Rewiring Relief

For people living with chronic pain, the hardest part often isn’t just the pain itself—it’s how much of life it quietly takes away. Everyday routines can feel overwhelming. Activities that once brought joy are avoided out of fear that they’ll make things worse. Living with chronic pain doesn’t mean that you’ve run out of answers; there is still hope.

At Boone Hospital, a therapy-focused chronic pain program known as Pain Neuroscience Education (PNE) Program is helping patients find answers, and a way forward, when traditional approaches haven’t worked.

Boone Health’s PNE Program was developed for individuals whose pain has persisted for months or years despite prior treatment. Led by physical therapists Hannah Williams, PT, and Ashley Beshear, PT, the program takes an education-based, neuroscience-informed approach that looks beyond injured tissues to the role of the nervous system in ongoing pain.

Research shows that nearly one in four people develop persistent pain after an injury. In many cases, the body has healed, but the nervous system remains sensitized continuing to signal danger long after the original threat has passed.

“For many people experiencing chronic pain for months or years,” Beshear adds, “receiving multiple explanations for why they still hurt can increase confusion, uncertainty, and fear.”

One Boone patient described searching for answers to their pain to no avail, despite living with it constantly for nearly five years. Without answers, they began to fear the pain would never improve.

“These are the people who are worn down. Not only by pain, but by uncertainty,” Williams says. “When nothing seems to explain why they still hurt, it can feel discouraging and isolating.”