Why does chronic pain continue even when an injury has healed, medical tests don’t fully explain the pain, or conventional treatment hasn’t resolved it?
Chronic pain is generally defined as pain that persists or recurs for more than three months. It can continue after an injury has healed, after surgery, or when there is no single structural finding that fully explains the severity or persistence of the pain. Modern pain science recognizes that chronic pain can involve changes in how the nervous system processes pain, along with biological, psychological, and social factors.
But there is another perspective on chronic pain that is rarely addressed in a conventional medical setting: the energetic pattern beneath the physical symptom.
I have worked with people in pain for 40 years. I also know chronic pain from the inside.
I spent 10 years living with daily chronic pain, underwent three back surgeries, experienced nerve damage, and spent eight months in a wheelchair. I followed the conventional medical path—diagnostic testing, physical therapy, chiropractic care, medications and surgery.
And I was still in pain.
What eventually changed my life was discovering that the physical body was not the entire story.
There were deeper patterns beneath what was happening physically—patterns involving survival, suppressed emotion, trauma, fear and experiences that had never fully resolved.
When I began addressing those deeper patterns, my body began to change.
That experience became an important part of how I understand chronic pain today.
The body can hold patterns long after the original experience is over.
That is where the energetic side of chronic pain begins.
What Is Chronic Pain?
Chronic pain is pain that persists or recurs for longer than three months. Unlike acute pain, which often functions as a warning signal associated with an injury or illness, chronic pain can continue even after the original condition has been treated or the expected healing period has passed.
The International Association for the Study of Pain estimates that chronic pain affects approximately 20% of people worldwide. It also recognizes chronic pain as multifactorial, meaning that biological, psychological and social factors can all contribute to the pain experience.
For some people, there is a clear physical cause.
For others, there isn’t a single explanation that accounts for what they are experiencing.
A scan may show a structural abnormality, but not explain the intensity of the pain. An injury may have healed, yet the pain continues. Surgery may correct a structural problem, while the person remains in pain.
And sometimes the tests simply don’t reveal enough to explain what the person is feeling.
That can be incredibly frustrating.
Because not having an explanation is not the same thing as not having a real physical experience.
Why Does Chronic Pain Continue After the Original Problem Is Gone?
One reason chronic pain can persist is that the nervous system itself can become involved in maintaining the pain experience.
Central Sensitization and the Pain Alarm
Central sensitization refers to increased responsiveness of pain-processing pathways within the central nervous system. It has been studied extensively in connection with chronic pain conditions and medically unexplained symptoms.
One way to understand this is to think of the nervous system as having a pain alarm.
After repeated injury, inflammation, stress or other painful input, that alarm can become increasingly sensitive.
A person may continue experiencing significant pain even when the original tissue injury no longer explains the intensity of the symptoms.
Current research also cautions against treating central sensitization as a universal explanation for all chronic pain. It is one mechanism within a much more complex picture.
From my perspective as an energy healer, this is where the physical and energetic pictures begin to overlap.
I see the nervous system as part of a much larger system.
There can be a physical contraction.
There can be a nervous-system contraction.
And there can be an energetic contraction.
The energetic contraction is not something that can be seen on an MRI.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t part of what a person is experiencing.
What Is the Energetic Side of Chronic Pain?
In energy medicine, we don’t look at pain simply as a physical symptom.
We ask what the body may be holding.
What was happening in your life when the pain began?
What experiences were never fully processed?
What have you been bracing against?
What emotions have been suppressed?
What survival patterns have been operating for years?
And what happens when those patterns become part of the body’s energetic field?
From my perspective, chronic pain can represent much more than an isolated physical problem.
The physical symptom may be the final expression of a much deeper pattern.
This is one of the fundamental differences between looking at pain energetically and looking only at the physical symptom.
Can Trauma and Emotional Experiences Contribute to Chronic Pain?
There is growing research examining the relationship between childhood adversity, trauma and chronic pain.
A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 85 studies involving more than 826,000 adults. The researchers found that people exposed to adverse childhood experiences had significantly higher odds of reporting chronic pain in adulthood, with greater cumulative exposure associated with greater odds of chronic pain.
Another 2023 systematic review examined the relationship between childhood adversity and chronic pain and found evidence of an association across the literature, while also noting that the mechanisms are complex and not completely understood.
Research like this does not mean that every person with chronic pain experienced childhood trauma.
