You have been to the doctor. Maybe several doctors. You have tried medication, physical therapy, lifestyle changes, and every suggestion the internet has to offer. Some of it helped a little. None of it resolved the pain. And at some point, someone, maybe a physician, maybe a well-meaning friend, said something that made you wonder if they think it is all in your head.
It is not in your head. But it is in your nervous system. And that distinction matters enormously, because it changes what treatment looks like.
Chronic pain, particularly conditions like fibromyalgia, recurring migraines, and pain that persists long after the original injury has healed, often has a neurological dimension that exists alongside or independent of the physical cause. The pain is real. The suffering is real. And there is a growing body of evidence that EMDR therapy, originally developed for trauma, can address the aspects of chronic pain that medical treatment alone cannot reach.
The Connection Between Pain and the Nervous System
Pain is not a simple signal that travels from an injury site to the brain. It is a complex experience that the brain constructs from multiple inputs: sensory data, emotional state, past experiences, contextual cues, and the nervous system’s current level of activation. Two people with identical injuries can experience vastly different levels of pain, because the brain’s interpretation of the pain signal is shaped by everything else happening in the system at the time.
This is why chronic pain often persists after the original tissue damage has healed. The injury is gone, but the nervous system has learned to produce the pain signal as a default. The pain pathways have been reinforced through repetition, emotional distress, and the brain’s threat-detection system becoming sensitized to the point where it produces alarm in response to stimuli that are no longer dangerous. This is called central sensitization, and it is the neurological mechanism underlying many chronic pain conditions.
Trauma amplifies this process. When a person has experienced trauma, whether physical, emotional, or relational, their nervous system is already operating at a heightened baseline of activation. The threat-detection system, the amygdala, is overactive. The prefrontal cortex, which would normally modulate pain signals by providing context (“this sensation is not dangerous, the injury has healed”), is less effective. And the body’s stress response, which produces inflammation, muscle tension, and hormonal changes that directly increase pain sensitivity, is chronically elevated.
The result is a feedback loop. Pain produces emotional distress. Emotional distress activates the stress response. The stress response amplifies pain. The amplified pain produces more distress. Medical treatment that addresses only the physical dimension of this loop can reduce the pain signal but cannot break the cycle, because the emotional and neurological dimensions remain untreated.
How EMDR Addresses Chronic Pain
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) was developed to help the brain process traumatic memories that remain “stuck” in the nervous system. The mechanism is well-established for PTSD and trauma-related conditions. What researchers and clinicians have increasingly found is that the same mechanism is relevant to chronic pain, because chronic pain often involves the same kind of stuck processing that trauma produces.
In an EMDR session focused on chronic pain, the therapist works with you to identify the experiences, memories, and emotional states that are connected to your pain. These might include the original injury or illness that started the pain, medical experiences that were frightening or dehumanizing, the emotional impact of living with chronic pain for months or years including grief, frustration, and hopelessness, or earlier traumatic experiences that sensitized your nervous system before the pain ever began.
Using bilateral stimulation, typically guided eye movements or alternating taps, the therapist helps your brain reprocess these experiences so they lose their emotional charge and their ability to amplify the pain signal. The traumatic memory of the car accident that started the back pain gets filed as something that happened rather than something that is still happening. The fear and helplessness you felt during a medical procedure get processed and released. The years of frustration and self-blame about the pain not going away get addressed at their neurological root.
As the emotional and traumatic components of the pain experience are processed, the feedback loop weakens. The nervous system’s baseline activation decreases. The brain’s threat-detection system recalibrates. And the pain signal, no longer amplified by unprocessed distress, often reduces in intensity, frequency, or both.
Who This Helps Most
EMDR for chronic pain is not a replacement for medical treatment. It is a complement to it, addressing the dimension that medicine alone does not reach. The people who tend to benefit most are those whose pain has a clear emotional or traumatic component, which is more common than most people realize.
Fibromyalgia is one of the conditions most responsive to this approach. The widespread pain, fatigue, and cognitive difficulties that characterize fibromyalgia are increasingly understood as products of central sensitization, and many people with fibromyalgia have histories of trauma, chronic stress, or adverse childhood experiences that contributed to the nervous system’s sensitization. EMDR can address the traumatic material that is maintaining the sensitized state, which often produces meaningful reduction in symptoms.
Chronic migraines that are connected to emotional triggers, stress, or traumatic experiences can respond to EMDR as well. When the emotional triggers are processed, the frequency and intensity of the migraines often decrease because the nervous system is no longer producing the stress response that initiates or amplifies the headache cycle.
Pain that persists after an injury has healed, sometimes called chronic post-surgical pain or chronic post-traumatic pain, often involves a nervous system that learned the pain pattern during the acute phase and never unlearned it. EMDR can help the brain update its model: the injury is healed, the danger has passed, and the pain signal is no longer needed at this intensity.
And for people who have been living with chronic pain for years, the accumulated emotional toll, the grief over lost functioning, the frustration of not being believed, the anxiety about whether the pain will ever improve, is itself a therapeutic target. Processing that emotional burden can change your relationship with the pain even before the pain intensity itself changes, which in many cases is the shift that makes everything else more manageable.
What to Expect
EMDR for chronic pain follows the same eight-phase structure as standard EMDR. The preparation phase includes developing calming and self-regulation techniques that you can use between sessions and during moments of pain flare. Your therapist may guide you in creating a “pain-free” internal image or safe place visualization, not as a cure but as a grounding resource that gives your nervous system an alternative state to orient toward.
The processing phases target the specific memories, experiences, and emotional states identified as contributing to your pain cycle. This is done gradually, at a pace your nervous system can tolerate, with ongoing attention to your physical and emotional state throughout each session. Body-based awareness is particularly important in this work, because chronic pain is a somatic experience, and the processing needs to include the body’s contribution, not just the mind’s.
Results vary by individual, but many clients report reduced pain intensity, fewer and less severe flare-ups, improved sleep, decreased anxiety around pain, and a restored sense of agency over their own health. These changes tend to build progressively as the processing work accumulates across sessions. Some clients experience noticeable shifts within the first few sessions. Others require longer, particularly when the pain is connected to complex or developmental trauma.
EMDR Therapy in Lakewood and Longmont, Colorado
At Self Care Impact Counseling, our team includes EMDRIA-trained EMDR therapists who work with clients managing chronic pain, trauma, and the intersection of physical and emotional suffering that traditional treatment often fails to address. We offer EMDR therapy at our offices in Lakewood and Longmont, as well as online sessions for anyone in Colorado.
We invite you to call us at 720-551-4553 for a free 20-minute phone consultation, or try our Find-Your-Therapist tool to get matched with an EMDR therapist who fits your needs. You can also reach us through the contact page on our website.
Self Care Impact Counseling envisions a new age of counseling for adolescents, adults, couples and groups that makes a REAL difference with core values of GROWTH | BALANCE | COMPASSION | INNER HARMONY.
About the Author
Alayna Baillod, LCSW, is a Clinical Supervisor and the Owner of Self Care Impact Counseling. She is an EMDRIA Approved EMDR Consultant and EMDR Therapist, extensively trained in Gottman Couples Therapy, Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), DBT, Somatic Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Attachment Theory. Alayna specializes in couples counseling, EMDR trauma therapy, and codependency recovery. Find your therapist here.
