Tag Archives: chronic pain

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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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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