From Pain to Possibility: A Journey into the Mind's Power to Heal

A comprehensive guide based on the groundbreaking work of Dr. Howard Schubiner and the science of neuroplastic pain

Introduction: Where This All Began

This journey started with a simple question: “What do you know about Dr. Schubiner and the brain trigger?” What followed was an exploration that went far beyond chronic pain into the very nature of human consciousness, reality, and healing.

This guide captures everything we discovered together—from the science of brain-generated pain to the profound realization that our brains construct our entire experience of reality. Whether you’re suffering from chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety, or simply curious about how your mind works, this is for you.

Part 1: The Brain Trigger and Neuroplastic Pain

What is the Brain Trigger?

Dr. Howard Schubiner, a clinical professor at Michigan State University, has developed a modern, scientifically grounded framework for understanding chronic pain. Central to his work is the concept of the “brain trigger” —a learned, overprotective neural circuit in the brain that can generate real physical pain even without ongoing tissue damage.

This is built on the principle of neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change and adapt. Schubiner argues that for many people, chronic pain is a “false alarm.” While all pain is real and created in the brain as a protective response, this alarm system can become overly sensitized due to factors like stress, strong emotions, or past trauma. When this happens, the brain continues to fire pain signals long after an initial injury has healed.

What are Brain Triggers?

Just like Pavlov’s dogs learned to associate a metronome with food, your brain can learn to associate certain triggers—a specific situation, a place, a stressful thought, or even an emotion—with a pain response. Schubiner describes these as part of a neural circuit disorder (NCD) or Mind Body Syndrome (MBS) .

The F.I.T. Criteria: How to Identify Neuroplastic Pain

Schubiner uses the acronym F.I.T. to help identify this type of pain:

Functional: The pain doesn’t match a known structural problem.
Inconsistent: The pain shifts, moves around, or comes and goes in unpredictable ways.
Triggered: The pain is provoked by specific emotions, situations, or other triggers.

Part 2: The Brain as a Dashboard Warning Light

Beyond Pain: The Alarm System

The brain’s protective repertoire goes far beyond physical pain. When it perceives a threat—whether physical, emotional, or psychological—it can trigger a wide range of responses:

Common Brain-Generated Symptoms:

Fatigue and brain fog
Digestive issues (IBS)
Tension headaches and migraines
Dizziness and tinnitus
Anxiety and depression
Functional seizures
Muscle weakness or tremors
Palpitations and chest pain
Numbness or tingling sensations
Visual disturbances
Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)

The “Body Says No” Phenomenon: When you ignore your body’s smaller signals of stress or overwork, the brain escalates the message into more prominent symptoms—forcing you to pay attention.

The “Check Engine” Light: Think of these symptoms as warning lights on your car’s dashboard. They’re not the problem themselves—they’re signals that something needs attention.

Why This Happens: The Role of Emotions and Experience

Emotional experiences, especially unresolved ones from the past, can prime this protective alarm system:

Emotions as Triggers: The neural pathways activated by emotional injuries can be the same as those for physical injuries. Unprocessed emotions, trauma, and chronic stress can make the brain’s alarm system hyper-sensitive.
Personality Traits: People-pleasers, perfectionists, and those who tend to silence their own needs (“self-silencing”) are more likely to experience these brain-generated symptoms.

Part 3: The Brain as More Than Just an Alarm

A Million Things at Once

The brain is not just a warning device—it’s the master control center of your entire existence:

1. Keeping You Alive (Master Regulator)
It runs your heartbeat, breathing, digestion, temperature, and hormones without you lifting a finger. It constantly works to maintain balance (homeostasis).

2. Predicting What’s Next (Prediction Machine)
Your brain is not passive—it’s a prediction engine. It constantly uses past experiences to simulate what’s going to happen next. When you walk into a room, your brain has already predicted the temperature, the people there, and how you’ll feel—before your senses even confirm it.

