I am a licensed clinical mental health counselor in private practice with 18 years of experience treating individuals and couples. Many mental health problems contribute to pain, including anxiety, depression, insomnia, and especially trauma, making stress reduction and the processing of stuck emotions key to resolving chronic pain. I use many body-oriented techniques including EMDR and Energy Psychology* which resolve the root causes of pain much more quickly than talk therapy.
That said, most chronic pain is learned and therefore, in addition to processing emotional reasons that might be causing and/or perpetuating the symptoms, it is important that treatment also addresses the process of neuroplasticity as it applies to symptoms. This involves retraining conditioned responses that activate symptoms, thereby unlearning them. I have done trainings from three different organizations using this paradigm: The Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS), Alan Gordon's Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), and the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association (PPDA).
I am very holistically minded. I attend to matters such as diet, sleep hygiene, and exercise which can be all part of a program for healing from chronic pain. I infuse all of my work with the principles of mindfulness and latest research on neuroplasticity. I teach my clients stress-management skills such as meditation, relaxation exercises, and visualization.
Most chronic health symptoms are an issue of neuroplasticity working against you, so the process is the same and therefore I treat more than just pain. So in addition to pain in specific body parts (head, neck, back, pelvis, knee, hand), Fibromyalgia, and Phantom Limb Pain, I have also treated clients with the following: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Lyme Disease (as well as the other tick-born co-infections), Long Covid, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, food allergies, and many other sensations like burning, tingling, numbness, dizziness/vertigo, shaking/tremors, tinnitus, and nausea.
In addition to individual therapy, I offer a group called Minding-The-Body Healing Group and offer couples therapy for those whose relationships have been strained by the impact of chronic pain, fatigue or illness. I have read extensively on spirituality and suffering and am happy to integrate this into the therapy for those interested.
My practice is 100% telehealth. Because of licensing laws, I am able to serve clients who are in the states of New Hampshire and Florida. This does not require you to be a resident of one of those states, only that you are physically located in one of them at the time of our meetings.
*The Association of Comprehensive Energy Psychology is the professional organization through which I've done most of my training in Energy Psychology methods. Check out its website for info on what Energy Psychology is and the research that supports its efficacy: http://www.energypsych.org
