Alan Gordon was in graduate school when his pain began. It came out of nowhere and it wouldn’t go away. His back pain became so severe that he couldn’t tolerate sitting in the chairs at his university and ended up wheeling his own office chair around campus, from class to class, just to keep him from dropping out of his degree.
It didn’t stop with his back. Gordon had pain all over his body. By the end of his degeneration he had 22 separate symptoms, including pain almost everywhere. He got several different diagnoses from different doctors. One said he had a disc herniation, another said disc degeneration, another said arthritis. “I thought to myself, ‘I’m in my 20s, how did my brain even survive through evolution if there’s so many things wrong with my back?’” Gordon began to suspect his pain was not primarily about his body, but about his brain.
It is well-established that the brain is capable of rewiring itself to learn new neural pathways to protect us. This phenomenon is known as neuroplasticity. It is also well-established that this neuroplasticity can interact with pain signals – all pain sensations are created by the nerves sending messages to the brain that are interpreted as pain – and essentially ‘learn’ chronic