3. Running Your Autopilot (Habits and Learned Behaviors)
Tying your shoes, driving a familiar route, or typing on a keyboard are all managed by deep brain networks that have learned these sequences over time.

4. Building Your Reality (Experience Builder)
Everything you see, hear, and feel is constructed by your brain. Colours don’t exist in the outside world—they’re just wavelengths of light. Sound is just pressure waves. Your brain turns raw data into a meaningful, cohesive experience.

Part 4: The Grand Illusion

The Radical Truth: Everything is an Illusion

This is where the journey gets truly mind-bending. Your brain doesn’t passively record reality like a camera—it actively constructs your experience based on incoming data, past experiences, and predictions.

Living in the Past: Your brain takes about 100-200 milliseconds to process visual information. By the time you “see” something, the event has already happened.

Your Blind Spot: You have a literal blind spot in each eye where the optic nerve connects. You never notice it because your brain fills in the missing information.

The Unified Self: The feeling of a single “you” sitting behind your eyes is an illusion. Consciousness is actually fragmented—different brain regions handle different tasks. The feeling of a unified self is a story your brain creates.

Time is a Construct: Your experience of “now” is a carefully edited version of the past, with different types of information processed at different speeds and synchronized into a single timeline.

Why Would the Brain Create Illusions?

This system evolved to keep you alive—efficiently:

It’s Faster: Predicting what’s about to happen allows for quicker reactions than processing raw data from scratch.
It Saves Energy: The brain uses about 20% of your body’s energy. Running detailed simulations is expensive, so the brain takes shortcuts.
It Prioritises Survival: The brain is biased towards detecting threats. It would rather give you a false alarm than miss a real danger.

Part 5: The Solution—You Can Unlearn the Pain

The 28-Day Program

Dr. Schubiner’s program is structured as a 28-day journey of brain retraining:

Week 1: Taking Control of Your Life
Education and observation. You learn the science behind neuroplastic pain, identify your patterns using the F.I.T. criteria, and start practicing somatic tracking.

Week 2: Reclaiming the Past
Emotional work begins. You start expressive writing exercises to explore and process suppressed emotions like anger, sadness, and grief.

Week 3: Dialogues Toward Understanding
Continue emotional processing, addressing complex feelings and relationships that contribute to your pain pattern.

Week 4: Creating the New You
Consolidation and moving forward. You practice responding to pain differently, build daily routines, and prepare for ongoing recovery.

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)

PRT is a groundbreaking treatment that helps the brain “unlearn” chronic pain:

The Core Principle: In about 85% of chronic back pain cases, the pain is not from ongoing tissue damage but from the brain continuing to send a warning signal long after healing.

The 5-Step Framework:

Education: Learning about pain neuroscience and why pain is reversible.
Personalized Insight: Connecting the science to your own history and experiences.
Somatic Tracking: Observing pain sensations without judgment or fear.
Addressing Emotional Threat: Lowering threat by processing emotions.
Cultivating Positivity: Inducing positive affect to dilute the experience of pain.

The Science: A landmark 2021 NIH-funded study found that after 4 weeks of PRT, 66% of participants were pain-free or nearly pain-free—significantly more than the 20% who improved from a placebo. fMRI scans showed reductions in brain activity in pain-processing regions.

Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET)

EAET targets the trauma, stress, and relationship problems that underlie many chronic pain conditions:

The Core Philosophy: Unprocessed emotions like anger, sadness, grief, and fear get “stuck” in the brain and body, triggering and sustaining the pain alarm system.

The Four Components:

Education: Linking emotions to pain through psychoeducation.
Emotional Disclosure: Talking or writing about traumas and conflicts.
Emotional Expression: Experiencing and expressing emotions like anger, grief, and self-compassion.
Relational Change: Communicating more effectively in real relationships.

Practical Exercises:

Writing a letter (not sent) to someone who hurt you
In-vivo expression: “I feel angry because…”
Guided imagery and imaginal exposures
Real-life communication practice

The Science: A 2024 study found EAET was superior to CBT for chronic pain. 63% of EAET patients had at least a 30% pain reduction compared to only 17% in the CBT group. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services designated EAET as a “best practice” for pain management.

