Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc.

Home
Canada
Calgary, AB
Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc.

Pain Psychotherapy Canada’s mission is to support clients in greatly reducing their chronic pain.

Website and Social Media Disclaimer: https://www.painpsychotherapy.ca/disclaimer

Disclaimer: The information provided by Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc., and its director Tanner Murtagh, on this page is for general informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice, psychotherapy, or counselling. Please Read
If you are in immediate danger, please call a local emergency telephone number or go immediately to the nearest emergency room.

04/04/2026

How do we assess neuroplastic pain?

It starts with a thorough assessment.

We look for two things
• Symptoms that don’t fully make physical sense
• A sensitized nervous system

You don’t need to meet every criteria.

If your symptoms are neuroplastic that’s good news they’re treatable.

Healing starts with understanding what’s really going on.

Note: this is for educational purposes only not medical advice.

04/03/2026

When I had chronic pain, I was obsessed with my symptoms. Every morning I would wake up and intensely scan my body for pain sensations. I thought about my pain 80% of the day. I talked about it constantly with my partner. I’d spend hours on Google looking for causes and treatments.

All my behaviours during the day were focused on fixing and solving my symptoms. Maybe this sounds familiar to you?

If so, it is vital to understand that obsessing about your pain or symptoms will worsen the sensations over time. Obsessive thinking and compulsive actions increase fight-or-flight energy and repeatedly signal to the brain that your body must be broken or diseased. This sense of danger can maintain or even worsen your symptoms.

To heal pain and symptoms, we need to overcome our obsession with them.

A simple way to start reducing the obsession with your symptoms is to give your brain something else to think about or do. We need to shift our focus to something other than pain, symptoms, and body sensations.

For myself, I did this by:

* Starting to do artwork again
* Listening to my favorite bands from the past
* Taking cheap online courses on topics I was interested in
* Researching what career I would want to pursue once my pain reduced
* Talking to a friend on the phone each day

Make a list of all the things you could think about, focus on, or do instead of focusing on your symptoms. Then, each time you notice your brain becoming hyper-focused on your symptoms, practice intentionally shifting to something on that list. With repetition, this can retrain your brain out of the obsession.

04/01/2026

What if chronic pain and symptoms aren’t always caused by injury or damage?

Research shows many symptoms are *neuroplastic* — meaning they’re driven by the brain and nervous system, not structural issues in the body.

That doesn’t make them any less real.
It just means they can be *retrained*.

For the past 5 years, we’ve been helping clients shift how they understand and respond to their symptoms — using evidence-based approaches like Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, and more.

And we see it every day:
Symptoms go down. Ability goes up.

When you change your relationship with your symptoms, your nervous system can start to feel safe again.

Ready to try a different approach? Book a free 20-minute consult (link in bio).

03/31/2026

Your nervous system isn’t broken; it’s protecting you.

Chronic anxiety, pain, fatigue, and other symptoms are often signs of a sensitized nervous system, shaped by stress, trauma, or past experiences.

The good news? It can be retrained.

Healing starts with understanding your body, reducing fear, and sending consistent signals of safety.

Start small:
Consider a simple thing you can do, in this moment, to guide your nervous system to safety. 💚✨

03/30/2026

Stop trying to make symptoms disappear… that’s where real change begins.

Tools like somatic tracking, meditation, and calming techniques can help, but if you’re using them to fix symptoms in the moment, your brain may still read danger.

Healing happens when you shift from control → acceptance.

When you fully allow sensations, your brain learns: this is safe.

And when the brain feels safe… symptoms lose their power.

Comment HEAL NOW and I’ll send you a free meditation to help you practice this.

03/29/2026

Your brain runs on feedback loops and they can keep you stuck or help you heal.

Ask yourself:
What loops am I reinforcing right now?

03/28/2026

Dysregulated?
Don’t overcomplicate it.

Ask:
Do I need to slow down… or speed up?

Fight/Flight = slow down
Freeze/Shutdown = gently speed up

Awareness changes everything.

03/27/2026

Your nervous system is always listening; the way you speak to yourself matters.

It's not only what you say, but your tone, your beliefs and your response in hard moments.

Self-talk can either reinforce danger…
or create safety.

These gentle reminders aren’t about forcing positivity; they’re about helping your brain reinterpret what’s happening in your body.

Less fear.
More safety.
More regulation.

You don’t need to believe them perfectly.
Just start practicing them.

Your brain learns through repetition 🤍

03/26/2026

Neuroplastic symptoms can feel confusing… even scary.
But what if they’re actually your brain trying to protect you?

Think of it like a phobia.

The fear feels real. The reaction is real.
But the danger? Not always.

Your brain can learn:
Movement = danger
Sensations = danger
Emotions = danger

So it creates symptoms to keep you safe
Avoidance keeps the cycle going.

Healing happens when you gently show your brain:
“This is safe now.”

03/25/2026

Let’s be honest. Healing chronic pain and illness is F***ing Messy.

You might have bought into the lie that healing would be quick and neat. “I’ll just learn to respond to my symptom with calmness and ease, process my emotions and trauma a few times, live life more fully with a sense of safety, and my pain or symptom will reduce day by day until it is completely gone.”

Well for 99% of people that just NOT how the healing process looks..

You likely will get better at responding to your symptom with less fear and fixation, be doing great brain retraining work, and then get a horrible rebound of worry and obsession about your body causing your symptom to flare.

You will be getting good at attending to emotions and feeling safe with them, and then have a week of anxiety, distress, or despair that feels too overwhelming tolerate.

You will start to process trauma, and then realize this is incredibly hard and terrifying.

And you will begin living with less perfectionism, people pleasing, and control, and then unconsciously start to use these coping mechanisms again.

Please know everything I have just listed is a normal part of the healing process. Healing is hard and messy, and you are not doing anything wrong.

Stay consistent and lean into the messiness of healing. You got this!

03/24/2026

Healing isn’t always obvious.
Sometimes, it looks like subtle shifts you almost miss:

Pausing when triggered instead of reacting.
Gaining awareness of your nervous system state.
Feeling a little bit safer with your sensations.

These are all signs your nervous system is healing 🤍

Not just fewer symptoms…
But more connection, more capacity, more life.

Track your progress in ALL the ways it shows up, not just by how “good” or “bad” your symptoms are.

You might be further along than you think.

03/23/2026

Chronic pain often makes us feel like we must constantly search for solutions. In this video, I explain why always trying to fix or eliminate your symptoms can actually make chronic pain worse. When pain becomes the main focus of every action, people tend to spend hours researching treatments, testing strategies, and searching for quick relief. This constant pressure can keep the nervous system in a heightened state, which may increase the intensity of symptoms instead of helping them settle.

Real healing often begins when the focus shifts from forcing symptoms to disappear to creating a sense of safety for the body and nervous system. By reducing pressure and changing how we respond to pain, the brain can begin to feel safe again, which gradually reduces chronic symptoms over time.

Address

Suite 300, 160 Quarry Park Boulevard SE
Calgary, AB
T2C3G3

Telephone

+15874387082

Website

https://linktr.ee/painpsychotherapy

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc. posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc.:

Shortcuts

Want your practice to be the top-listed Clinic in Calgary?