Alex Klassen, MSW, RSW

As you can see above, Edward Adelson's checker board illusion plays an interesting trick on the brain. The A square looks darker than the B square, even though they're the exact same shade of grey. Still, when you look back at only the left image, you can't help but see the B square as lighter. So what exactly is happening here?

Our vision isn't straightforward like a camera, simply relying on our eyes and visual cortex. Seeing involves complex brain processing that incorporates the temporal lobe, parietal lobe, and frontal lobe; our brain references contextual information and prior knowledge about the visual world^1,2,3. This means when you're looking at the checkerboard above, the colour and lightness of objects is not determined just by your eyes⁴. When neuroscientists study certain optical illusions, they find it's not the eyes or visual cortex that's being fooled. It's the processing in the frontal lobes where the mistake appears to be made.⁵

“It’s really important to understand we’re not seeing reality; we’re seeing a story that’s created for us”

- Patrick Cavanagh, Neuroscientist, Harvard Dept. of Psychology

Like our vision, chronic pain and symptoms aren't produced by just one area of the brain. When deciphering signals from our body, the brain references context, memory, belief, and pre-existing information to determine if our body is safe or dangerous. This means the level of pain/symptom we're experiencing isn't an accurate measure of our tissue health⁶. Much like an optical illusion, the brain can make a mistake, trying to protect us when our body is actually safe and healthy.⁷

Even when we're physically injured, it's still the job of the brain to generate pain and physical sensations.⁷ This means pain and symptoms are always an illusion created by the brain; it's just a question of whether that illusion is helpful or not. Pain caused by actual damage to the physical body is called nociceptive pain. This pain is crucially important, allowing us to move away from physical dangers and treat issues in the body. In contrast, neuroplastic pain occurs when we become sensitized; the brain decides to generate pain and symptoms in the absence of structural damage. This happens due to reinforced memories, fearful beliefs, a sense of danger, and nervous system dysregulation⁷. The good news is, many forms of chronic pain and symptoms are neuroplastic, and this can be unlearned^8,9.

The first step in healing is assessing your symptoms and determining if your pain/symptom is neuroplastic. To get started on this, we encourage you to read our other blog posts, which will help you understand the criteria for neuroplastic pain/symptoms and how it develops. Once you gather evidence and come to recognize your pain/symptom is neuroplastic, you can begin to change your beliefs about your body and the types of movements and conditions you are safe to engage in.

Your second step is engaging in gradual exposure to retrain your brain and pain system. You can use specific meditations, safety messages, movement, and behavioural strategies to heal the communication between you brain and body. This leads to a reduction of fear-based avoidance and restoration of a sense of safety, over time.

The third step is regulating the nervous system. When the brain is in a constant state of danger due to past trauma, relationship concerns, life stressors, or mental health issues, it's more likely to generate neuroplastic pain⁷. By guiding the nervous system to a regulated state, we reduce alarm signals in the brain and symptoms decrease.

You can think of healing neuroplastic pain/symptoms like a mix of show and tell. By assessing and gathering evidence, you tell the brain you're actually safe and there's no need for pain/symptom generation or avoidance. By engaging in exposure-based practices and regulating your nervous system, you show the brain it's safe and doesn't need to generate symptoms to protect you.

At this point, you may be curious about the specific steps to retraining the brain and pain system. Don't worry; we've got you covered. The Somatic Safety Method course walks you through every step, providing video based education, detailed self-assessment tools, behaviour change plans, over 60 guided meditations, tools to process emotions and trauma, and strategies to increase your sense of social safety. We've brought together the most effective, evidence-based tools from Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy, Polyvagal Theory, Mindfulness, Qigong, Somatic Experiencing, and more. Through an in-depth, comprehensive approach, you can restore safety. And when brain realizes it's safe, pain and symptom generation drops.

Plus, you don't have to do this work alone! With live Q&A sessions with course creators and an interactive chat forum, you can ask questions and connect with others. What are you waiting for? Join the Somatic Safety Method course today.

References

1. Libedinsky, C., & Livingstone, M. (2011). Role of prefrontal cortex in conscious visual perception. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 31(1), 64–69. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3620-10.2011

2. Purves D, Augustine GJ, Fitzpatrick D, et al., editors. Neuroscience. 2nd edition. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates; 2001. The Functional Organization of Extrastriate Visual Areas. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10884/

3. Rahnev, D.E. Nee, J. Riddle, A.S. Larson, M. D’Esposito, Causal evidence for frontal cortex organization for perceptual decision making, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.113 (21) 6059-6064, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1522551113 (2016)

4. Troscianko, J. & Osorio, D. (2023). A model of colour appearance based on efficient coding of natural images. PLOS Computational Biology 19(6): e1011117. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011117

5. Steinberg, N., Roth, Z., Movshon, A. & Merriam, E. (2024) Brain representations of motion and position in the double-drift illusion eLife 13:e76803 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.76803

6. Moseley, L & Moen, D. (n.d.). It’s time to rethink persistent pain. Tame the beast. Retrieved November 25, 2024, from https://www.tamethebeast.org/#tame-the-beast

7. Gordon, A., Ziv, A. (2021). The way out: A revolutionary, scientifically proven approach to healing chronic pain. Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC.

8. Woolf C. J. (2011). Central sensitization: implications for the diagnosis and treatment of pain. Pain, 152(3 Suppl), S2–S15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2010.09.030

9. Schubiner, H., Lowry, W. J., Heule, M., Ashar, Y. K., Lim, M., Mekaru, S., Kitts, T., & Lumley, M. A. (2024). Application of a Clinical Approach to Diagnosing Primary Pain: Prevalence and Correlates of Primary Back and Neck Pain in a Community Physiatry Clinic. The journal of pain, 25(3), 672–681. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2023.09.019