Chronic Pain Management from a Muslim Therapist
About Dr. Aisha Chaudhry
Dr. Aisha Chaudhry is an Aalimah and Muslim therapist. She specializes in trauma which often looks like depression, anxiety including OCD, intrusive thoughts, health anxiety, and panic. She has a special interest in helping clients learn how to calm the body through a combination of neural informed therapies, Internal Family Systems, CBT, and Exposure-Response Prevention. For clients looking for integrated therapy, a holistic approach is available.
Chronic Pain Management from a Muslim Therapist
The information contained herein is to offer an overview of chronic pain management (not for treatment or diagnosis), with special emphasis on how therapy can help alongside your medical care. It is important to get help from a Muslim therapist, particularly one who has studied Islam, because this has proven beneficial for the Muslim women I care for. Why is this?
Therapeutic Alliance
It is important for the client to develop a good therapeutic relationship with the therapist. This can only happen if the client feels safe enough to discuss matters that they feel embarrassed about or fear they may be judged for. Sometimes pain, and how it affects the body, family life, marriage, and worship, is very difficult to talk about with anyone, which is one of the reasons people delay seeking care at all.
Islamic Principles, Per Your Comfort
Islamic principles may be used according to each client’s comfort. For example, special care is taken so the meditation audios do not include music or anything contrary to Islamic principles, and they can include du’as from the Sunnah if you would like.
What is Chronic Pain?
Chronic pain is pain that lasts or keeps coming back for more than three months, or that continues past the usual time for healing. It can come with a long-term health condition, such as arthritis, or continue after an injury has healed. It may be “on” and “off” or constant, and it can affect a person to the point that they cannot work, eat properly, stay active, sleep well, or enjoy life.
Pain is the body’s protective alarm system. Sensory nerves send signals through the spinal cord to the brain, and the brain decides how much danger there is and how strongly to sound the alarm. Pain medications work by reducing or blocking these signals. With chronic pain, the alarm system can become more sensitive over time, so pain continues even when there is less or no ongoing tissue damage. This does not mean the pain is “in your head” or imagined. The pain is real.
New pain, usually from an injury, illness or surgery, that improves as the body heals.
Pain lasting several weeks, up to about three months.
Pain lasting or recurring for more than three months.
Ranges from mild, like a tension headache, to severe, like kidney-stone pain.
About one in four adults in the US lives with chronic pain (CDC). You are not alone.
Types of Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is one of the most common and costly health problems in the United States. Beyond medical bills, it can mean lost income and productivity, strain on families, and a heavy emotional toll.
Common sources of chronic pain include:
Low back pain
One of the most common health problems worldwide and a leading cause of limited activity and missed work.
Arthritis pain
Arthritis affects more than 50 million adults in the US.
Headaches & migraines
Migraines, tension-type headaches and cluster headaches can all become chronic.
Cancer pain
Many people with cancer experience pain from the illness or its treatment.
Three Kinds of Pain
Pain specialists often describe three overlapping kinds of pain:
Nociceptive
Pain from tissue damage or inflammation, such as arthritis or an injury.
Neuropathic
Pain from damage to or disease of the nerves, such as neuralgias, neuropathies, or pain after shingles or central nervous system injury.
Nociplastic
Pain from a sensitized pain system without clear tissue or nerve damage, as seen in fibromyalgia and some chronic headache and pelvic pain conditions.
How Can a Therapist Help?
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a talk therapy that helps you notice and change the thoughts and behaviors that make pain harder to live with. It does not replace your medical care and it does not mean your pain is imagined. The brain is where all pain is experienced, so how it interprets signals, which is shaped by stress, fear, sleep and mood, can turn the “volume” of pain up or down.
CBT can change the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors connected to pain, strengthen coping strategies, and put the discomfort in a more manageable context. Many people find they can do more and suffer less, even when the pain itself changes only a little.
Stress also affects the body directly. When the nervous system stays on high alert, the body’s natural pain-control systems, including brain chemicals such as serotonin and norepinephrine, work less effectively. Calming the stress response helps those systems do their job.
CBT is usually combined with other pain management approaches, such as medication, physical therapy, gentle movement, or other treatments your doctor recommends. Research reviews show that CBT leads to small-to-moderate improvements in pain, disability and distress, with far fewer risks and side effects than many medications or procedures.
How therapy helps relieve pain:
- Encourages a problem-solving attitude. One of the hardest parts of chronic pain is feeling helpless. Therapy helps you see what is within your control and take steps again.
- Involves practice between sessions. You may track thoughts, feelings, activity and pain in a journal, and we review it together.
- Builds life skills. You learn coping tools such as pacing, relaxation, and calming the nervous system.
- Lets you continue on your own. Over time, you become able to use these skills yourself, including with guided audios.
Sessions are usually weekly, and many people work through roughly 8 to 12 sessions, with occasional booster sessions afterward.
What We Think Affects How We Feel
Our goal in therapy is to change how the brain and body respond to pain, so that both can settle. We look at the thinking patterns that often come with long-term illness, such as fear, worry, and “this will never change,” and build healthier ways of coping. I combine talk therapy with meditation and relaxation techniques that calm the nervous system.
Schedule AppointmentAdditional Pain Treatment Options
As a Muslim therapist, I am able to offer a holistic approach that can include spirituality, spiritual meditations, and du’as. For example, a meditation audio for relaxation might include du’as from the Sunnah for relief from pain, if you would like. Many of my clients have shared that they appreciate this holistic approach and find it especially comforting.
I also create custom meditation audios for many types of pain. Along with relaxation, they are designed to strengthen trust and reliance on Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala). Audios are available for:
- Endometriosis pain
- Vulvodynia
- Autoimmune disorder pain
- Cancer pain
- Fibromyalgia
- Neuropathic (nerve) pain
- TMJ pain
- Shingles pain
- Post-catheter discomfort
- Anesthesia-like induction
- “Mental massage” that relaxes the body
- Myofascial pain syndrome
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Hip pain
- CRPS pain
- Phantom limb pain
- Lower back pain
- Frozen shoulder pain
- Fear of pain
How long until relief comes?
This varies from person to person and depends on how consistently you practice. Many clients report feeling calmer, more relaxed, and more able to manage after the first session. To keep training the brain, it is important to continue listening to your audio regularly. Booster sessions every 2–3 months can help.
What’s the guarantee this will work?
There is no guarantee, just as there is none with any medical or therapeutic treatment, and it would not be ethical to promise one. In my experience, people who engage sincerely and practice consistently usually notice improvement.
What are the charges?
- Schedule an intake session on the appointments page so I can learn your background and symptom history.
- I create a custom meditation audio for your specific condition (for example, hip pain).
- Choose your access: $200 for 60 days in the client portal, or $350 for lifetime access sent by email.
- If you would like talk therapy as well, you can book sessions on the appointments page. This is recommended if you are also struggling with anxiety, depression, trauma, or other concerns.
Please keep your doctor involved in your care. New, worsening, or unexplained pain should always be checked medically. Therapy and audios work alongside medical treatment, not instead of it.
Keep Reading
Relief can begin with calm
Book a free 15-minute meet & greet to ask your questions and see whether working with Dr. Aisha is the right fit.
Book a Free Meet & GreetDisclaimer
None of the information on this website is intended to diagnose or treat any condition. This information is for educational use only. Please get treatment if you feel you are struggling with different symptoms. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 (in the US), call your local emergency number, or go to the nearest emergency room.