It does tell us something important:
The experiences we have throughout our lives can affect the way the body experiences and responds to pain.
This is something I understood long before I had scientific language for it.
In my own healing, I discovered that my chronic pain was connected to much more than the physical condition of my spine.
There were emotional experiences I had never fully processed.
There were fears and survival patterns.
There were things I had carried in my body for years without consciously understanding their connection to my physical pain.
That is what I mean by cellular memory.
The body can retain the energetic imprint of an experience long after the conscious mind has moved on.
The Fascia and Chronic Pain
The fascia is a three-dimensional network of connective tissue that surrounds and connects muscles, bones, nerves, blood vessels and other structures throughout the body.
Fascia is increasingly being studied in relation to chronic pain. Research has identified changes in fascial tissue associated with conditions including chronic low back pain, chronic neck pain and other painful disorders. These changes can include altered tissue stiffness, changes in innervation, inflammation and tissue contracture.
This is particularly interesting from an energy-medicine perspective.
Because fascia is not simply inert tissue.
It is living, responsive tissue with an extensive relationship to the nervous system and surrounding structures.
In my work, I see fascia as one of the places where physical and energetic patterns can intersect.
When the body has been living in a chronic state of protection, contraction can become part of the physical pattern.
And when the energetic field is also contracted around an experience, the physical and energetic patterns can reinforce one another.
This is why I don’t look at chronic pain as simply a problem with one muscle, one nerve, one joint or one diagnosis.
I look at the pattern of the whole person.
What Emotions Are Connected to Chronic Pain?
There is no single emotional meaning for every physical symptom.
Human beings are not that simple.
But there are patterns I see repeatedly in my work.
Anger, resentment and inflammation
From an energetic perspective, repressed anger, resentment and rage are strongly associated with inflammatory “itis” conditions.
Arthritis.
Colitis.
Tendonitis.
The body can express an energetic pattern of resistance, internal conflict or inflammation through the physical system.
This is an energy-medicine perspective, not a conventional diagnostic model.
Fear and survival
Fear can create a powerful survival response.
When a person has lived for years feeling unsafe, unsupported or responsible for constantly holding everything together, the body can remain in a state of protection.
That protection can become chronic contraction.
Grief and emotional suppression
Grief that has never been fully experienced can also become part of the energetic pattern of the body.
Sometimes people have learned very early in life that certain emotions are not safe to express.
So they don’t.
They hold them.
The body becomes the place where those experiences remain.
Where Does Chronic Pain Show Up in the Body?
I don’t believe that every body part has one fixed emotional meaning.
However, certain energetic patterns tend to appear repeatedly.
Lower Back, Hips and Knees
These areas can be associated energetically with survival, security, support, money, stability and the ability to move forward.
My own chronic pain was deeply connected to survival patterns and fears around security and money, along with unresolved emotional experiences.
Neck and Shoulders
The neck and shoulders can carry patterns of bracing, responsibility, holding everything together, suppressing your voice or feeling unable to put something down.
Pelvis and Reproductive Area
This area can carry powerful patterns around safety, sexuality, relationships, family, creation and ancestral experience.
Widespread or Migrating Pain
When pain moves throughout the body or doesn’t stay within one obvious anatomical pattern, I often look beyond the individual body part.
The pattern may be much more systemic.
This is one reason a diagnosis alone doesn’t tell me everything I need to know.
Why Can Pain Remain After Surgery?
Surgery can be appropriate and necessary.
It can repair damaged structures, remove diseased tissue, stabilize a joint or address a specific anatomical problem.
But surgery is addressing the physical structure.
It does not necessarily address every pattern that developed around the condition.
I know this personally.
I had three back surgeries.
They addressed physical problems, but I continued to experience chronic pain.
If surgery alone had resolved the entire pattern, I would not have spent another eight years living with daily pain.
My eventual healing required me to look beyond the physical structure and address what was happening at a deeper level.
This is one of the reasons I believe chronic pain sometimes continues even after the original structural problem has been addressed.
The structure may have changed while the pattern remains.
What Does Energy Medicine See That Conventional Testing Cannot?
Medical imaging, laboratory testing and physical examinations are designed to evaluate specific physical processes.
They are invaluable tools.
But they are not designed to measure everything that a person experiences.
They cannot measure grief.
They cannot measure suppressed anger.
They cannot show you a survival imprint.
They cannot show you an energetic contraction.
