How to Cure Chronic Pain Without Pills: The Science Big Pharma Ignores

Speaking to one of his patients about their chronic back pain, the late Dr. John E. Sarno, a pioneer in mind-body medicine and a professor at New York University School of Medicine, once explained:

“Most of the structural changes in your spine are natural occurrences… The brain doesn’t want to face up to the repressed anger, so it is running away from it… By laughing at or ignoring the pain, you are teaching the brain to send new messages to the muscles…We’re going to help you take the Sword of Damocles into your hands instead of having it hang over your head.”

Can you really laugh your backpain away? Or is it wishful thinking? Dr. Sarno repeatedly emphasized that chronic pain is often a signal of repressed emotions. It is not necessarily caused by the structures of the body but is often generated by the brain itself as a distraction from deep-seated emotional conflicts. Once you learn to ignore the symptoms and address the underlying emotional disturbances, the pain goes away. Sarno described the role of the pain syndrome was not to “express the hidden emotions but to prevent them from becoming conscious.” - he referred to this as the mind’s defense mechanism.

In other words, instead of experiencing and expressing painful emotions as they come, we suppress them. The brain creates physical pain – shielding us from the deeper psychological suffering lurking beneath. It’s a distraction mechanism – the soul’s natural self-defense.

Dr. Sarno also highlighted that conditions such as Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS), ulcers, and migraines often accompany hard-working, conscientious, hyper-responsible, ambitious, and driven people. The reason is clear – they push themselves too hard and tend to suppress all emotions that might get in the way. They constantly feel this inner conflict between their ambitious goals and the pressing needs of the body and soul. Rather than confronting their anxiety, anger, frustration, or fear, they bury these emotions deeper and deeper, fearing their resurgence and unsure how to deal with them.

It’s far easier to hide in work than to feel. The more emotions are pushed down, the more they want to resurge. Suppressed emotions are like an inflated balloon held underwater – the harder you push them down, the stronger they fight to surface. They are seeking awareness.

That’s where the brain comes in and creates a distraction mechanism – chronic pain. In other words, we feel physical pain not to feel the emotional one. But, paradoxically, the more we suppress our emotions, the more pain pathways are created in the brain, and the more physical pain we feel.

To reverse the situation, we need to retrain the brain – to ignore pain symptoms and refocus the attention on soothing the underlying emotional patterns driving it.

Business Model of Big Pharma: Profit Over Cure?

“Think psychological, not physical” – this is exactly what conventional medicine ignores. And this is one of the key reasons it continues to rely on drugs to “manage” chronic pain. Conventional medicine is largely controlled by pharmaceutical companies that manufacture those drugs – opioids, antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, and other medications.

The solution offered by the pharmaceutical industry is long-term treatment, not a short-term cure. This is partly because long-term treatments generate a more consistent flow of income than one-time cures. Chronic pain is a widespread problem all over the world, and for Big Pharma, it is a goldmine – patients are told to rely on medications indefinitely.

At the root of this approach lies a materialistic worldview that prioritizes physical symptoms over root causes. Even though traditional medicine acknowledges the existence of the psyche, it does so superficially, reducing it to brain’s physical activity. While medications can be lifesaving, a growing body of research suggests that integrating neuroplastic healing into standard care could provide better long-term outcomes for chronic pain sufferers.

However, a true understanding of the mind-body connection is impossible without taking consciousness seriously. According to Dr. Howard Schubiner, chronic pain is reversed at the level of the psyche:

‍“Now that I am fully aware of the incredible connection between the mind and the body, I am almost always able to get rid of the aches and pains that arise by recognizing them for what they are: physical symptoms as a manifestation of stress, worry, anxiety, fears, anger, and the many other emotions that come with being human.”

What Big Pharma forgets is that conditions caused by deep psychological issues cannot be cured by physical means. They can only be “controlled” for a while – namely, while the drug remains in effect. Any attempt to rely on medication alone will ultimately lead to a growing dependency on more drugs.

Think of the opioid crisis: Drugs like OxyContin, which were originally marketed as safe and effective for chronic pain, led to widespread addiction. Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, made billions before facing legal repercussions. Despite this crisis, the pharmaceutical industry continues to develop and market new pain-relief drugs.

The Rise of Neuroplastic Healing

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to rewire itself in response to new experiences, thoughts, and behaviors. What does it mean? It means that the brain remains pliable throughout one’s life and can be changed.

Simply put, neuroplastic healing helps to rewrite the brain’s script. Through techniques such as visualization, graded motor imagery, mindfulness, and somatic tracking, we can effectively tell the brain to relax and stop producing chronic pain signals.

Again, the chronic pain signals are the brain’s way to distract us from the real problem – repressed emotions buried in the wounded psyche. We can use neuroplastic healing to teach our subconscious to relax, and when it does, the pain resolves on its own. When the brain has no more reason to produce pain, it stops producing it.

Research in neuroscience, particularly by experts like Dr. Norman Doidge and Dr. Michael Moskowitz, has demonstrated that chronic pain often arises when the brain continually generates pain signals due to learned neurological patterns.

Neuroplasticity enables us to effectively train the brain to let go, release tension, rest, and trust. Unlike pharmaceuticals, which only mask pain symptoms, neuroplastic healing goes to the root of the problem by reversing maladaptive neural patterns.

In his book Healing Back Pain, Dr. Sarno describes the case of radio host Howard Stern who suffered from bad backpain for years.

