Tag Archives: pain reprocessing therapy

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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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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