24/09/2026
A huge reason healing chronic pain is so exhausting isn't just the physical pain itself… It’s the mental fatigue of feeling like you’re throwing a million things at the wall and just hoping something sticks. You buy the books, you try the exercises, you change your diet, and you monitor every little sensation. But it all feels like guessing. Like going around in circles.
When I was finding my own way out of chronic pain and illness, I had to stumble through the dark and figure it out the hard way. But I wandered around long enough that I finally stumbled onto what actually worked. A framework, a guide, a map that helped me know if I was headed in the right direction. Now, as a counsellor, I take my clients through the same process so they don’t have to wander blindly.
Is this the only way? Absolutely not. But it is ONE way, and having a plan makes this journey infinitely faster and easier than trying to wing it.
The Prerequisites: Rule Out to Rule In
Before we can even talk about starting this journey, we have to make sure this is even the right path for you.
If you haven’t ruled out structural issues or acute medical problems, then that is your very first task. This is like the travel pass you need to get on the road.
But this doesn’t take years, or even months. In fact, you’ve likely already done it. This is simply ruling out potential structural causes for your symptoms. This can look different for different symptoms. But this flowchart will give you a good place to start. Click here to download and complete the Rule Out/Rule In Flow Chart
Our safety precautions don’t end here, either. Throughout your entire journey, you need to keep these safety guidelines in mind. When to see a doctor immediately:
Rapid escalation or dramatic changes in your symptoms.
Entirely new symptoms that pop up out of nowhere.
Loss of function: If you are unable to function in daily life (bed-bound, unable to eat, secondary side effects because of symptoms like infections, etc.), medical management has to walk hand-in-hand with your mind-body work. Even though I ended up healing my symptoms through my nervous system, I leaned on Western medicine when I needed to in order to stay physically stable enough to do the work I needed to do with my mind. These are not opposing strategies; they can be complementary.
Keeping these things in mind will ensure that nothing gets missed or overlooked. This is critical for your safety, but it also creates mental peace of mind, so that you can confidently say to yourself—when doubt inevitably creeps in—that YES, I have done my due diligence, and I know what red flags to look out for. If I do not see them, then I will continue on my journey.
And with that, let’s get into the first leg of our adventure.
Step 1: Understand the Mechanics
Once the prerequisites are handled, Step 1 is simple: Understand how pain actually works.
Pain is generated by the brain as a danger signal, not by tissue damage alone. Once pain becomes chronic, the nervous system gets stuck in a hyper-vigilant loop. Crucially, this doesn't just affect your nerves! It can affect every single system in your body. Digestion, immune response, energy levels, muscle tension, etc. The whole system can go haywire when the brain gets stuck in a chronic danger signal.
The cruel irony is that the pain or symptoms become the danger itself, and you get stuck in a loop of stress > pain > stress > pain. But that’s okay, because that’s what we’re breaking in Step 2.
Why is this step of understanding so critical? Because if you don’t understand the mechanics, every flare-up feels like a crisis, every pain is a cause for worry, and every little (or big) symptom needs to be monitored, checked, evaluated, and monitored some more. But when you understand intellectually that your brain is generating false alarms, you can look at a symptom and recognise it for what it is: a misfiring alarm system, not an injury or immediate danger.
Will you still feel scared? Will you still want to monitor and evaluate? Absolutely. There’s a big difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing it in your bones. But that’s what the next step is going to help soothe.
Step 2: Steady the Ship (Nervous System Regulation)
With the mechanics understood, we move to Step 2: Calming the waters.
Allow me to switch metaphors for a moment…
Sometimes it can feel like our mind is a raging ocean in a storm. If we want to get anywhere, we’ve got to stop capsizing.
This is the step that focuses on calming, soothing, regulating. All of those -ing words that people like me talk about.
This is the phase focusing on tools like somatic tracking (learning to observe sensations without fear), gratitude practices, meditation, and nervous system regulation. All the things that tell our brain, “You’re okay. You’re safe. This will pass.”
This is also where we introduce graded exposure to things that we have become fearful of. For a lot of people, this step alone is enough to change everything—this is the core of what mind-body pioneers like Dr. Howard Schubiner talk about and teach with great success. Steadying the ship is about teaching your body that it is safe right now. It’s about building a lifeboat so you aren't drowning in daily panic.
However, a lot of people stop here. This is often where a lot of coaches run out of ideas and say, “Just keep going with the same thing. You just need to get on with life and accept the symptoms. Outlive them.” I think this leaves something very important out. Which brings us to Step 3.
Step 3: Looking Beneath the Churn
Your nervous system didn't decide to freak out and generate chronic pain randomly. It learned to do it for a reason.
Step 3 is about asking the deeper, often uncomfortable questions:
What actually started all of this?
Is there unaddressed trauma or emotional backlog?
Are there ongoing dynamics, relationships, or environments in your life keeping you from feeling safe?
Where do you need to set firmer boundaries?
This is where the real, transformative healing happens. You have to look beneath the churn of daily symptoms to find the root stressors keeping your nervous system on high alert. This will look different for everyone. This is the majority of the work that I do with my clients. And this is where life can change—not just healing the symptoms, but healing many layers of pain that go deeper than the physical body.
This is the step that doesn’t just break the vicious cycle of chronic pain; it ensures that the cycle doesn’t get started again.
Indulge me one last metaphor… This is the step where we are no longer pruning the weeds—we are ripping them out root and stem.
The Non-Linear Reality
You will not move through this in a straight line.
You will constantly shift back and forth between Step 2 (steadying the ship and regulating your nervous system) and Step 3 (looking beneath the churn and processing root causes). Digging into trauma or life stressors might cause temporary flare-ups, which means you have to drop back into Step 2 to soothe your system. Step 2 gives you the stability to step back into Step 3.
That back-and-forth is the journey. Those two states working together are what actually move the ship forward.
The Takeaway
Healing chronic pain can feel like wandering through a forest blindfolded. But it doesn't have to be a guessing game. By ticking off the safety prerequisites, understanding the brain-body mechanics, steadying your nervous system, and bravely looking into the deeper layers of your mind and past, you turn a chaotic guessing game into your own roadmap. A journey that has an end.
It might not be a magical overnight fix, but having a clear plan makes the path infinitely faster, easier, and a whole lot less scary.
You’re not alone in this. I’ve walked this road, and continue to do so in different ways. I hope these essays, emails, and videos give you some good company on the road.