They cannot tell you everything that a person’s body has carried throughout their life.
This is where energy medicine operates from a different framework.
Rather than asking only:
“What is wrong with this body part?”
I also ask:
“What pattern is this body expressing?”
That distinction can open an entirely different conversation about chronic pain.
Can Energy Healing Help With Chronic Pain?
Energy healing is a complementary approach that has been studied in clinical research, although the evidence base is still developing and studies vary considerably in their methods and quality.
A systematic review of biofield therapies examined 66 clinical studies involving approaches including Reiki, Therapeutic Touch and Healing Touch. The authors concluded that the literature showed enough potentially beneficial findings to warrant continued research, while also identifying important limitations in the evidence.
Research has also examined nonphysical-contact biofield therapies. One systematic review identified randomized controlled trials involving approaches such as Therapeutic Touch, external qigong, Reiki and Healing Touch. The researchers described the evidence as preliminary and heterogeneous, while noting that several of the higher-quality trials reported beneficial outcomes.
There is also a long history of research specifically examining distant or remote healing. A systematic review published in Annals of Internal Medicine evaluated 23 randomized trials involving 2,774 patients and concluded that the evidence available at that time was insufficient to establish efficacy.
The research is not the reason I do this work.
My reason is what I have experienced personally and what I have witnessed over 40 years of working with people.
I have seen people change.
I have seen longstanding patterns shift.
And I know what happened in my own body when I stopped looking at chronic pain as only a physical problem.
That is why I believe energy medicine deserves a place in the larger conversation about healing.
Can Chronic Pain Actually Resolve?
I believe it can.
I know that because my own chronic pain resolved.
I lived with daily pain for ten years.
I underwent three back surgeries.
I spent eight months in a wheelchair.
I was told I might not walk independently again.
Today, I no longer live that way.
That does not mean every person’s experience will be identical.
It does not mean that every chronic pain condition has the same cause.
And it does not mean that a particular healing approach can guarantee a particular outcome.
It means something much simpler:
I do not believe that chronic pain automatically means you are destined to live with pain forever.
Sometimes the physical symptom is only one layer of what needs to change.
Sometimes the deeper pattern needs to change.
I have walked alongside people in pain for nearly 40 years. I have seen people struggle with conditions that left them without answers, and I’ve seen what can happen when we look at the whole person—not just the symptom.
Science and energy medicine are not opponents. They are simply looking at the same human being from different angles. I believe there is wisdom in exploring both.
If you are living with unexplained chronic pain, please don’t give up. Stay with your medical care. And if you feel called to explore what distance healing might add to your journey, I’m here. I would be honored to help. SCHEDULE A SESSION
Frequently Asked Questions About Chronic Pain and Energy Healing
Yes. Chronic pain can persist even when conventional testing does not identify a single cause that fully accounts for the person’s pain experience. Chronic pain is complex and can involve multiple biological, psychological and social factors.
From an energetic perspective, there may also be patterns present that conventional diagnostic testing is not designed to measure.
Pain can persist beyond the normal healing period. Changes in pain processing, including mechanisms associated with sensitization, can contribute to persistent pain.
From my perspective, the energetic pattern surrounding the original experience may also remain after the physical injury has changed.
Research has found significant associations between adverse childhood experiences and chronic pain in adulthood. One systematic review and meta-analysis found that both individual and cumulative adverse childhood experiences were associated with greater odds of reporting chronic pain later in life.
In energy medicine, we understand this through the concept of energetic and cellular memory—the idea that experiences can leave an imprint that remains in the body long after the original event.
Stress is one factor that can influence the experience and persistence of chronic pain. Chronic pain itself can also create significant emotional and psychological stress, making the relationship between the two complex.
From an energetic perspective, prolonged stress can create contraction within the body and energetic field, particularly when a person has spent years in survival mode.
Energy healing may be used as a complementary approach alongside conventional healthcare. Research into biofield therapies has produced mixed and preliminary findings, and more high-quality research is needed.
My perspective comes from 40 years of energy-healing practice and my own experience recovering from chronic pain.
Yes. Distance energy healing is specifically designed to be performed without physical contact or the practitioner and patient being in the same location.
I work with patients remotely from anywhere in the world.
No.
Energy healing can be complementary to conventional medical care.
Do not stop, reduce or change prescribed medication or other medical treatment based on an energy-healing session. Medication changes should always be managed with the appropriate healthcare professional.