Hi, I’m Katie.
I’m a somatic and creative arts therapist who helps people living with chronic pain reconnect to their bodies and restore agency in their lives. I incorporate emotional processing, gentle body awareness, and creative expression in therapy to help people feel better in their bodies and more safe in their nervous system so they can begin to unlearn the patterns of tension and fear that so often come along with chronic pain. To support lasting relief, I also help people explore the feelings that go with the pain so they can rebuild trust in the body and feel in charge of their lives again. When people feel safe in their body, hopeful for the future, and powerful they can take the first step towards healing.
My Background
I’m an LPCC in Colorado with a masters degree in somatic therapy/ dance movement therapy from Naropa University. I lived with chronic pain and chronic conditions for 15 years, wrote my thesis about chronic pain, and made it my life’s mission to help others reclaim their lives from the all-encompassing effects of chronic symptoms. My training includes the Freedom From Chronic Pain method developed and taught by Dr. Howard Schubiner, a global leader in chronic pain research and treatment. Outside of therapy, I find joy in dancing, making art, and making up songs about any and everything.
My Approach: The very first thing
After trying so many “cures” for chronic pain that end in disappointment, or worse, hopelessness, it can feel like there’s nothing left to try. I know from my own experience, you might start to wonder if anyone can help or even if you’re broken. The very first thing I’ll say when we start working together is you are not broken. Enduring the pain you have for so long only proves your strength. Together, we can tap into this strength to support real relief. The difference between our work together and treatments you’ve tried before is that I trust you as the expert of your own body, not the other way around. I know you can become the agent of your own relief and reclaim your life from pain.
2 ways we get there
neurobiological rewiring
Neorobiological rewiring refers to the brain’s ability to change and form new pathways in response to new experiences in a process known as neuroplasticity. Chronic pain can cause the subconscious brain and nervous system to become ‘stuck’ in protective patterns that keep telling the body it’s in danger, all the time, even when the body is safe. In therapy we use gentle awareness, emotional processing, and new ways of relating to the body to help the brain turn off these alarm signals and make new neural pathways which in turn changes or even eliminates the experience of pain. When the brain and body start to feel safe and pain reduces, you can start to trust your own body again.
making sense of the pain
The impact of chronic pain and illness isn’t just physical. Our sense of who we are, how others see us, and whether or not we can take action in our lives is deeply impacted by our symptoms. Depression, anxiety, and isolation are often a result and can cruelly compound our suffering. I work to help those in pain find symptom relief and process the emotional impact of pain taking over your life to find the you underneath again. This is essential to support lasting healing: when you reclaim your identity beyond pain, you regain power to direct your life and heal.