Your symptoms are real. We don't have to argue about that here.
Pain, weakness, shaking, fatigue, dizziness, numbness, gastrointestinal symptoms, seizures or seizure-like episodes, and other persistent physical experiences can change the way you move through your entire life.
And when tests, diagnoses, providers, or explanations don't give you a clear answer, you can end up carrying something else too: the exhausting question of whether anyone actually believes you.
I do. And believing you doesn't require us to stop being curious about everything that may be influencing what your body is experiencing.
When your life gets reorganized around symptoms.
There is no single story that brings people here, but there are some familiar shapes. See if any of these sound like yours:
You may have been told
- your symptoms are "medically unexplained," and you're tired of that being the end of the conversation
You may carry a diagnosis
- an FND diagnosis, and you're looking for a therapist who understands it
- chronic pain that hasn't responded fully to medical treatment alone
You may already sense connections
- you suspect, or already know, that stress, trauma, or nervous system patterns are connected to your symptoms
The system itself may be part of the load
- you're exhausted by the medical system, by not being believed, or by having to prove how much this affects your life
What you're looking for
- a provider who treats your body's signals as real information, not as something to explain away
A symptom can be influenced by the brain and still be completely real.
Your body and your mind were never separate systems to begin with.
We often talk about symptoms as though we have to put them into one of two boxes: physical or psychological.
Human bodies don't work that neatly.
Your brain, spinal cord, immune system, hormones, muscles, organs, sensory systems, emotions, attention, environment, relationships, previous experiences, injuries, medical conditions, and expectations can all interact with what you experience physically.
That doesn't make a symptom imaginary.
It also doesn't mean every symptom should be explained psychologically. New, changing, or concerning physical symptoms deserve appropriate medical evaluation. Therapy does not replace medical care.
Sometimes the body keeps protecting long after protection became necessary.
Pain and other physical symptoms are not simple readouts of tissue damage. They are experiences created through complex communication between the body and brain.
In some conditions, the brain can become increasingly efficient at detecting, predicting, or responding to threat, even when the original injury, illness, or danger has changed.
That can mean sensations become easier to trigger, harder to ignore, or more frightening. Fear of the symptom can understandably change how you move, what you avoid, what you monitor, and how safe your body feels.
None of that means you chose the symptom.
For some people, this process is relevant. For others, ongoing disease, injury, structural changes, medication effects, neurological conditions, or other medical factors remain important contributors. Often, more than one thing is true.
Your history may matter. It doesn't have to explain everything.
Stress, trauma, medical trauma, chronic uncertainty, attachment experiences, loss, repeated exposure to danger, and other difficult experiences can influence how the brain and body respond to threat, sensation, pain, and safety.
For some people, those experiences are an important part of understanding persistent symptoms.
For others, they aren't the central story.
I don't need to find trauma to believe your body.
If trauma is part of what is happening, we can work with it. If it isn't, we don't need to manufacture a trauma explanation for your symptoms.
And when a medical condition, injury, or other physical process is present, psychological and experiential care can still sometimes be useful without pretending the medical condition isn't real.
Healthcare itself can become part of what needs support.
Living inside the medical system is work: repeated appointments and procedures, waiting for results, adapting to new providers, keeping track of it all while managing symptoms.
And sometimes care leaves its own marks: being dismissed or not believed, losing control during procedures or hospital stays, frightening diagnoses or treatment, or simply carrying uncertainty no one can resolve. Having to repeatedly explain or prove what you're living with is its own kind of exhaustion.
Needing support to process difficult healthcare experiences doesn't mean something is wrong with you, and it doesn't make you anti-medicine. It means care can be hard to live through, and that deserves the same compassion as anything else.
If medical experiences are part of what you're carrying, they have a place in this work.
Functional doesn't mean fake.
Functional neurological symptoms can affect movement, sensation, speech, awareness, and other neurological functions. When seizure-like episodes are not caused by epilepsy, they may be called psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES).
The symptoms are real. They are not the same thing as intentionally producing or pretending to have symptoms.
For some people, receiving an FND or PNES diagnosis brings relief because something finally has a name. For others, it creates more confusion, especially if the explanation they received sounded like, "Nothing is medically wrong, so this must be psychological."
That's not how I approach it.
When FND or PNES is part of the picture, therapy may focus on understanding symptom patterns, reducing fear and shame, increasing awareness of triggers and internal cues, addressing relevant stress or trauma when present, and helping you build more options for responding to what your body is doing.
Appropriate neurological and medical evaluation, and coordination with your medical providers, remains important. Psychotherapy is one part of care, not a replacement for it.
We aren't trying to convince you that your body is wrong.
We're trying to understand what it's doing.
That may mean noticing what happens before symptoms increase, what your body interprets as threatening, what you've learned to avoid, how attention changes the experience, what emotions or memories become connected to symptoms, and what helps your body experience more choice.
The work may focus on areas like:
Fear, attention + self-trust
- feeling less frightened by every change in sensation
- recognizing patterns without constantly monitoring your body
- trusting yourself enough to distinguish "I need to listen" from "fear is making this decision for me"
- reducing shame about what your body is doing
Responding + capacity
- having more ways to respond when symptoms increase
- gradually returning to meaningful activities when medically appropriate
Relationships + limits
- communicating needs and limits more clearly
When they're part of the picture
- addressing trauma, grief, or medical experiences when they are part of the picture
Sometimes the work is about reducing symptoms. Sometimes it's about reducing how much of your life the symptoms get to decide. Often, we're interested in both.
Your life can become bigger even while we're still listening to your body.
The goal isn't to ignore symptoms, push through everything, or convince yourself nothing is wrong.
For some people, symptoms may decrease. For others, the meaningful change may be greater function, less fear, more flexibility, or a different relationship with symptoms that remain.
Success is not measured by how well you learn to pretend you aren't hurting.
Complex physical symptoms deserve more than "it's all in your head."
Working at the intersection of physical symptoms, pain, trauma, stress, and emotional health requires being able to hold more than one explanation at a time.
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Ways to Work Together
Individual Intensives
For some people living with chronic pain, an intensive may provide focused time to work with a specific psychotherapy target, such as medical trauma, grief, fear around symptoms, or patterns related to living with pain.
If an intensive isn’t the right fit, I’ll tell you that and can provide referral options when possible.
Learn more about Individual IntensivesInvestment
Current fees and policies for all offerings live on the Fees & Investment page, including intensive pricing and cancellation terms.
See the Fees & Investment pageA Note on Medical Care
This work complements, not replaces, medical treatment. Many clients are already connected with physicians, neurologists, or pain specialists. This therapy works alongside that care, addressing the nervous system in ways medical treatment alone often can't.
Serious Illness, Grief + Loss
Facing a diagnosis, caring for someone who is dying, and living after a death are a distinct part of this practice with their own page.
Serious Illness, Grief + LossYou shouldn't have to convince me that what you're experiencing is real.
A consultation gives us time to talk about what's happening, what you've already tried, the care you're currently receiving, and whether psychotherapy could be a useful part of your treatment.