Tag Archives: chronic pain

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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What Chronic Pain Might Be Telling Parents of Challenging Kids

On suppressed emotions, neuroplastic symptoms, and why self-compassion might be the most therapeutic thing you can do

There’s a version of parenting I imagined before I had children. It involved connection, warmth, small hands in mine. It did not involve sitting in a school parking lot after a parent teacher conference, trying to remember how to breathe.

I have an adult son who is neurodivergent. He is brilliant, funny, kind, and, for many years, genuinely difficult. Hard at school, where the structure and overstimulation chafed him in ways nobody quite had words for. Hard with his siblings, where his temperament caused more conflict and chaos than would have been ideal. Hard for me to reach on the days when I was already running on fumes, and the gap between the parent I wanted to be and the one I actually was felt like a canyon.

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Your Nervous System Doesn’t Need You to Be Calm

That’s a good thing, because stress is a big part of a life with purpose and meaning

I remember a time in my life when stress was overwhelming and I was drowning. My severe anxiety, depression and physical symptoms landed me in a psychiatric hospital when I was postpartum with my second child. I had never experienced stress like that before, or since.

In the hospital, we had group sessions where we did relaxation exercises. Trying to relax was the absolute worst thing for my anxiety. I thought I was going to crawl out of my skin. Trying to calm my nervous system actually made me even more anxious.

The crazy thing was, seven months later I started a business.

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What the Research Finally Proves About Chronic Pain

Science has finally caught up to what thousands already knew

I promised in my post a couple of weeks ago to share the scientific evidence supporting Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), but then I got inspired to write about nocebos instead. Sorry about that! This week’s post is for you science-oriented skeptics out there.

Before There Was Evidence, There Was Sarno

Those of you coming to this work right now are lucky. There is more evidence than ever before to support neuroplastic recovery. When Dr. John Sarno was writing about mind-body recovery in the 1980s and 90s, he was widely ridiculed and his theories were rejected by his medical peers, even as thousands of patients recovered from their symptoms using his methods.

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You Can Unlearn Your Pain

What neuroscience is teaching us about chronic pain — and the treatment that’s changing lives.

Many years ago, I went through a two-year period with chronic tendinitis in my wrists. During those years there were countless days when I couldn’t type, garden, cook, or even open doors or jars without excruciating pain. I saw my doctor and went to physical therapy for over a year. I stretched, I rested, I iced, I splinted. Nothing really shifted.

I overcame my wrist symptoms after reading a book called Healing Back Pain by Dr. John Sarno, which convinced me that my wrists weren’t damaged. At the time, that was enough — the pain gradually faded and I moved on.

It wasn’t until I got trained in Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) in 2021 that I looked back and understood the fuller picture.

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The Problem With Problem-Solving

On anxiety, self-compassion, and why your brain keeps looking for problems to solve

The mind, when it’s anxious, will find a problem to solve. It doesn’t matter if the problem is real or imagined, or already over. It just needs something to work on. I was reminded of this the other night, lying awake and anxious after working on my last post too close to bedtime.

There were thoughts about whether I was sharing too much of my personal story in my posts, whether they were overlapping too much in terms of the themes I discussed, and also how people might respond to what I shared about how my first marriage ended. I wondered whether anyone really wanted to hear any of it. I was comparing myself to other writers on Substack who I felt were much more capable writers than I am, and wondering why I had committed to writing a Substack newsletter.

I realized that I was trying to “problem solve” the uncomfortable sensations I was feeling, so I focused my attention just on the bodily sensations and let the thoughts go for now.

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The Need Nobody Talks About in Chronic Pain Recovery

If you’ve struggled with chronic pain or symptoms, there may be a deeper need beneath the surface—one that, when finally met, may be the missing piece in your recovery

I have been working with a client recently who recovered remarkably quickly from disabling pain and other symptoms. She hadn’t been able to work or care for herself for quite a while. She had moved home with a parent and needed help with even small tasks, such as taking a shower, pouring herself a glass of water, or opening doors. She was unable to use her phone because of debilitating pain in her hands.

She was highly motivated to heal, as you can imagine.

She is now living independently, driving herself to work, doing a job that involves lots of work on a laptop, and using her phone too much (like the rest of us!)

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Tied in Knots: Why We Abandon Ourselves

(and How to Stop)

“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough…”

That Barbie monologue spoke to me, as it did to so many women. America Ferrera was speaking for millions of women who’ve tied themselves in knots trying to be everything to everyone—and ended up losing themselves in the process.

I know because I was one of them.

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The Drama of the Upside-Down Plate: What I Learned About Emotions as a Child

For many years, I thought I was just “too emotional.” I hadn’t learned to allow and to express my feelings. They felt too big because they were stuck inside, and because of what I had been taught was normal.

My feelings often felt too intense, too easily triggered. Everyone else seemed to have it together while I was a mess inside. It never occurred to me that other people might be having the same feelings—they just weren’t showing them. I was comparing my insides to other people’s outsides.

It also didn’t occur to me that burying my emotions might make me sick.

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How I Learned Not To Abandon Myself

(and What a Mispronounced Name Taught Me)

My body had been speaking what I refused to acknowledge: I was abandoning myself to take care of everyone else, and my nervous system wasn’t having it anymore.

While postpartum with my second child, I was hospitalized for severe depression and anxiety after suffering months of chronic dizziness and nausea. I was released from the hospital after twelve days of inpatient treatment. During those days, I kept solid food down for the first time in months, started to have an appetite, and was just beginning to be able to sleep through the night. I was seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

When I got home and was back in the stressful environment I had left, I immediately felt like no recovery had occurred at all. My husband expected me to be back to 100% right away, and every stressful moment, even the sound of my son’s voice (needing something from me!), caused a wave of dread, dizziness and nausea to come right back. Clearly, I hadn’t fully recovered yet. So I got put in a full-day intensive outpatient program for six weeks, so I could ease back into “life on the outside.”

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