Pain Reframed
I want to challenge something that gets said to women with chronic pelvic pain constantly, usually with a kind of relief in the doctor’s voice, like it’s good news: “Everything looks normal.” I don’t think it’s good news, and I don’t think it means what most of us have been trained to think it means. […]
I want to push back on a word. Just one word, but it’s done more damage in this space than almost anything else: managing. You’ve probably heard it from every provider you’ve ever seen. “Let’s find a way to manage your symptoms.” “Here’s a management plan.” Managing is treated as the ceiling. The best-case outcome. […]
Nobody talks about this part enough, so I’m going to. Chronic pelvic pain doesn’t just hurt you. It teaches you not to trust the thing that’s hurting. And that distrust becomes its own injury, one that usually gets far less attention than the physical symptoms themselves. By the time most of my clients find me, […]
Almost every woman I’ve worked with has some version of the same two-part story: the pelvic pain, and the anxiety that showed up somewhere alongside it. And almost every one of them has been treated like those are two separate problems that just happen to be occurring in the same body at the same time. […]
I need to say something, and some people in the pelvic pain space are not going to love it. Every protocol, every elimination diet, every “here’s what triggers a flare” list is built around the same instruction: avoid this. Avoid gluten. Avoid dairy. Avoid sitting too long. Avoid tight clothes. Avoid certain positions. Avoid stress. […]
If you’ve been living with chronic pelvic pain, you may know the very specific heartbreak of hearing, “Everything looks normal,” when absolutely nothing about your life feels normal. You’re still planning around pain. You’re still wondering if dinner, sitting too long, sex, stress, travel, your cycle, or “doing too much” will trigger another flare. You […]
