today

Take a few minutes to place your hand over your heart and tell your body: "I'm safe, I am listening, I love you."

Repeat it every day, maybe several times a day. Set up some reminders: a notification on your phone, a post-it note somewhere, a bracelet or piece of jewelry, or wearing your watch on your other arm. Anything that might remind you to do that practice.

Remember This

Pain is protection. It's a loving message inviting you back to safety and self-love. The brain can rewire and your body can heal.

You're not broken. You are loved. You are safe. You are capable of healing.

Think of your brain as a garden, and every loving thought and calm breath plants seeds of safety. Cultivate a garden of safety, and when we can do that, the brain and nervous system can feel safe again and release pain in the body.

If you found this helpful, please share it with someone who might benefit from this message. Together, we can start creating less pain in the world.