Therapy for Chronic Pain & Medical Trauma in Racine, WI
Living with chronic pain means your body is always part of the conversation.
You may wake up scanning for sensations, planning your day around symptoms, or negotiating how much energy you can afford to spend. Pain isn’t just something you feel—it shapes your choices, your routines, and your sense of what’s possible.
You’ve likely done everything you were told to do.
Appointments. Tests. Treatments. Adjustments.
And still, your body doesn’t feel reliable.
What’s most exhausting isn’t only the pain itself—it’s the constant uncertainty, the need to stay alert, and the feeling that your life is organized around something you can’t fully control.
A Different Kind of Support
I work with people who are living in bodies that no longer feel predictable or trustworthy.
Chronic pain and medical trauma can quietly change the relationship you have with your body—from something you once relied on to something you feel you have to manage, monitor, or brace against. Over time, that constant vigilance can be as exhausting as the pain itself.
My work is not about convincing you that pain is psychological or asking you to push through it. Instead, I help clients rebuild a felt sense of agency, choice, and collaboration with their bodies after illness, injury, or medical stress has taken that away—so life no longer has to be organized entirely around symptoms or uncertainty.
Illness, injury, and ongoing medical care place real and cumulative demands on the body.
Repeated procedures, hospitalizations, diagnostic uncertainty, and pain flare-ups require the nervous system to stay alert for long periods of time. Even when treatment ends or symptoms stabilize, the body may continue to respond as if it needs to remain guarded and prepared.
This doesn’t mean your pain is imagined—or that you’re doing something wrong.
It means your system adapted to prolonged stress in order to get you through something difficult. Over time, those adaptations can make it hard to trust your body, relax into rest, or feel any real sense of control.
Healing begins by understanding these responses rather than fighting them. With the right support, the nervous system can learn that it no longer has to stay on high alert—and that steadiness, relief, and choice are possible again.
After Illness, Injury, or Medical Stress
Who Therapy for Chronic Pain & Medical Trauma Is Most Helpful For
This work is especially helpful for people who:
Live with persistent pain or physical symptoms
Have experienced illness, injury, surgery, or repeated medical procedures
Feel dismissed, misunderstood, or overwhelmed within medical systems
Notice pain intensifies with stress but remains very real
Feel disconnected from, frustrated with, or betrayed by their body
Therapy for chronic pain and medical trauma does not replace medical care. Instead, it works alongside it—supporting how your nervous system processes pain, stress, and loss of control so your body doesn’t have to carry everything alone.
When Pain and Illness Take Away a Sense of Control
One of the hardest parts of chronic pain and medical trauma is how much it can erode your sense of agency.
When symptoms flare unpredictably, decisions are made for you—by pain levels, by appointments, by what your body will or won’t allow that day. Over time, it can begin to feel like life happens to you rather than something you participate in.
This isn’t a mindset problem.
It’s a nervous system response to prolonged uncertainty.
When the body learns that discomfort or danger can appear without warning, it adapts by staying vigilant, cautious, and reactive. That adaptation can keep you safe—but it can also make it difficult to feel choice, confidence, or trust in yourself.
Therapy focuses on gently restoring that sense of internal authority, so you can respond to your body rather than feel controlled by it.
Why Chronic Pain Involves the Nervous System
Pain is not just a physical signal—it’s processed through the nervous system.
When pain persists, the system can become sensitized, responding more quickly and intensely to stress, sensation, or perceived threat. This doesn’t make the pain “all in your head.” It means your body has learned to stay on guard.
Over time, this can show up as:
Heightened pain responses
Muscle tension or guarding
Fatigue or shutdown
Difficulty resting or feeling safe in your body
Addressing the nervous system helps create the conditions for pain to become more manageable, flexible, and less consuming—without denying the physical reality of what you’re experiencing.
How Medical Trauma Affects the Body
Medical trauma is often overlooked, even though it can have a lasting impact.
Experiences such as surgeries, invasive procedures, emergency care, restraints, anesthesia, or being dismissed by providers can leave the body holding fear, helplessness, or loss of autonomy—especially when these experiences are repeated.
Your body may remember these moments even if your mind wants to move on.
Therapy offers space to acknowledge how medical experiences have shaped your relationship with your body, without requiring you to relive or retell every detail.
How Brainspotting Can Support Chronic Pain & Medical Trauma
Brainspotting is a body-based therapy that works directly with how pain and stress are held in the nervous system.
Rather than analyzing symptoms, we pay attention to how your body responds in the present moment—tracking internal cues, sensations, and shifts. This process supports awareness without forcing exposure or pushing through discomfort.
For many people, Brainspotting helps:
Increase trust in internal signals
Reduce the intensity of pain responses
Restore a sense of choice and pacing
Build a more cooperative relationship with the body
This work is slow, collaborative, and consent-based—especially important when the body has learned that control was taken away.
What Healing Can Look Like
Healing does not mean eliminating pain entirely or pretending it doesn’t matter.
Instead, many people notice:
Less fear and reactivity during flares
Greater confidence in responding to symptoms
More flexibility in daily life
Improved emotional steadiness
A renewed sense of partnership with their body
The goal is not to fight your body—but to work with it in a way that restores dignity, trust, and agency.
Listening to the Body—At a Pace That Feels Safe
Alongside Brainspotting, I work in a way that pays close attention to how your body responds in the moment. We may slow things down to notice sensations like tension, warmth, heaviness, or ease—not to analyze them, but to understand what your body is communicating.
This helps us recognize when your system is becoming overwhelmed and when it’s ready for more. Instead of pushing through discomfort, we work in small, manageable steps so your body can release stress gradually rather than all at once.
Over time, this approach helps your nervous system build tolerance, flexibility, and trust—allowing your body to respond with less urgency and more choice.
Frequently Asked Questions About Chronic Pain & Medical Trauma Therapy
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No. Chronic pain is real and lived in the body. This work does not deny or minimize physical pain, illness, or injury.
Therapy focuses on how pain, stress, and medical experiences affect the nervous system—and how the nervous system, in turn, influences how pain is experienced and managed. Addressing this layer can support greater steadiness, flexibility, and relief without dismissing the physical reality of what you’re going through.
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Yes. Therapy for chronic pain and medical trauma is designed to complement, not replace, medical care.
Many people continue working with physicians, specialists, or physical therapists while also doing this work. Therapy supports the emotional, nervous-system, and stress-related aspects of living with pain—especially when medical care alone hasn’t addressed how overwhelming or destabilizing the experience has been.
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That’s very common with chronic pain.
Sessions are paced with flexibility and care, and we work with what your body is capable of on any given day. You don’t need to arrive feeling “okay” or having symptoms under control for therapy to be helpful.
In fact, learning how to respond differently during flares—without panic, shutdown, or self-blame—is often an important part of the work.
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No. You are never required to relive or recount medical experiences in detail.
Much of this work focuses on what’s happening in your body now—not on retelling everything that happened in the past. We move at your pace, and your consent guides what we explore and when.
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Brainspotting is a body-based approach that helps access how pain, stress, and medical experiences are held in the nervous system.
Rather than analyzing symptoms, we pay attention to internal cues and responses as they arise. Over time, this can help reduce reactivity, soften pain responses, and restore a sense of choice and collaboration with your body.
Brainspotting is paced carefully and does not require pushing through discomfort.
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Many people living with chronic pain feel betrayed by their bodies or unsure how to trust them again.
Therapy offers a space to rebuild that relationship gently—without forcing positivity or ignoring what hurts. The goal is not to “love” your body overnight, but to develop a more steady, respectful, and responsive connection with it.
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Yes. Many clients find virtual therapy effective for chronic pain and medical trauma.
Whether we meet in person in Racine, WI, or virtually anywhere in Wisconsin, sessions are structured to support comfort, pacing, and nervous-system regulation.
Coming Soon: Expanded Somatic Care
This spring, I’ll be expanding the Rooted Counseling & Wellness team to include trauma-informed massage therapy and acupuncture as part of a more integrative approach to healing chronic pain and medical trauma.
These additions are being chosen intentionally. Each practitioner will share a trauma-informed, consent-based philosophy and an understanding of how pain, stress, and the nervous system intersect. The goal is not to “fix” the body, but to offer supportive, body-based care that helps restore safety, regulation, and trust.
For clients living with chronic pain, this expansion will create more opportunities for coordinated, nervous-system-aware support—meeting the body from multiple angles, at a pace that feels respectful and grounded.
If you’d like to stay informed as these offerings come online, you can join our mailing list below for updates.