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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.”
A supportive, empowering message to women who have had their pain and symptoms dismissed for far too long.
For generations, possibly since the advent of modern medicine, women’s health concerns have been minimized, misunderstood, or dismissed outright. Women have been labeled “hysterical,” “dramatic,” or “too sensitive” when they were suffering with very real physical conditions. Many of us have been told our symptoms are “all in our heads,” that we’re overreacting, and that we simply need to calm down or push through. Or to “just get over it.”
Given that history, it is completely understandable that the idea of mind–body healing can feel uncomfortable or even insulting. For many women, it appears to echo the same harmful messages we’ve heard their whole lives: “You’re imagining it.” “It’s your fault.” “Just get over it.” That’s the opposite of what women deserve.
Women are not “more emotional.” We are more burdened.
Women experience higher rates of chronic pain, autoimmune illness, migraines, IBS, fatigue disorders, anxiety, and other stress-related conditions—not because we are weaker or more fragile–in fact, just the opposite! It is very likely that these conditions impact women more because we often carry more:
Caregiving responsibilities
Emotional labor at home and at work
Discrimination and microaggressions
Financial and workplace instability
Exposure to trauma and unsafe relationships
Pressure to be accommodating, calm, kind, and self-sacrificing
Women are often expected to perform at work as if we don’t have families, and at home as if we don’t have jobs. We are trained to consider others’ needs before their own. We are told to smile through pain and stay “pleasant,” no matter what we’re carrying. A body under those conditions will eventually speak up. Often through pain or symptoms.
When symptoms are neuroplastic, they’re not imaginary
Pain or symptoms that are created or maintained by the brain are not “made up,” “in your head,” or less legitimate or impactful. It simply means the nervous system has become overwhelmed and has created the symptom as an act of self-protection. The brain is incredibly powerful, and it can create real:
pain
inflammation
skin conditions
digestive issues
dizziness
fatigue
nausea
sensitivities to foods, sounds, light and chemicals
sensations of numbness, tingling, itching and burning, and others
The difference between symptoms created by the brain and nervous system and symptoms that are due to an injury or disease is that neuroplastic symptoms can be unlearned. Not with willpower. Not with “pushing through.” Not with being a “good patient.” Not with pretending you’re fine. But with approaches that calm and retrain the brain, address stress and overwhelm, restore agency, and bring your system back into balance.
Why women often hesitate to embrace mind–body neuroplastic treatments:
Women have excellent reasons to be cautious. We’ve often been dismissed by providers or been given answers and treatments that were not helpful or that made things worse. We’re often told that our symptoms are due to stress without receiving support to address the root cause. We’ve lacked adequate care, support, or time to heal. We haven’t had our suffering taken seriously.
So when someone says, “Your pain may be neuroplastic,” many women understandably hear: “You’re imagining it,” or “It’s up to you to fix it alone.” But in truth, neuroplastic healing is one of the most validating approaches available, because it says: “Your symptoms are real, your suffering is legitimate, and your healing matters.”
Mind–body healing is not self-blame — it is self-restoration.
Neuroplastic treatments do not ask women to ignore structural medical issues that need treatment, and they are not based on the idea that pain or discomfort is “all in your head.” What mind-body healing does do is empower women with tools that have been proven to reduce or eliminate chronic pain and other symptoms by addressing the overloaded nervous systems that so many women live with every day.
Healing happens through:
Learning to feel safe in your body again
Setting boundaries where life has demanded too much
Addressing perfectionistic or self-sacrificial patterns that make life difficult
Giving yourself the compassion you rarely receive from others
Processing emotions you’ve had to suppress to survive
Reclaiming agency over your health and wellbeing
It is about restoring your sense of safety and learning to live in a way that allows you to feel your feelings, prioritize your well-being, and live in a more authentic way. Living more authentically allows your nervous system to thrive and allows you to engage with life in a more joyful way.
You deserve a healing path that sees the whole you
Mind–body healing is not a message that something is wrong with you. It is a message that you’ve likely carried too much, and it’s taken a toll on your well-being. Your symptoms — painful, frustrating, frightening as they are — are your body’s way of saying: “I’ve been carrying too much for too long.” “I need care just as much as I give it.” “I deserve safety, rest, and support.” You deserve to feel fully supported as you reclaim your health, your agency, and your well-being.
