HASANNA FLETCHER, LMFT

Hope for Ending Chronic Pain

Twenty-two years ago I cured my own chronic back, neck, shoulder and hip pain using Dr. John Sarno’s mind-body approach.  Since then I’ve helped many of my clients avoid unnecessary surgeries and treatments and overcome a broad range of chronic pain conditions.

If you are reading this, you are probably in pain right how.  Your pain may be in your back, legs, head, feet, neck, stomach—it could be anywhere.  Maybe diagnostic tests have not been able to find anything wrong.  Or maybe you’ve had MRI’s that reveal abnormalities that are in fact not actually causing your symptoms.

Emotionally induced pain disorders are so epidemic, it is very possible that your pain is not due to a physical cause.  But I want to be clear:  I’m not saying that it’s all in your head!  As I know personally, this is real pain.  The issue is understanding what causes it and giving you the power to end it. The main goal of chronic pain psychotherapy is to regulate your nervous system.

I work with my clients to uncover and identify the hidden emotions that have gotten directed into physical pain.  There are three main areas to explore:  the residue of emotional pain from childhood, current stress, and the internal conflicts brought on by our personality traits, such as the need to be perfect and good.  Ending physical pain comes through acknowledging and accepting your pushed down emotional pain.  I find that my personal experience with chronic pain equips me to guide and  encourage  my clients.

Often just reading and working with any of Dr. Sarno’s books is enough to overcome symptoms.  But sometimes repressed feelings are too unacceptable or unbearable to uncover without the support of a trained therapist.  Therapy can also help you get past the tendency to minimize the hidden pain in your “perfectly normal childhood” that has been resulting in physical pain.  It’s important to work with a therapist who understands and  is familiar with the idea of repressed emotional pain causing physical symptoms.

I’ve been a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist since 1995, and have specialized in helping people with chronic pain—back, hip, knee, leg, foot pain; sciatica, tendonitis, carpal tunnel, headaches, fibromyalgia, and gastrointestinal disorders—for twenty-two years.