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Alan describes a useful approach and I would like to add another. For some of my patients relapses occur because they have strong emotions (anger, fear or grief most commonly) that they do not fully recognize and so are not able to think or talk about. Consequently these emotions are expressed via the body and this is what causes symptoms (often pain but can be any of a variety of other symptoms). Most often the source of these emotions can be traced to adversity in childhood (or to a trauma in adulthood) which for some is obvious but others suffered a more subtle harm to the self-esteem in childhood. One way to assess for this is to imagine what it would be like to raise a child you care about exactly as you were raised. Would that be painful to do? Writing about that imagined experience (or your own personal experience) has helped a number of my patients recognize buried emotions and convert them from bodily expression into words with subsequent reduction in symptoms.

This is a lot to compress into one paragraph. There is more information at stressillness.com, unlearnyourpain.com and pathwaystopainrelief.com.