Living with chronic pain can feel all-consuming.

My journey into treating chronic pain began when I experienced four years of back pain and then healed myself after reading Healing Back Pain by John Sarno, M.D. It felt miraculous to go from my back hurting all the time to being pain-free, and at that point I knew I wanted to help other people heal from their pain, too.

I work with people experiencing a variety of pain and neuroplastic symptoms (by neuroplastic, I mean that the symptom originates in the mind/brain, not from a biomechanical/biological/structural cause) including back pain, sciatica, neck pain, shoulder pain, groin pain, knee pain, hip pain, foot pain, pelvic pain, Fibromyalgia, TMJ, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Dry Eye, tinnitus, eczema, dizziness, migraines and other headaches.

No matter what the chronic pain or neuroplastic symptom looks like, it can be utterly awful and feel like a prison that can’t be escaped. My goal is always to help you heal from, and not just manage, pain.

My Approach

Because of the proliferation of information about the mind body connection and a growing number of practitioners that treat neuroplastic symptoms, I want to help you understand my approach.

First, it is important to rule out a physical, structural, biological explanation for pain. I collaborate regularly with Dr. David Schechter, a medical doctor specializing in the treatment of chronic pain who was trained directly by John Sarno, M.D. Dr. Schechter can do a thorough assessment of your symptoms to make sure that proceeding with a psychological approach to healing is appropriate. Dr. Schechter is one of the kindest and most thoughtful doctors I have encountered, and I highly recommend him. Another way you can rule out a structural explanation for your pain is if another medical provider communicates that there is either nothing structurally wrong or that they can’t find anything wrong, or if you have tried structural approaches like physical therapy and they have not worked. I can also help you assess if your pain is appropriate to treat psychologically.

Fundamentally, I believe chronic pain and symptoms have a meaning in our lives that we need to understand in order for you to heal. John Sarno, M.D. was the pioneer of this idea, and he believed that chronic pain represented repressed negative feelings (especially anger and rage) that the unconscious mind creates a distraction from. In other words, the meaning of the pain was to keep you focused on your body instead of on extremely threatening feelings.

I have been heavily influenced by Dr. Sarno and I also believe our understanding of chronic pain has continued to evolve and grow. Dr. Sarno was focused mostly on anger and rage. However, there are other threatening feelings that pain can distract us from, including intense feelings of guilt, sadness, shame, and grief. I have also worked with many people where previous traumas were being stored in their body through pain.

Another important consideration is that pain is extremely distressing and very scary. This means that once chronic pain begins, even if the person addresses repressed emotions and feelings, there can still be a pain-anxiety-fear loop that can keep someone stuck in pain.

With all of this said, the heart of my approach to treatment is that we must help you have a thorough understanding of what your specific pain is about. This clears the path towards healing. I have worked with people where their pain was related to stressful work circumstances, unhappy relationships, unfulfilled life dreams, childhood traumas, underlying chronic anxiety, underlying obsessive and compulsive tendencies, as well as people that are just caught in an endless pain-fear loop and need help breaking out. I see it as my role to help guide you from being in pain and probably confused about what’s going on in your body to feeling confident about the roadmap out of pain.

We can discuss your chronic pain and how pain has impacted your life further during a free video consultation.

Pain Resources

I created with Dr. Schechter The MindBody Healing Journey, an online video course for people with neuroplastic symptoms/TMS. The course has over five hours of material and is great for those looking for a self-directed, comprehensive healing program or those looking to deepen their understanding of healing from chronic pain. You can find out more information here.

Journaling is a common practice to help people heal from chronic pain. I co-authored The MindBody Workbook Volume 2, and you can find out more information about it here.

I am also a regular contributor for the pain app Curable