Author Archives: Meri Levy

The Best Pain Medicine I’ve Found Is Asleep Next to Me

On what research and lived experience taught me about love, security, and chronic pain

A colleague of mine has fibromyalgia. About eight years ago, I suggested that she check out the Curable App. I gave her a little bit of information about my own journey with chronic pain, but I didn’t push it too hard. I’ve learned over the years that not everyone wants to hear about my miraculous recovery or how mind-body healing is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

A few years ago, she told me that she finally subscribed to Curable, and that she was experiencing a lot less pain, and wanted to thank me. It’s been nice to have a local colleague who’s also fascinated by how the mind and body work together to create and to heal pain.

Recently, she shared something she’d discovered worked really well when she was in a pain flare: if she lay her head in her husband’s lap and allowed him to stroke her hair and lay her dog across her feet, she felt that the love being received on both ends of her body had the power to melt her pain away.

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I Went to Paradise and My Body Had Other Plans

The Role of Self-Compassion in Chronic Pain Recovery

As I’m writing this, I’m on vacation in the Dominican Republic with my wonderful husband. It is a hot, hazy, humid day in this tropical paradise, and I’m riddled with terribly itchy sand fly bites from our first night here, and my tummy is also a bit off. Not food poisoning, but tricky enough for me to feel like I don’t want to be too far from a bathroom.

If you’ve never been bitten by sand flies, I have to tell you it’s pretty miserable. On me, they turn into enormous swollen welts that itch worse than any mosquito bite. I’ve been trying to manage how I attend to the sensations, since the bites themselves aren’t dangerous, but I’m having such an intense allergic reaction that it’s set off my asthma, which makes it a lot harder to stay relaxed and curious.

I’ve been struggling this week with taking care of my body’s needs, and feeling some shame about being a stick-in-the-mud. But as I listen to that shame, I noticed something: the voice telling me I should push through and go to the beach anyway didn’t even feel like my inner voice. It felt like an old, inherited one.

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When My Body Remembered What I Didn’t

How to Unwire Fear and Pain, For Ourselves and Our Children

There is a year in my life that I reflect on when I consider the many reasons chronic pain can begin. It’s the year I turned 59, two and a half years ago.

My mother died at 59. Suddenly, out of the blue, with no known health issues, she died of her first heart attack. It was awful, grieving the loss of my mother and coming to terms with how unexpectedly I could lose someone who was such a huge part of my life, and who I loved so much. It still hurts my heart to think about her dying alone.

I wasn’t consciously aware that I was afraid of being 59 when I hit that birthday. But clearly, something in my body was keeping track.

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I Don’t Want Thicker Skin

A skin condition, a sister, and forty five years of not connecting the dots

For those of you who have been reading this Substack since the beginning (23 weeks ago!), you know that I come to mind-body work through my own chronic pain and symptoms. I’ve discussed my history of IBS, TMJ pain, chronic wrist tendinitis, interstitial cystitis, chronic dizziness and nausea, plus some anxiety and depression sprinkled in there.

One would think that at this point, having recovered from so many chronic symptoms and now being a therapist who treats them, I’d be aware of all the neuroplastic symptoms that I’ve experienced, but you’d be wrong.

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You Cannot Help Anyone from the Floor

On titrating political news exposure and the radical act of self-compassion

I have a few clients whose mental health has taken a huge hit since January of 2025. And given what has unfolded since then, that doesn’t surprise me.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to stay informed, stay engaged, stay functional, and stay human during challenging times. And if you’re someone who lives with chronic pain or persistent symptoms, especially if you’re also parenting, you are spending your limited energy reserves on something enormous before touching on what’s happening in the world.

I want to talk about that.

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Handouts for Recovery from Anxiety, Pain or Symptoms

I’m sharing some handouts that I created for my Substack newsletter, Body Wise Parent. I hope you find them helpful!

Neuroplastic Pain & Symptoms Overview

A general overview of neuroplastic pain & symptoms, for those suffering from chronic pain or persistent physical symptoms and clinicians new to this field.

Neuroplastic_SymptomsDownload

Pain Reprocessing Therapy Overview

An overview of Pain Reprocessing Therapy, the most effective evidence-based treatment for chronic pain and persistent physical symptoms.

prt_principles_handoutDownload

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Somatic Tracking for Chronic Pain/Symptoms

A mindfulness exercise associated with Pain Reprocessing Therapy, for people overcoming chronic pain or symptoms.

