What is neuroplasticity?
“Neurons that fire together, wire together” Carla Shatz
Neuroplasticity is your brain’s remarkable ability to adapt and change throughout life. It forms new neural connections in response to your experiences, environment, and even the thoughts and feelings you repeat. This means your brain is always learning and evolving.
Anything you do over and over—whether it’s a thought pattern, an emotional reaction, or a behavior—shapes your brain’s neural pathways. Some of the factors that can influence neuroplastic changes include:
Traumatic events
Chronic illness or stress
Social interactions
Meditation and relaxation practices
Emotions
Learning and paying attention
New experiences
Exercise
While some of these changes happen consciously and intentionally, many occur beneath our awareness.
How Neuroplasticity Relates to Pain
One important way neuroplasticity affects us is through a process called sensitization.
This happens when the nervous system starts to adapt negatively to repeated pain signals. Over time, it becomes more reactive and vigilant, amplifying even minor or non-painful stimuli into pain. In other words, things that used to hurt a little may now hurt a lot, and things that didn’t hurt at all might start to feel painful.
Another factor that can contribute to this process is the use of opioids. These medications, while often prescribed for pain, can lead to long-term changes in the nervous system that make pain sensitization worse over time.
Central Sensitization and Beyond
This heightened sensitivity doesn’t just apply to pain. It can also affect how you perceive other sensations:
Smell
Touch
Vision
Sound
Taste
It can also make you more sensitive to emotional states like distress, anxiety, fear, and stress.
In short, through neuroplasticity, your brain can become highly skilled at producing pain and amplifying your sensitivity.
The Good News: Neuroplasticity Also Makes Healing Possible
But here’s the hopeful part: the same neuroplasticity that wires these pain pathways can also unwire them.
Your brain can learn new patterns. You can intentionally guide this process to reduce pain and reclaim greater well-being.
If you’d like to learn more about how neuroplasticity shapes pain—and how you can use it for healing—stay tuned for the next entry.
Ready to harness neuroplasticity in support of your healing?
About the author:
Dr. Lilia Graue is a physician, psychotherapist, and mindbody healing mentor.
After living with chronic pain for more than a decade, she found freedom through an integrative mindbody approach grounded in neuroscience, mindfulness, and compassion.
She is passionate about helping people who are living with chronic pain, fatigue, long COVID, and other persistent symptoms to find freedom and reconnect with joy, vitality, purpose, and agency. She also loves mentoring fellow practitioners—therapists, coaches, and clinicians— to support them in creating trauma-integrative, relational, and sustainable healing spaces, while keeping their sanity and their passion and thriving personally.
With over 25 years of experience in medicine and psychotherapy, Lilia’s work prioritizes consent, curiosity, and co-creation, honoring individual context, systemic influences, and the power of genuine relationship in supporting long-term change and healing. She works with people globally in both English and Spanish.
Originally from Mexico City, she currently lives in London with her husband and the two rescue cats who own them, Ziggy and Lupito. In addition to her work, she loves spending time in nature, baking, reading, traveling, and enjoying live music.
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