We’ve been taught that pain always means something is broken, but it’s often just a "stuck" danger signal in the brain. 

To show us how to turn that signal off, Jill Stoddard talks with Alan Gordon, the founder of the Pain Psychology Center and author of The Way Out. Drawing on his own recovery from chronic pain, Alan explains how fear and conditioning keep us hurting even after we've healed.

Through fascinating stories like the "construction worker" case and MRI surprise, they dive into the science of neuroplastic pain and the tools you can use to retrain your nervous system, build stress tolerance, and finally feel safe in your own body again.

Listen and Learn:

• Alan’s personal frustration with navigating a broken medical system and how that led to the discovery of a groundbreaking mind-body approach that offers lasting relief for chronic pain
• How your brain can misinterpret emotional stress or past memories as physical danger to create real, persistent pain even after an injury has fully healed 
• The specific clues that can reveal whether your chronic physical pain is actually coming from your brain, and how to break the cycle of fear that keeps symptoms alive 
• The reason why traditional recovery methods can fail when we ignore our internal state, and how "backward engineering" your physical tension can signal to your brain that the danger has passed 
• Why the clinical evolution of Pain Reprocessing Therapy shifted from exploring unconscious emotions to targeting the brain's internal danger signals, and how modern neuroscience identifies the hidden driver keeping your physical symptoms alive 
• Why somatic tracking outperforms traditional mindfulness 

Resources:

• The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780593086858 
• Pain Psychology Center Website: https://painpsychologycenter.com/
• Follow the Pain Psychology Center on Social Media: 
• https://instagram.com/thepainpsychologycenter
• https://www.facebook.com/painpsychologycenter
• Tell Me About Your Pain - Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tell-me-about-your-pain/id1503847664  
• The Pain Reprocessing Therapy Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pain-reprocessing-therapy-podcast/id1785564399 
• TEDxAdelaide - Lorimer Moseley - Why Things Hurt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs

About Alan Gordon

Alan Gordon is the creator of Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and founder of the Pain Psychology Center. He developed PRT through years of clinical practice and research, and its efficacy has been validated in randomized controlled trials published in JAMA Psychiatry. He is the author of The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain.

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• 39. Chronic Pain with Adrianne Sloan
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• 114. Way of Effortless Mindfulness with Loch Kelly
• 155. Mindfulness and Recovery with Rebecca Williams
• 177. Mind-Body Practices for Stress and Overwhelm with Rebekkah LaDyne
• 201. Fierce Compassion with Kristin Neff
• 336. Mindfulness and Living Expansively with Sharon Salzberg
• 364. The Brain-Gut Connection with Megan Riehl

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