How Difficult Is It to Learn Forward From Chronic Pain? Not a 'Lock-In!'

Weisman and Masharawi, in their chronic pain research, describe a 'lock-in'—once certain interoceptive loops set in, they argue psychological intervention is basically powerless to undo them. If this is about beating cognitive behavior therapy about the head, I'm all for it. But mostly I want to say "whoa." They are referring to the 'lock-in' in the way that I refer to attractors. Yes, chronic pain is a nasty bit of sucking attraction. But it isn't a lock-in without a key! I think their 'lock-in' attitude comes in part from their narrow and undeclared 'there are only two phases' metaphor of hysteresis. Do Feldenkrais practitioners have the key? NO. But in fact we are the gods and goddesses of subjective experience, and I think it is time to pay attention to what we do. What we do is more about learning and less about fixing, and fixing—Weisman and Masharawi's lock-in—is absolutely a hysteresis story and—as they say—not a very hopeful one.