Somatic Tracking: The Daily Practice

Somatic tracking is a mindfulness practice designed to break the pain cycle:

The Core Principle: Observe pain with curiosity and neutrality rather than fear. When you’re afraid of pain, your brain treats it as a danger signal. By calmly observing, you teach the brain that the feeling is safe.

The Step-by-Step Guide:

Ground Yourself: Take slow, deep breaths to center your attention.
Tune In: Gently bring awareness to the most dominant physical sensation.
Observe with Curiosity: Ask neutral questions—What does this feel like? Is it tight, warm, tingling, pulsing?
Stay Neutral: Your job is not to get rid of the pain—just to observe it.
Follow the Sensation: If it moves, shifts, intensifies, or disappears, just follow it like a curious observer.
Reinforce Safety: Remind yourself—“This is just a safe sensation. I am not in danger.”

Key Attitude: The goal is to develop new neural pathways by consistently pairing the physical sensation with a feeling of safety.

Part 6: The Science—Is This Legitimate?

Yes. It’s Evidence-Based.

PRT Research:

2021 JAMA Psychiatry study: 66% of participants became pain-free or nearly pain-free.
2026 pilot study on veterans: PRT was “feasible, acceptable, and have potential clinical efficacy.”
2025 pilot study on chronic widespread pain: PRT was a feasible and potentially effective intervention.

EAET Research:

2020 study: EAET more effective than CBT for chronic pain in U.S. military veterans.
2024 study: 63% of EAET patients had at least 30% pain reduction vs. 17% for CBT.
2019: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services designated EAET a “best practice” for pain management.

The Broader Science:

Groundbreaking research from the Technion in Israel, published in Cell, showed that the brain can store an “immune memory” and reactivate inflammation by stimulating specific neurons.
Chronic stress can severely dysregulate the HPA axis, leading to low cortisol levels found in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Long COVID.
The brain can control immune responses so precisely that manipulating the right brain areas could potentially help “withdraw” a disease.

Dr. Schubiner’s Credentials:

Clinical Professor at Michigan State University
Published in peer-reviewed journals including Psychosomatic Medicine
His work has been praised by experts like Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Part 7: Genetics, Epigenetics, and Family History

The Role of DNA

The relationship between DNA, the brain, and family history is complex but crucial:

The Straightforward Role:

You can inherit specific genetic mutations that dramatically increase disease risk (e.g., Huntington’s disease, early-onset Alzheimer’s).
For common conditions like heart disease, it’s a combination of many small genetic variations (polygenic risk).

The Brain-Gene-Environment Link:

A 2020 study found that a high genetic risk for coronary artery disease was associated with higher stress-related brain activity, which increased heart attack risk.
Epigenetics: Your lifestyle, environment, and even thoughts and experiences can influence how your genes are expressed without changing the underlying code.
Trauma and chronic stress can lead to epigenetic changes that affect stress-response and immune-inflammatory signaling—and these changes can even be passed down to future generations.

What This Means:

You can’t change your DNA, but you can influence how it behaves.
Understanding family history gives you crucial information to make proactive choices.
The goal is informed empowerment, not genetic determinism.

Part 8: The Deepest Question

If Everything is an Illusion, What Does This Mean?

This is the question that opened up the entire journey. If your brain can create:

Pain from no injury
Phantom limb sensations
Visual and auditory experiences
The feeling of a unified self
The experience of time

…then everything you experience is a brain-constructed simulation. This isn’t a flaw—it’s a feature. Your brain filters out almost all of reality to give you a simplified, practical version that helps you survive.

The Paradox:
The illusion feels real, and that’s what matters. Your pain is real. Your suffering is real. Your joy is real. Even if it’s all brain-generated, it’s still your lived experience.

