How I came to this work
I know what it's like to be crushed by chronic pain, to try everything under the sun and still hurt every day.
For more than three years, I lived with debilitating chronic bladder pain. I'm talking burning bladder, up all night bonfire kind of pain. I got up to pee like 15 times every night. Was I sleep deprived? Absolutely. Was I pissed off? Of course. Was I depressed? Definitely. And I was desperate for answers.
I did what most people in chronic pain do. I went to one medical doctor after another. When that didn't work, I widened the search: herbal teas, giving up coffee, sugar, and alcohol, an energy healer, round after round of antibiotics. I was willing to try anything. Nothing touched it. Does this sound familiar? Anyone?
Now you should know I'm someone who solves problems with the focus of a trained assassin. I'm known for this among my friends and family. But I could not solve my chronic pain. Turns out, I'd been looking for the answer in my body, when the piece I was missing was in my nervous system.
Finally, near the end of a meeting with yet another nutritionist, she casually mentioned a mind-body approach called Pain Reprocessing Therapy.
What I learned changed everything: chronic pain — whether pelvic pain, back pain, migraines, or fibromyalgia — often resists treatment because while it feels like it's coming from the body, it's actually being created by misfiring pain circuits in the brain. PRT uses specific psychological techniques to rewire those circuits and break the chronic pain cycle.
I trained in Alan Gordon, LCSW's founding cohort — Alan is the founder of Pain Reprocessing Therapy and the author of The Way Out. I went on to train with Dr. Howard Schubiner, the internal medicine physician and leading expert on mind-body medicine. Within about eight weeks of using PRT (and IFS – Internal Family Systems, which is also part of my course) on myself, my bladder pain vanished. It hasn't returned.
I've spent the years since walking hundreds of clients in my private practice through this work, for all kinds of chronic pain. The brain is wildly creative when it comes to the symptoms it can produce – even in the absence of physical damage.
I built Solve Chronic Pain™ because I'm one therapist, and my practice can only hold so many people. Meanwhile, about 60 million American adults live with chronic pain, and many can't find a trained therapist or afford months of private sessions. If this course reaches even a small fraction of them, I'll feel I've made a meaningful contribution. It puts my full method in your hands, for a fraction of the cost, on your own schedule.
Ready to take the next step?
In addition to my work as a psychotherapist and chronic pain specialist, I am also a writer and author of several books including, Forty Beads, The Simple Sexy Secret for Transforming Your Marriage (Running Press, 2011) which offers solutions for couples around the power struggle that often emerges around sex in a marriage. The following are some media outlets that have featured my work:
