Treatment Approaches
Emotional Awareness & Expression Therapy (EAET)
Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy helps people recognize and feel the emotions the nervous system has been carrying, often without their knowing. Strong emotions like anger, fear, shame, grief, or guilt don’t always have a safe outlet, especially ones rooted in childhood. When they can’t be felt or expressed in words, they don’t go away. That can keep the brain’s danger signal switched on, and the symptoms with it. When those emotions are brought into the open and felt safely, the alarm can taper.
Medically Reviewed
David Clarke, MD
Medical Reviewer
Published by ATNS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit led by volunteer clinicians.
Published: July 9, 2026 · Last updated: July 9, 2026
How it works
EAET helps you connect the dots between your symptoms and the experiences behind them. You identify the emotions that have been buried or felt unsafe to feel, often anger, guilt, or sadness, and the situations, stresses, or traumas that created them. Then you learn to feel and express those emotions safely, in the present, so the nervous system no longer has to hold them in the body. Recognizing the link between a past situation and a present symptom is often the turning point.
The evidence
In randomized trials, EAET outperformed standard psychological care and reduced chronic musculoskeletal pain. (Yarns B, et al., 2024, JAMA Netw Open)
It grows out of decades of ISTDP research (Abbass) and is named as a treatment option in the U.S. HHS Pain Management Best Practices report.
Recovery with EAET
Find a practitioner.
Explore our clinician directory to find practitioners who treat neuroplastic symptoms. Many practice Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy, often alongside other approaches. Every provider works a little differently, so it’s worth speaking with them directly about their approach to find the right fit.
Go deeper.
Podcasts
Recovery conversations, practical tools, and live treatment sessions across all three ATNS shows.
Apps
Guided apps that put neuroplastic recovery into daily practice, with lessons, somatic tracking, and exercises.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)
The companion therapy we recommend, for retraining the brain’s response to pain.