The Power:
If the brain can create chronic pain as an illusion, it can also create relief. You can learn to work with the illusion:

Learn how the brain constructs reality.
Understand the triggers that activate false alarms.
Practice somatic tracking to show your brain it’s safe.
Process suppressed emotions to quiet the alarm system.

Part 9: The Healing Framework

What the Brain Responds To

Why Positive Thinking Alone Falls Short:

The Brain Doesn’t Believe It: If you’re in severe pain and say “I feel great,” your brain knows it’s a lie.
It Can Feel Like Gaslighting: Forcing positivity while your body screams in pain can create shame, guilt, and frustration.
It Avoids the Real Issue: Suppressed emotions like anger, sadness, and grief are often the fuel for the pain circuit.

What Actually Retrains the Brain:

Positive Thinking	Brain Retraining (PRT/EAET)
Tries to override negative thoughts	Acknowledges and processes emotions
Denies the pain experience	Observes pain without fear
Can feel like gaslighting	Feels honest and self-compassionate
May increase internal conflict	Reduces internal conflict
Doesn’t address root emotions	Directly addresses suppressed emotions

The Heart of It: The brain is not tricked by forced positivity. It is soothed by safety and honesty. When you show your brain you’re willing to feel your emotions and observe your pain without fear, you send a powerful message: “I am safe. There is no threat. You can stand down.”

Part 10: Practitioners and Resources

Where to Find Help

In South Africa:
While EAET and PRT are still emerging in South Africa, here are promising leads:

Simone Steyn (PainEase Coaching), Robertson, Western Cape: Explicitly anchors her work in both PRT and EAET. Offers online sessions.
Janie Loubser, Stellenbosch: Clinical Psychologist specializing in mind-body techniques, Clinical Hypnotherapy, and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for chronic pain.
Joanne Marsh, Cape Town: Therapeutic Reflexologist rooted in holistic health, neuroplasticity, and mind-body integration.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast: Episode #133 of Unstoppable Body and Mind—”Embracing Your Emotions Meditation.”
Insight Timer: Free meditations on somatic tracking and connecting with emotional body.
Book: Unlearn Your Pain by Dr. Howard Schubiner (includes access to official meditation audio).

Conclusion: A Hopeful Ending

Your brain is not your enemy. It’s a well-intentioned protector that sometimes overdoes its job. By understanding how it works—how it constructs reality, creates illusions, and generates protective symptoms—you can gently teach it to calm down and reclaim your life from chronic pain.

The key principles to remember:

All pain is real—whether from tissue damage or a brain-generated false alarm.
Your brain is a prediction machine—it constantly constructs your experience of reality.
Pain can be unlearned—through PRT, EAET, somatic tracking, and emotional processing.
Science supports this—with landmark studies in JAMA Psychiatry, Cell, and more.
You have agency—you can’t change your DNA, but you can influence how it behaves through lifestyle, environment, and emotional processing.
Everything is an illusion—but the illusion feels real, and you can learn to shape it.

A Call to Action:

If you’ve experienced pain with no clear cause, know that you’re not alone and you’re not broken. Your brain is simply trying to protect you in the only way it knows how. With patience, compassion, and the right tools, you can teach it a new way.

“Have you experienced pain with no clear cause? Share your story below.”

“If you found this helpful, share it with someone who needs to hear it.”

📚 Sources and Further Reading

Schubiner, H. (2026). Unlearn Your Pain: The Science of Recovering from Chronic Pain, Fatigue, Anxiety, and Depression.
JAMA Psychiatry (2021). Pain Reprocessing Therapy for Chronic Back Pain.
Cell (2021). The brain’s role in storing and recalling inflammation.
Circulation (2020). Genetic risk, brain stress activity, and heart disease.
Psychosomatic Medicine. EAET research studies.
Technion (2021). “Immune memory” in the brain.
NIH-funded studies on PRT and EAET.

This guide was created from a comprehensive conversation about Dr. Howard Schubiner’s work, neuroplastic pain, and the nature of human consciousness. It is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional for medical concerns.