“Howard Stern, like many others, had tried everything – physical therapy, chiropractic adjustments, medication – but nothing provided lasting relief. Once he understood that his pain was not due to a structural problem but rather to repressed emotions, his pain disappeared. He has since become one of my most vocal advocates, sharing his recovery story publicly.”

Why Neuroplastic Healing Is Ignored

If neuroplastic techniques are so effective, why aren’t they practiced more widely? The answer has to do with economics rather than science. Neuroplastic healing offers a lasting cure and does not require expensive drugs or recurring prescriptions. All you need to do is learn the steps and commit to the practice.

The medical industry doesn’t give neuroplastic healing enough attention due to:

• Limited long-term profit potential: Pharmaceutical companies prioritize treatments that generate recurring revenue, which can make one-time cures less financially attractive. Neuroplastic healing, once learned, is self-sustaining and self-administered. The patient does not have to make repeated purchases.
• Institutional Resistance: Most medical schools and institutions get their funding, at least in part, from pharmaceutical companies. As a result, their curriculum favors drug-based treatments over alternative methods.
• ‍The Role of Insurance: Insurance companies tend to reimburse medications and surgeries but not for neuroplastic therapies. ‍
• Public Perception and Quick Fix Mentality: Many people with chronic pain have been trained to seek quick relief through medication. Very few would think of investing time in rewiring their brain’s pain responses.‍
• Regulatory Barriers: The FDA and other regulatory bodies prioritize conventional therapy methods. Their lengthy and costly approval process makes it difficult for alternative therapies like neuroplastic healing to gain mainstream acceptance.

Real-Life Success Stories

There are many well-documented cases demonstrating the efficacy of neuroplastic healing methods for chronic pain. Dr. Michael Moskowitz, a pain specialist who suffered from chronic pain himself, successfully cured his own pain and helped countless patients do the same.

Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and researcher explores this revolutionary approach in a book The Brain’s Way of Healing, where he documents multiple cases of successfully reversing chronic pain with neuroplastic methods. His core belief is:

‍“The mind programs the functioning of the brain.”

The Future of Chronic Pain Treatment

The shift from pharmaceutical dependency to neuroplastic healing won’t happen overnight. It requires awareness, education, and action. The science is clear - the brain can rewire itself. As more people embrace these new methods, neuroplastic healing will become a mainstream approach to chronic pain recovery. Now, it’s up to both practitioners and chronic pain sufferers to embrace this shift.

Unlike medication-based therapies, neuroplastic healing is holistic and sustainable. It is rooted in the forgotten link between the mind and the body. The key insight behind neuroplastic healing is that the brain can change – precisely because it is not identical to the mind. The brain is changed by refocusing our attention away from the symptoms. As Dr. Norman Doidge says, the mind programs the brain.

The more we recover the forgotten link between the mind and the body, the more self-evident neuroplastic healing methods will become. Modern medicine often treats pain as an objective phenomenon arising from structural abnormalities in the body. In this view, there’s no place for consciousness. Yet, mounting evidence suggests that chronic pain often results from learned neurological patterns rather than permanent physical damage.

This is good news for chronic pain sufferers. Several studies confirm that retraining the brain is highly effective for reversing chronic pain and symptoms:

• Sixty-six percent of participants who underwent Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) reported being pain-free or nearly pain-free after 4 weeks.  
• A cluster-randomized controlled trial comparing three types of therapy approaches to fibromyalgia – emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and education for fibromyalgia – reported that EAET was more effective than FM education on multiple health criteria.
• Multiple clinical trials (both early and recent) confirm that Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) significantly reduces pain and its interference in daily life, especially with conditions with no clear structural cause, such as fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, pelvic pain, and others.

Neuroplastic healing vs. symptom management

Dr. Moskowitz writes in his book TheBrain’s Way of Healing:

“I don’t believe in pain management anymore. I believe in trying to cure chronic pain.”

As his own first patient, Dr. Moskowitz successfully cured himself. He realized that chronic pain rewires the brain by keeping it in a constant fight-or-flight state. Strong pain causes the brain to devote more and more attention and energy to assessing, thinking about, and worrying about the pain itself.

The more we think about our pain, the more it persists. When Dr. Moskowitz grasped this essential paradox, he realized that the solution was in retraining the brain – teaching it to consciously take its attention away from the symptoms. Over time, Moskowitz developed ground-breaking methods to achieve this.

When strong pain signals activate the amygdala – the brain’s center for fear and emotional responses – we are unable to heal.

“The amygdala is not a place of moderation. It is a place of extreme emotions, fight-and-flight and post-traumatic stress disorder.”  Dr. Moskowitz

This aligns with Dr. Sarno’s observation that chronic pain is cured by addressing the underlying emotions. True healing occurs when the amygdala is calmed, soothed, and reassured. When we shift from a fight-or-flight state to rest-and-digest, the body’s natural healing mechanisms take over.

If you or someone you know struggles with chronic pain, explore evidence-based neuroplasticity techniques.

Call To Action:

Read:  

• The Great Pain Deception by Steve Ozanich – A compelling personal journey and in-depth exploration of Dr. Sarno’s work on TMS.

• The Brain’s Way of Healing by Dr. Norman Doidge – Ground-breaking research on neuroplasticity and pain reversal.

• Chronic Pain: Your Key to Recovery by Georgie Oldfield – A practical approach to overcoming chronic pain through mind-body healing.

Learn:

Seek out mind-body or neuroplastic practitioners.

Apply:

Start practicing mindfulness, somatic tracking, and visualization     techniques to help retrain your brain’s pain responses.

Chronic pain doesn’t have to define your life. The brain can change - so can your experience of pain. The time to start is now.