Somatic-TrackingDownload

Inner Child/Inner Parent Dialogue Exercise

For people who are learning to improve emotional self-care and overcoming the impact of childhood emotional neglect.

Inner-Child-DialogueDownload

Overcoming Compulsive Caretaking Handout

For people who feel over-responsible for others and are learning not to abandon themselves.

Compulsive-CaregivingDownload

Emotional Awareness & Expression Handout for Anxiety and Pain or Symptoms

For people learning to acknowledge, allow and express emotions as a way of calming their nervous system and diminishing chronic pain or other symptoms.

EAET-PrinciplesDownload

The Good Enough Parent

For those of you learning to overcoming perfectionism in your parenting, so you can be a “good enough parent,” and give your children the benefits of experiencing frustration, advocating for themselves, and can develop a greater sense of their own capabilities.

Good-Enough-ParentDownload

Breaking Free from Perpetual Problem-Solving

For those of you learning to overcoming the habit of “problem-solving mode,” to learn to tolerate uncomfortable physical sensations and difficult emotions and teach your brain that you are safe, to calm your nervous system and overcome anxiety, chronic pain and neuroplastic symptoms.

Overcoming-Problem-SolvingDownload

Safety Reappraisal for Chronic Pain/Symptoms

For people overcoming chronic pain or symptoms by establishing a greater sense of safety in the body.

Safety-ReappraisalDownload

HEARTS Framework for Secure Attachment

This handout is for people who want to feel more secure in their relationship with their partner and within themselves. You can use the HEARTS framework to improve the security of your marriage or partner relationship, as well as to build security within yourself.

hearts_framework_handoutDownload
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Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys

On resentment that fuels chronic pain and symptoms, and the embodied process of unlearning the habit of anticipating the needs of others

I didn’t grow up in an abusive family. Neither of my parents were addicts or had a personality disorder. No one went to prison. I think a lot of people assume that if they had a “good enough” childhood, they don’t carry significant wounds, or cannot call any of their childhood experiences trauma.

But when I went to therapy during college, after years of living with mild depression and low self-esteem, I realized that I had internalized a bunch of really burdensome beliefs from the childhood I did have.

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A Master’s in Economics and a PhD in People-Pleasing

On hiding who you are, chronic pain and symptoms, and what it takes to heal both

Today, my middle child turns 27. Their birth was a watershed time in my life. Before, I thought I was a relatively happily married mom, a government analyst who worked in San Francisco and lived in the suburbs, with a predictable path set forth for me.

Seventeen months after that birth, I was still recovering after a severe episode of postpartum anxiety, depression, and chronic dizziness and nausea. I was starting a business. I was very much aware that my marriage might not last. And I felt alive in a new way. More than ever before, I was excited about my future and focused on what I wanted for myself, not just what others expected of me.

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The Weight I Carried Before I Knew I Could Put It Down

There was a period in my life when getting out of bed in the morning felt like trying to lift a car off my chest. I would wake up with a wave of dread, and the weight of depression was crushing.

Dread felt like a burning cold wind on my chest and at the back of my throat, and despair felt like intense psychic pain, worse than I can put into words. Anxiety made me feel as if something truly awful was about to happen. And depression caused me to move through my days in a fog, a mother on autopilot, present enough to pack the lunch and remember the pediatrician appointment, but mostly just waiting for the day to end.

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When the Doctor Says Everything Looks Fine (And You Still Hurt)

Medical rule-outs and mind-body rule-ins for those with chronic pain or symptoms

When I was suffering the worst chronic symptoms of my life, I saw all the doctors, did all the tests, and never got any answers that helped me, just one that scared me so much that it made everything worse.

The problem is, the medical system’s approach to many chronic symptoms is all wrong. It assumes that the “problem” occurs solely in the body, overemphasizes common imaging findings that don’t necessarily explain symptoms, and treats patients as if their nervous systems are irrelevant and as if doctors’ words don’t cause harm.

For many people with chronic symptoms, healing requires not just a different diagnosis but a fundamentally different style of relating to patients.

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