Restoring Mind–Body Connection Through Evidence-Based Pain Science

I’m a licensed clinical psychologist in the states of Washington and Oregon with over a decade of experience studying, teaching, and treating chronic pain from a neuroscience-based perspective.

My work focuses on how pain is learned, maintained, and changed within the nervous system — particularly when symptoms persist despite medical care, don’t map neatly onto structural findings, or feel tightly linked to stress, emotion, identity, or long-standing threat patterns.

I’ve spent more than ten years immersed in contemporary pain science across research, clinical practice, and education. My doctoral research examined self-compassion in chronic pain, and I’ve received advanced training in Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), and Internal Family Systems (IFS). These frameworks inform my work, but I don’t approach pain through rigid protocols. Instead, I focus on helping people understand how their nervous system is operating — and how to work with it rather than against it.

Much of my work involves translating complex pain science into practical, usable understanding. This includes education for individuals living with chronic pain, skills-based programs, and training and consultation for clinicians who want a more nuanced, nervous-system-informed approach to pain.

I’m especially drawn to working with people who are insightful, capable, and worn down by years of trying to “do everything right.” Many have been misunderstood by medical or mental health systems, or left feeling that their pain is either purely structural or “all in their head.” My work rejects that false split. Pain is real, meaningful, and changeable — but only when we understand the conditions that keep it going.

I also bring lived experience with chronic pain to this work, which informs my respect for pacing, autonomy, and the complexity of real bodies and real lives. I don’t view pain recovery as a process of fixing what’s broken. I see it as helping a nervous system feel safe enough to update, adapt, and reorganize.