What Is a Chronic Pain Coach? How It Differs From a Physio or Psychologist

If you’ve been living with persistent pain for months or years, chances are you’ve already seen a GP, a physiotherapist, maybe even a psychologist or specialist. You’ve had scans, tried exercises, possibly taken medication and yet here you are, still searching for answers. That’s where a chronic pain coach comes in, and it’s a role that’s quite different from anything you may have tried before.

As a chronic pain coach, Melbourne clients often ask me: “What exactly do you do that’s different?” It’s a great question, and the answer says a lot about why so many people find real, lasting change through coaching when other approaches haven’t quite hit the mark.

A physio works with your body they assess movement, prescribe exercises, and address musculoskeletal dysfunction. A psychologist works with your mind supporting mental health, processing trauma, and developing coping strategies. Both are incredibly valuable, and I often work alongside these practitioners.

A chronic pain coach brings something different: the big picture. My role is to help you understand why your pain has persisted, connect the dots between your biology, your life circumstances, and your nervous system, and then work with you on practical, personalised strategies to move forward.

The foundation of this work is pain neuroscience education helping you understand what’s actually happening in your brain and body when pain signals fire. Pain is real, but it’s not always a reliable indicator of tissue damage. Once people truly grasp this, it can be genuinely liberating. It shifts the dynamic from feeling like a victim of your body to feeling like someone with real agency over their experience.

From there, we move into lifestyle coaching: sleep, movement, stress, nutrition, social connection, pacing, goal-setting. These aren’t add-ons. They’re core drivers of how your nervous system regulates pain and they’re the levers most clinical appointments simply don’t have time to address.

Modern pain science recognises that chronic pain is never purely physical. It’s shaped by biological factors (like inflammation or nervous system sensitisation), psychological factors (like stress, anxiety, or fear of movement), and social factors (like work pressure, relationships, or isolation). This is called the biopsychosocial model, and it’s the gold standard in pain research.

The challenge is that our healthcare system tends to treat each piece in isolation. You see your GP for medication, your physio for your back, your psychologist for anxiety but nobody is helping you see how it all fits together. That’s the gap a chronic pain coach in Melbourne comes to fill.

Coaching tends to suit people who have had pain for three months or more that hasn’t resolved with standard treatment, feel like they’ve tried everything without lasting results, want to understand their pain better, are ready to take an active role in their recovery, and are tired of appointments that focus only on the physical.

I work from two Melbourne locations Oakleigh (66 Atherton Rd) and Carnegie (162 Koornang Rd) as well as via telehealth for clients across Australia. If you’re curious about what working with a chronic pain coach could look like for you, book a free discovery call at wayfinderpain.com.au.