Pain Reprocessing Therapy in Ontario — For Symptoms Medicine Can’t Fully Explain

Pain management generally works on reducing and coping with a signal it treats as ongoing. Pain Reprocessing Therapy works on how the brain appraises danger in the first place. There is real overlap in the tools, and coping strategies stay useful either way. The difference is mostly what is being aimed at.

No, and nothing should be stopped on the strength of a website. Decisions about medication or physical treatment belong with the people prescribing them. This runs alongside whatever is already in place. Worth being clear: Naomi is a Registered Psychotherapist, not a physician, and is not authorized to diagnose. Nothing here is medical advice or a substitute for assessment by your doctor. This work runs alongside your medical care, never instead of it, and anything new, changing or worrying belongs with your medical team first.

It is not self-diagnosed and it is not assumed here either. It gets worked out over the first few sessions, in conversation with your medical team where that helps, and after medical causes have been properly explored by the people qualified to explore them. Not every presentation is primarily neuroplastic, and saying so early matters more than being encouraging.

This is a general pattern rather than an explanation of your situation, and it is worth raising with your doctor as well. If someone was taught early to ignore their body, to push through and not make a fuss, the body often has to get louder to be heard at all. Once it finds a signal that does get a response, it tends to reach for that one again, and not only for the original problem. That is sensitization: the volume goes up across the board. It is not a character flaw and it is not anyone being dramatic. It is a system doing its best to protect someone with the tools it has.

Rarely. Living with symptoms nobody can explain costs more than the symptoms do. There is the tiredness of carrying something invisible, the particular exhaustion of not being believed, the hours spent researching your own body because nobody else would, the things you stopped being invited to. That is grief, and it does not resolve on its own just because the pain settles. So this tends to be PRT and processing rather than PRT instead of it.

Talking, and a fair amount of attention to what the symptom is doing in real time. Some of it is education about how pain gets produced, because not understanding the mechanism is often part of what keeps it running. It tends to be less grit-your-teeth than people expect.

Often shorter than people expect for the pain-specific part, which is worth saying because it is unusual in this territory. In the Colorado trial the protocol was eight sessions across four weeks. Real practice is rarely that tidy. Some people need longer, and it tends to be PRT alongside processing rather than PRT on its own, which extends things. It also depends on how long the pattern has been running and what else is in the picture. None of that is a prediction for your situation, only the shape it usually takes.

It is psychotherapy, so it is covered under most Extended Health Benefit plans and not under OHIP, the same as any other session here and at no separate rate. Direct billing to most major carriers is available, and the details are on the fees page.

Yes, and it is encouraged. Neuroplastic symptoms are complex, and treating them well often calls for an interdisciplinary approach. With your written consent, information can be shared with your physician, your physiotherapist, or anyone else on your team, and the release-of-information paperwork is straightforward. Ask and it will be provided. Naomi is a Registered Psychotherapist, not a medical professional, so collaborative care is not a nicety here; it is how this tends to work best.

Ask it. Email info@ontariotherapy.org or bring it to a free 20-minute consult. Most of what ends up on this site started as somebodyu2019s question.