Becoming a parent brings out so many new qualities in each of us. We learn to nurture selflessly. We learn patience and empathy. We learn to read the cues of our new baby, and how to meet their needs as best we can. It is an opportunity for growth like no other in our lifetime.
However, as we learn to give love and care to our child, many of us also begin to face the reality that we were not nurtured in certain ways in our own childhood. As we provide a loving mirror to our child, reflecting back a positive and validating image, we may become aware that we were not mirrored in a loving way ourselves. Perhaps we were shamed for certain qualities, or silenced when we voiced our truth, or in other ways shown that we were “not OK” the way we were.
Many of us have internalized shaming and dismissive attitudes directed at us as young children. We may not even realize that we continue the pattern by shaming or silencing ourselves. The child part within each of us, which is our source of joy, passion and creativity, is often stifled by our own inner shame. Our need for validation, love and nurturing are easily dismissed as “selfish” or “needy,” as we tell ourselves that we “shouldn’t” need the things the child inside us craves. The things we most enjoy and that give us pleasure are easily lost as we focus our attention on practical realities and the needs of others, especially our children and our partner.
This pattern of self-neglect fosters depression and chronic pain or physical symptoms. The child inside us loses hope that he or she will ever experience joy and fulfillment, contributing to depression. Or the child gets angry at being neglected and acts out, causing us to be resentful, irritable, or develop chronic symptoms (anxiety or somatic complaints) that tell us that all is not well in our inner world.
This is how I understand my own struggle with anxiety and chronic symptoms as a mother raising my children. When I lost touch with the child inside me, as it is so easy to do while raising children, my anxiety mounted. If I continued to be what I believed a “good mother” was (e.g. selfless, endlessly patient and focused on the needs of others), the result was depression, painful physical symptoms, overeating, and other self-destructive patterns. What I came to discover was that by focusing my attention inward, and creating a loving dialog between my inner parent self and my inner child, I was able to heal those childhood wounds and feel a sense of balance and wholeness.
Some clients of mine find that they can identify a clear inner parent and inner child voice. But for those who find it more difficult, the following exercise can be useful. You can communicate in the voice of your inner parent by writing with your dominant hand, and can reply as your inner child by writing with the non-dominant hand. It is amazing how easy it is for many people to access the child part of themselves when struggling to write with their non-dominant hand! If you have difficulty “hearing” your inner child voice, put your hand on your belly — that can help you access this vulnerable part.
You can start a dialog by asking “how are you doing?” or “how can I take care of you today?” or “what are you needing from me?” Some will find that the child inside them is quite angry and distrustful of the inner parent at first, for having neglected them for so long. But you can overcome this distrust by responding consistently in a loving parental voice, and reassuring the child inside you that you are there for them, that you will not leave them alone again, and that you love them just the way they are. You may not always be able to give your inner child what it wants in that moment, but just as we do with our children, we can learn to validate their needs and make sure that we create a life in which our inner child’s needs have some level of priority as well.
Here’s an example of an inner child dialog, that was initiated when the client found herself feeling very heavy and having back pain:
Parent: What are you needing from me today, Sweetie?
Child: I’m sad and I want to play with my friends, but I always have to work and take care of people.
Parent: I’m so sorry you’re sad. Working so much is really hard. We don’t have time to go play today, but I will make sure we have a couple of hours this weekend to go do something fun. You’re feelings matter to me, and I’m really glad you told me how you feel. Would asking [partner] for a hug help make this day easier?
Child: Yes, I like hugs. But I’m still sad.
Parent: I know, and it’s OK to be sad. Your feelings matter to me. Do you think a nice bath before bed would feel good?
Child: Yes, that’s good. Can I have bubbles and music?
Parent: Absolutely! I’m so proud of you for asking for what you need and I love you very much.
This exercise will allow you to begin a conversation that can allow you to experience a corrective emotional experience of being cared for and attended to, which can heal your heart in a very deep way. You can also learn how to create a balance between the needs of others and the needs of this tender part of yourself, which will allow you to live a more authentic, joyful life.
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