If you are like me, when you first started having pain, you determined that the source of that pain was at that spot in your head/ gut/ back. This is quite reasonable to assume.

 What we know now about pain is that it is Biopsychosocial. That is, influenced by things biological (sleep, nutrition, hormones, inflammation), things social (who is around you, your culture, your social world at large), and things psychological (thoughts, feelings, beliefs about the pain).

 Have you ever had some pain yet valued an activity so much that you were able to ignore your pain and do that activity?

 Or had an episode and started talking to someone, and then your symptoms were worse?

 That is hopeful, because we can learn to turn down the volume on pain sensations and turn up the volume on pleasurable ones.

Pain that terrifies you.
Fear of more symptoms, additional illnesses, or heavy “what ifs”
Anger that you have squashed for years.
Saying yes when you mean no.
Pushing through when you should rest.

These things keep your nervous system in high alert. The ironic thing is that you know if you could find some calm, you would have less pain and less flares; but pain just increases the nervous system dysregulation. It’s a difficult feedback loop that takes courage to step out of.
It takes more than just telling yourself that you are safe or using logic to out-think your overthinking. At times, more specialized tools are needed to bring your whole nervous system into a state of calm, a state in which you can decrease the sensitization that is keeping you in pain. In my practice, finding just the right way for you to reach calm states is a priority. We can find what works for you through hypnosis, somatic tracking, and opening one’s focus.