Alan Gordon is a psychotherapist who specializes in the treatment of chronic pain. He is a member of the scientific advisory board for the Curable app, the founder of the Pain Psychology Center, and the creator of a remarkably effective treatment method called Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT). AG and his lifelong friend Alon Ziv (a neuroscientist) co-authored the book The Way Out and produced an excellent podcast called Tell Me About Your Pain, which both teach PRT and explain psychogenic pain in a highly approachable manner.

Dr. Howard Schubiner is an internal medicine doctor who advocates for the use of mind-body medicine to treat chronic pain. He is a member of the scientific advisory board for the Curable app, a co-founder of the online pain recovery program Freedom From Chronic Pain, the founder and director of the Mind-Body Medicine Center at Providence-Providence Park Hospital in Southfield, Michigan, and the co-creator of a treatment method called emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET). Schubiner teaches EAET in his books Unlearn Your Pain and Unlearn Your Anxiety & Depression, which walk you through a series of expressive writing exercises and guided meditations designed to help you uncover the hidden causes of your symptoms and retrain your brain to switch them off. To see EAET in action, check out the incredible indie documentary This Might Hurt, which provides a window into the lives of three chronic pain patients as they undergo Schubiner’s treatment program.

Nicole Sachs is a psychotherapist who treats chronic pain. Nicole is a “direct disciple” of Dr. John Sarno. She teaches that our bodies produce MBS symptoms as a way to distract us from repressed emotions. She is the creator of a treatment method called JournalSpeak™, a form of expressive writing in which you barf your unfiltered feelings onto a page. Nicole hosts a podcast called The Cure for Chronic Pain, in which she interviews MBS-sufferers. There are hundreds of episodes of this podcast, and the interviewees recount an enormous variety of different symptoms, so you are almost guaranteed to find something that you relate to. (For IC people, I highly recommend Season 1, Episode 86.) Nicole has many other offerings, including a YouTube channel, online courses, a membership-based online community, an annual in-person retreat, and her book, The Meaning of Truth. You can learn more about all these offerings on her website.

Dr. John Sarno is the OG of mind-body medicine. He was (R.I.P.) an iconoclastic family medicine doctor who coined the term tension myositis syndrome (TMS) to describe chronic pain that results from powerful, unconscious emotions. His approach to treating chronic pain was simply to educate his patients that their pain was produced by their brains rather than a physical problem. Sarno never tested his ideas using controlled studies and his mechanistic understanding wasn’t perfect, but the methods that he taught for overcoming chronic pain (e.g., in his best-selling book, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection) helped thousands of desperate people fix themselves. Check out the 2016 documentary All the Rage: Saved by Sarno for some charming interviews with this kind-hearted man and his famous patients Howard Stern and Larry David.