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Many years ago, before I heard the term “neuroplastic pain,” I was bowed in front of a shaman, begging him to separate pain from pleasure in my body. He sang his “Icaros” song to me, willing these two sensations to become independent of one another. “Please allow me to feel pleasure without pain,” I pleaded through tears. Oh, the stories we accumulate as we travel along our pain recovery journey. It’s a common experience for those with chronic pelvic pain to feel pain before

I still remember waking up in the middle of the night with a sudden, deep, throbbing pain in my left thigh. At the time, I assumed it had to be structural — a nerve, a muscle injury, something mechanical that needed fixing. What I didn’t understand then is that pain that wakes you from sleep, especially when imaging is normal or inconsistent, can sometimes be a clue that the nervous system is the culprit of pain. But back then, I didn’t know anything about neuroplastic pain.