Introduction

Hi, I'm Elysia Bronson, Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC, BCACC) and founder of The Woods Counselling. I'm certified in the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) and trained in pain reprocessing approaches, and I also live with chronic pain myself — including a trigeminal nerve disorder. So everything in this course has been tested twice: once in research, and once in my own body.

First, the most important thing: your pain is real. Nothing in this course says it's "all in your head" in the dismissive way you may have heard before. All pain — every kind — is produced by the brain. That's just how pain works. Sometimes the brain produces pain because tissue is being damaged. And sometimes the brain keeps producing pain after the tissue has healed, or without any damage at all, because it has learned to. That second kind is called neuroplastic pain, and it's what this course is about.

What is Pain Reprocessing Therapy? Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is an evidence-based approach that retrains the brain to interpret signals from the body correctly — as safe, not dangerous. In a 2021 randomized controlled trial published in JAMA Psychiatry, 66% of people with chronic back pain were pain-free or nearly pain-free after PRT, and most stayed that way a year later.

This course teaches the core ideas and skills of pain reprocessing, drawing on The Way Out by Alan Gordon, LCSW (the developer of PRT), taught through my lens as a chronic health clinician and a person with a chronically painful body.

this course is — and isn't

This is psychoeducation: it teaches you how neuroplastic pain works and gives you skills to start retraining it. It is not therapy, and it doesn't replace medical care. Please keep working with your healthcare team — and if your pain hasn't been assessed by a doctor, start there. Ruling out conditions that need medical treatment is step one of pain reprocessing, not a detour from it.

How to move through this course There are six lessons. Take them in order, and take them slowly — one lesson per sitting is plenty. This work asks your nervous system to learn something new, and nervous systems learn best when they aren't rushed. If a lesson stirs things up, pause. Come back later. The course isn't going anywhere; you have lifetime access.

Try it: your starting point Grab a journal — you'll use it through the whole course. On the first page, write down three things: what your pain is like on an average day, what you're most afraid it means, and what you'd do first if it eased. Don't overthink it. We'll come back to this page at the end.