Helping you reconnect to your body and find lasting relief.
Therapy for Chronic Pain, Illness, and Injury in Boulder & Online Across Colorado
You've done everything right.
You’ve seen the specialists, dones the scans, and tried every medication, surgery, or physical therapy suggested to you, and yet the pain remains.
It is incredibly frustrating and exhausting to feel like you’ve followed the map perfectly, only for your pain to have a mind of its own, moving from place to place, flaring up without warning, or lingering long after an old injury should have healed. This doesn’t mean the pain is "in your head." Your experience is deeply, physically real. What it can mean is that your nervous system has learned to stay on high alert to protect you, creating a loop where the fear of a symptom actually keeps the cycle of pain going. It may be something called mind-body pain. Together, we can help your system find its way back to a place where you feel safe, steady, and finally at home in your own skin again.
Some of what I hear most often from the people who find their way to me:
"My doctors can't find anything structurally wrong — but the pain is absolutely real."
"I've had surgeries, tried every medication. It's still there, sometimes worse."
"I've been told the pain is in my head. I don't know whether to be angry or devastated."
"I'm exhausted. I'm angry. Some days I feel hopeless that anything will ever change."
"I've gotten so good at pretending I'm okay that no one believes me anymore — including sometimes myself."
"I miss my old life. I miss being able to work, to be present, to feel like myself."
"Will I ever get better? I genuinely don't know anymore."
If any of these landed — you're in the right place.
But first, you may be wondering, what is mind-body pain?
For a long time, we believed that if something hurt, something must be physically "broken." We now know that isn't always the case. Sometimes, after an injury, illness, or a stressful or traumatic event, your nervous system gets stuck in a pattern of distress, sounding the alarm long after the original stressor has ended or the physical body has been healed.
This is called neuroplastic pain, and it isn't imaginary or a sign of weakness—it is a learned pattern in the nervous system. And because it was learned, it can be unlearned.
This might be what you're experiencing if your pain "moves around," flares during stress, or hasn't responded to traditional physical treatments—you may have a nervous system that has simply gotten stuck in an alarm state. Together, we’ll work to change these patterns and help you find your way back to the things you love.
— HEALTH CONDITIONS I WORK WITH
While this isn't an exhaustive list, these are the types of persistent symptoms that often respond well to a mind-body approach.
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Chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), "brain fog," and the long-term exhaustion that often follows viral illnesses like Long COVID and chronic Lyme disease.
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Idiopathic pelvic pain or endometriosis that worsens with stress.
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This can include fibromyalgia and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.
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This includes persistent back, neck, or joint pain. Also includes issues like tendonitis that seem to persist or recur even after rest and ergonomics have been addressed.
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Chronic tension headaches, migraines, and lingering symptoms following a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) or concussion. This also includes "unexplained" nerve sensations like tingling or numbness.
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Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), chronic bloating, abdominal pain, and other "unexplained" gut sensitivities that often flare with stress.
— HOW I CAN HELP
We’ll work together to quiet the constant worry and help you rediscover a sense of agency within your own body again.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is a structured, research-backed approach developed specifically for neuroplastic pain. It works by helping the brain reinterpret pain signals as safe rather than dangerous, gradually teaching the nervous system to turn down the alarm that has been stuck in the on position. It involves a combination of education about how neuroplastic pain works, specific techniques for shifting your relationship to pain signals in real time, and a gradual process of helping your brain build new, safer associations with movement and sensation. Here is an example of a PRT meditation we might try.
I used PRT in my own recovery from post-concussion chronic pain and fatigue, and is one of the primary reasons I became a therapist.
Compassionate Skills for Daily Life
Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills, and other mindfulness-based practices, we’ll work together to build a personalized toolkit of mind-body skills that help you stay compassionately attuned to your body’s needs. Whether you are navigating emotional stress or a pain flare, these tools are designed to help you remain safe and supported while you keep moving toward what matters most, even on the hard days.
Emotional Awareness & Expression Therapy
Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) is based on the well-established connection between emotional experience and physical symptoms. When emotions (particularly difficult ones like grief, anger, resentment, fear, or shame) are chronically suppressed or avoided, they can sustain and amplify pain signals in the body.
EAET works by gently helping people become more aware of and expressive with those emotions, interrupting the patterns that keep the pain cycle alive. It is particularly powerful for people whose chronic pain is accompanied by anxiety, depression, or a history of trauma, which is often the case for many of the people I work with.
Depth & Contemplative Practices
Chronic illness often changes your relationship with yourself, sometimes leaving you feeling betrayed by your own body or lost in a restless mind. Beyond managing symptoms, we’ll create an intentional space to explore the deeper layers of your story. Using somatic Internal Family Systems (IFS) and depth-oriented, contemplative practices, we’ll get to know the different parts of you as we explore the deeper questions of meaning and identity that chronic conditions so often raises.
You deserve to be more than just a patient managed by a diagnosis; you deserve to feel safe, believed, and in control of your own life.
How It Works
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A real conversation, no pressure, no commitment. You share what you've been dealing with, I share how I work, and we both get a sense of whether this might be the right fit.
If you decide to move forward, sessions are 50 minutes. We can meet weekly or every other week depending on what works best for you. I offer in person therapy at The Grove in Boulder or online anywhere in Colorado.
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In the beginning, sessions will focus on building trust and learning more about your specific pain history. What makes it better or worse, how it relates to stress and emotion, what your nervous system has learned. Together, we’ll build a shared understanding of what's happening and why, which itself begins to shift things. Exploring your neuroplastic pain is part of the treatment, not just the setup for it.
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Once rapport and understanding are established, and you feel ready, we’ll move into the active work. The specific PRT and EAET techniques, the somatic practices, the careful and patient process of helping your nervous system learn that it is safe. This isn't a linear process and it isn't always comfortable. But it is, for many people, profoundly clarifying. And for many people, it produces real relief, sometimes for the first time in years.
READY TO TAKE THE FIRST STEP?