The link between chronic pain and emotional trauma is a powerful and often-overlooked key to recovery for pain patients. As research on chronic pain continues to unfold, Maggie Phillips (Healing the Divided Self, and Finding the Energy to Heal) and Peter Levine (Waking the Tiger, Trauma-Proofing Your Kids, In an Unspoken Voice) have teamed up to coauthor this essential handbook for those who have chronic pain, and want to liberated.

According to the authors, recent research by the IOM (Institute of Medicine) indicates that more Americans suffer from chronic pain than from cancer, diabetes and heart disease combined.  Other studies show that 40 percent of these individuals are unable to find adequate pain relief.   Many believe that there is no solution, and that pain is just something they have to live with.

Chronic pain is defined as pain that persists after the normal time period for expected healing has elapsed.  A growing number of research studies show a correlation between chronic pain and emotional trauma from the past.  Recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience explain how the relationship between trauma and pain develops.  The pathways to pain include a resetting of the stress management pathways in the deep brain, resulting in increased muscle tension and muscle fatigue.   The brain may also directly express emotional distress through physical pain, such as times when an individual feels a lump in the throat, and aching heart, a knotted stomach, or a headache in responses to emotional pain.   These expressions of emotional pain can also manifest

themselves as back pain, joint pain and muscle pain in many other body parts.   In addition, brain maps for managing sensations can become disturbed and disrupted, so that the brain perceives pain even when only normal sensation triggers are activated in the body. These are only a few of the numerous pathways by which trauma in the mind produces pain in the body.

More exciting is the growing evidence that shows that the release of unresolved trauma emotions can result in a release from pain.  Join us Wednesday, May 23th at 5 pm  as Dr. Phillips shares a wealth of research, insights, exercises and and solutions for chronic pain.

This program will be broadcast live on KHQN 1480 AM and will simulcast via live streaming video on healingtalkradio.utahvalleylive.com