TLDR several reasons to be suspicious of PRT and its creator, but anecdotally it seems to ~work on me.
The negative first:
The leading study in favor of PRT (Ashar et al 2021) had 151 participants (a third on which they did PRT, another third on which they did normal pain therapy, and a control). The measured effect was very large (which to me is suspicious). Importantly, it has not been replicated yet. (This is not to say it has failed to replicate)
I’m now reading Gordon’s book. As someone who’s been in a semi-cult and who’s also paid a lot of attention to wannabe gurus and other scammers in the fields of therapy, group therapy, pain relief etc, I can say that this book has a lot of the signs. For instance, Gordon claiming that he cures everyone. This is highly suspicious to me. Generally speaking, the book has an aura of “this cures everything and everyone, now buy my programme” that other scammers in the field have. This is of course not to say that I’m convinced he’s a fraud. But it’s a dark orange flag.
In a more intuitive way, I just feel resistant to believe that telling your brain “this is fine” will make the pain go away. Isn’t the brain a super complex machine that you can’t just talk to? </rant>
The positive:
Because as Ruby said this has “Big if true” energy, I do want to give this a shot. Your article definitely peaked my interest: I’ve had two types of chronic pain over the last year. First on my foot sole after playing a lot of tennis, which pushed me to stop. Even after I stopped tennis, the pain (mild) lasted for months, flaring especially when walking. Second in the form of mild headaches I now have every day, pretty much since I had my first real intense migraine 3 months ago. I’ve gotten rid of the foot pain, but the headaches are still very real.
Since reading your post, whenever I get the start of a headache (usually a 2 or 3⁄10 intensity), I tell myself something like “all is fine, I’m ok, this is not painful, you can relax”… and it kind of works? I’d say the headache intensity goes down to a 0.5 or 1⁄10.
So while I’m highly suspicious, I’m surprised it’s had some positive effect on my pain already. I’d love to see more replication studies.
Thanks for putting this on my radar :)
A few thoughts.
TLDR several reasons to be suspicious of PRT and its creator, but anecdotally it seems to ~work on me.
The negative first:
The leading study in favor of PRT (Ashar et al 2021) had 151 participants (a third on which they did PRT, another third on which they did normal pain therapy, and a control). The measured effect was very large (which to me is suspicious). Importantly, it has not been replicated yet.
(This is not to say it has failed to replicate)
I’m now reading Gordon’s book. As someone who’s been in a semi-cult and who’s also paid a lot of attention to wannabe gurus and other scammers in the fields of therapy, group therapy, pain relief etc, I can say that this book has a lot of the signs. For instance, Gordon claiming that he cures everyone. This is highly suspicious to me.
Generally speaking, the book has an aura of “this cures everything and everyone, now buy my programme” that other scammers in the field have. This is of course not to say that I’m convinced he’s a fraud. But it’s a dark orange flag.
In a more intuitive way, I just feel resistant to believe that telling your brain “this is fine” will make the pain go away. Isn’t the brain a super complex machine that you can’t just talk to? </rant>
The positive:
Because as Ruby said this has “Big if true” energy, I do want to give this a shot.
Your article definitely peaked my interest: I’ve had two types of chronic pain over the last year.
First on my foot sole after playing a lot of tennis, which pushed me to stop. Even after I stopped tennis, the pain (mild) lasted for months, flaring especially when walking.
Second in the form of mild headaches I now have every day, pretty much since I had my first real intense migraine 3 months ago. I’ve gotten rid of the foot pain, but the headaches are still very real.
Since reading your post, whenever I get the start of a headache (usually a 2 or 3⁄10 intensity), I tell myself something like “all is fine, I’m ok, this is not painful, you can relax”… and it kind of works?
I’d say the headache intensity goes down to a 0.5 or 1⁄10.
So while I’m highly suspicious, I’m surprised it’s had some positive effect on my pain already.
I’d love to see more replication studies.