What is Chronic Pain?
What qualifies as chronic pain? What does this big umbrella term “chronic pain” even mean? Is my pain “chronic?” These are some of the questions that you may be wondering.
Chronic pain is a large umbrella term that covers a lot of situations and contexts. On the simplest level, chronic pain is when you have regular pain in some or all your body that impacts the way you live. Sometimes the pain can be constant, other times the pain can be intermittent and show up at different times.
If you’re living with ongoing pain here in the Lee’s Summit or Blue Springs area, you’re not alone. Many people reach out for therapy after years of trying medical options without finding relief—and it’s often the mind-body connection that brings new understanding.
What is the difference between primary and secondary pain?
The variation in chronic pain is really about the source of the pain. What is causing the pain is the big question.
In medical literature, there are two terms used: primary pain and secondary pain. Most people are familiar with secondary pain. Secondary pain is when there is an identifiable source to the pain, say a broken bone. The broken bone is the issue, and your pain is secondary to that issue.
Primary pain is when the pain is the primary source of complaint, but no physical situation can be identified why. Migraines can be an example of this, as well as neck or back pain.
Chronic pain can be secondary pain, and that might be a situation where you have scar tissue from a past injury that is constantly irritating a nerve causing a pain sensation. However, most of the time, chronic pain is primary; meaning that there is no known cause of the pain, there’s just pain.
In a study published in 2024, researchers found that 88% of people with chronic pain had primary pain. They were experiencing pain, but they couldn’t find a physical cause for that pain.
(You can read more about how pain affects mood, energy, and sleep in When Pain and Emotion Collide: How Chronic Pain Affects Mood, Sleep, and Mental Health.)
What is Neuroplastic Pain?
Due to this finding, researchers have now created a new term called neuroplastic pain which is meant to point to the cause of the pain. Neuroplastic pain, in very simple terms, states that the pain is coming from the brain and not the body.
The interesting idea here is getting into how our brains and bodies create the sensation of pain. Pain is not a raw sensation. Pain is an interpretation of other sensations the body is experiencing. This can be a tricky concept, because we’re not used to thinking this way.
How Does the Brain Interpret Pain?
The brain is usually receiving way more information than it can handle. Just consider how much stuff is in your visual field and how much you are seeing; or hearing or feeling. Your body is bombarded with stimulus from the environment, and your brain must figure out what to do with that.
So, it starts filtering and it starts interpreting all that information into bite sized chunks that it sends up to your conscious mind. Everything that you could possibly notice is going through this process. This means that everything you notice has some kind of meaning attached to it and therefore some kind of bias that your brain applied.
This is true of pain. When your body gets injured, the body sends a signal to the brain, the brain interprets that signal as danger and then tells your conscious mind to do something to protect what was damaged.
With neuroplastic pain, this danger meaning has gotten out of control and your brain is applying that message to more sensations than it needs to. You are feeling something, but your brain interprets that feeling as damage and threat and the need to protect, when there isn’t a need there.
This can be incredibly frustrating, especially as you try to describe your pain to medical providers.
How Can Therapy Help the Brain Relearn Safety & Treat Chronic Pain?
Treating neuroplastic pain is all about helping the brain relearn how to interpret these sensations. We do that through a process called somatic tracking which is an intentional way of paying attention to the sensations in our body and feeding our brain information that we are safe and the sensations don’t mean danger.
Therapy for Chronic Pain in the Kansas City Area
At my counseling office in Lee’s Summit, MO I often see people who have been living with pain for years. They’ve tried every medical test, specialist and medication. Perhaps they’ve seen improvement. Perhaps they have a diagnosis. Yet, they still feel frustrated and stuck.
Many people come to therapy when they realize it’s not just about fixing the body. It’s about helping the mind and body work together again. We use tools to calm the nervous system and rebuild a sense of safety. Over time, your brain learns new patterns—and pain becomes less consuming.
If you’re ready to start that process, I’d be honored to help. Our Aspire Counseling office is located in Lee’s Summit, just off Highway 50 near downtown, and we also offer online therapy anywhere in Missouri.
You don’t have to keep facing pain alone.
Let’s begin this work together.
Schedule your free 30-minute consultation to get started.
About the Author
Adam White, LPC, is a therapist at Aspire Counseling in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. He helps adults navigate anxiety, trauma, and chronic pain using evidence-based, mind-body approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS) and CBT.
Before becoming a counselor, Adam worked as an electrical engineer, which gives him a unique appreciation for how systems—both mechanical and human—function and sometimes get stuck. His approach is calm, curious, and grounded in helping people reconnect with themselves so they can live with more ease and meaning.
Adam offers therapy in person in Lee’s Summit and online across Missouri.
