Six modules to live better with chronic pain — built by a clinician who lives with it too.
Universal Pain Therapy (UPT) is a self-paced online course for adults living with chronic pain or chronic illness. Pain neuroscience, emotion regulation, pacing, polyvagal regulation, social support, and the long game — all in one place, on your schedule, designed to work even on flare days.
Universal Pain Therapy (UPT) is a six-module self-paced online course for adults living with chronic pain or chronic illness — including fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, Long COVID, POTS, MCAS, central sensitization, EDS, autoimmune conditions, and persistent primary pain. Created by Elysia Bronson, MA, RCC, BCACC — a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Canadian Pain Society Board Member who also lives with chronic illness — UPT combines Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Polyvagal Theory, DBT, CBT, pacing skills, and somatic regulation into one integrated program. Slides are read aloud by the therapist for cognitive fatigue days and to lower energy input. The course is a subscription CAD $180/month (about the cost of one therapy session per month), cancel anytime — includes all six modules, with every teaching video fully filmed and ready to watch from the day you enroll. Available worldwide.
You might be in the right place if you're living with…
Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, Long COVID, POTS, MCAS, EDS, or another complex chronic illness
Chronic back, nerve, or widespread pain that hasn't responded to "just rest" or "just move more"
Central sensitization, neuroplastic pain, or pain that flares without a clear trigger
An autoimmune condition, cancer recovery, or a diagnosis that turned your life upside down
The exhaustion of explaining your symptoms to people who don't get it
Burnout from being your own care coordinator, researcher, and advocate
You don't need to have it figured out before you start. Module 1 is built for exactly that.
Meet your instructor
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Meet your instructor ✳
I'm Elysia Bronson, MA, RCC, BCACC — a Registered Clinical Counsellor in British Columbia and a Board Member of the Canadian Pain Society, where I also co-chair the Interprofessional Special Interest Group. I'm certified in the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), and I hold a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology.
I also live with fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, hypothyroidism, trigeminal autonomic cephalalgia (a rare neurological pain condition), vascular migraine, chronic fatigue syndrome, and a cardiac issue still in workup. I've had occipital nerve stimulator surgery. I know what it is to do this work from inside a chronic-illness body — to pace the writing, to film around flares, to build a course that has to work on the days I can't get out of bed. UPT is the course I needed when I was first diagnosed, made by someone who couldn't have made it any other way.
A course that blends the latest therapy tools, (i.e. from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, and Polyvagal Theory) — with in depth science about how our biology works. Giving you a great advantage in learning how to manage your symptoms, with a new understanding of how they’re being created.
These are tried and tested strategies from working with chronic health patients and as a therapist with lived experiences.
You don't need to have it figured out before you start. The first module is built for that.
All of this is packaged together with slides, handouts, and videos to help you build your own chronic health toolbox.
Six modules to live better with chronic pain — built by a clinician who lives with it too.
Six-module self-paced course for living with chronic pain and illness. All six teaching videos are fully filmed and ready to watch the day you enroll, plus downloadable workbooks, handouts, and slide presentations. Monthly membership — cancel anytime.
Universal Pain Therapy: A Self-Guided Course for Chronic Pain and Illness
What's inside the course
Module 1 — Understanding Your Pain Brain
Pain neuroscience for non-scientists. Why pain persists long after tissue heals, how the autonomic nervous system amplifies signals it interprets as threat, and what the biopsychosocial model actually means for you. By the end of Module 1 you'll have a framework that makes the rest of the course make sense — and a few first regulation tools you can use today. Module 1 is free to preview without enrolling.
Module 2 — The Feelings Underneath the Pain
Chronic pain almost always travels with grief, fear, anger, and the slow ache of identity loss. This module names that load and gives you tools to work with it — mindfulness practices that don't require a meditation cushion, emotion regulation skills adapted for fatigue and brain fog, and a self-compassion practice for the days the body feels like the enemy.
Module 3 — Pacing, Pivoting, and Pain Reprocessing
The practical core of the course. How to find your real energy baseline (not the one you wish you had), how to use the energy envelope without falling into rigid rules, how Pain Reprocessing Therapy-informed thinking actually works in daily life, and the cognitive reframing tools that interrupt catastrophic thought spirals before they amplify a flare.
Module 4 — Being Sick in a World That Doesn't Get It
Communication scripts for the conversations that drain you the most — doctors who minimize, employers who don't understand, partners who want to help but don't know how, family members who say the wrong thing. Boundary tools that don't require burning bridges. A relational map for deciding who belongs in which circle of your life.
Module 5 — Your Nervous System Has a Brake Pedal
Polyvagal Theory translated into something you can actually use. How to recognize which state your nervous system is in (ventral, sympathetic, or dorsal), how to gently shift state with breath, sound, and orientation cues, and how to build a personalized regulation menu that works on low-energy days — not just on your best ones.
Module 6 — Flare Days, Setbacks, and the Long Game
The work isn't to never flare again. It's to have a plan when you do. This module pulls everything together into a personalized pain-and-energy management plan, an early-warning protocol for catching a crash before it deepens, and a one-page Letter to My Future Self in a Flare that holds your own wisdom for when brain fog wipes the slate.
What every module includes:
A teaching video — all six module videos are fully filmed and ready to watch in your account from the day you enroll. Slides are read aloud, so you can listen with your eyes closed on flare days
A downloadable Canva-built slide presentation along with the download, and printable PDF (workbook-style, fillable)
One or more printable handouts (the Storm & Boat metaphor, superhero pacing, polyvagal recap, and others)
Learning objectives that work whether you have ten minutes or an afternoon
All Six Modules — One Simple Monthly Plan
Your membership includes all six modules — and every teaching video is fully filmed and ready to watch in your account from the day you enroll. No upgrade fees, no “advanced tier” upsell — and you can cancel anytime. Module 1 is free to preview in full — no email address, no enrollment — so you can judge the course before a dollar changes hands. If you join and find within your first 14 days that it isn’t a fit, email me and I’ll refund that month in full. Most people move through the course in 2–4 months, working in ten-minute pieces — there’s no deadline and no penalty for going slowly.
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Universal Pain Therapy (UPT) is a six-module self-paced online course developed by Elysia Bronson, MA, RCC, BCACC. It combines Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Polyvagal Theory, DBT, CBT, pacing skills, and somatic regulation into one integrated psychoeducational program for adults living with chronic pain or chronic illness. Each module includes a slide presentation PDF, handouts, and a teaching video — and every future video update is included in your membership.
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No. UPT is psychoeducation developed by a Registered Clinical Counsellor — not a substitute for one-to-one therapy. It is designed to support work with a therapist, not replace it. If you live in British Columbia and want 1:1 clinical care with Elysia, you can book separately at thewoodscounselling.com. For people outside her clinical service area, UPT offers clinician-developed psychoeducation that's available worldwide.
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Adults living with chronic pain or chronic illness — including fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, Long COVID, POTS, MCAS, EDS, central sensitization, neuroplastic pain, autoimmune conditions, persistent primary pain, cancer recovery, or burnout from managing a complex condition. The course is built for chronic-illness bodies — short video chunks, flare-friendly pacing, no all-day workshops, no homework guilt.
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About five to seven hours of total content, designed to be worked through across six weeks (one module per week) — but at your pace. Each module is 45 to 75 minutes of student time, broken into short video clips, a slide presentation, and one or two handouts. You can do a single ten-minute exercise on a flare day or settle in for a longer session when you have the energy. There’s no rush — your membership stays active for as long as you want it.
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Elysia Bronson offers Weekly Support Sessions no matter where you are in the world. And in Canada there are individual sessions available. Both are at cost alongside the course.
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That’s completely fine — UPT is a monthly membership, not a one-time push. If you’d rather try a smaller, lower-commitment starting point first, our Self-Paced Pain Reprocessing Course is a single-module introduction to the core pain-neuroscience skill for a one-time cost. Many people start there and move into the full UPT course when they’re ready to go deeper.
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Item descriptionNo. I’ve written publicly about why brain retraining programs miss the mark for chronic illness, and this course holds the same line. Module 3 borrows specific, limited tools from Pain Reprocessing Therapy — ways of relating to pain signals with less alarm — because for some people they reduce the amplification layer of symptoms. That is not the same as claiming your disease is a learned brain pattern that can be unlearned. Your illness is biological, and nothing in this course claims to treat, reverse, or cure disease. The framework throughout is “And”: your illness is real, and a regulated nervous system can make living inside it more bearable.
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Yes — and I want to be direct about why, because you’ve likely been burned before by programs that promised recovery, or by “pacing” that turned out to be graded exercise with better branding. Your illness is biological, and nothing in this course claims otherwise. There is no graded exercise here, no incremental activity targets, and no framing where doing more is the measure of success. The pacing content is energy-envelope pacing — finding your real baseline and staying within it — and if you have post-exertional malaise, staying inside your envelope is treated as the non-negotiable foundation, not a starting point to push past. What the course can help with is the load that comes with being sick: the grief, the fear during flares, the conversations with people who don’t get it, and the way a stressed nervous system can amplify — not cause — symptoms that are already real. If that layer isn’t a problem for you, you may not need this course — and Module 1 is free to preview so you can judge for yourself.
FAQ
“Elysia has gone above and beyond to make me feel safe, seen, and honestly cared for. The overwhelmingly heavy emotions that come with being sick have gotten lighter since meeting her.”