Author: katiekaufmann

Hey, Reader! Happy New Year! Like most of us, you might be pondering change and ways you would like to bring about change in the upcoming year. Change is hard. Changing neural pathways is harder! So let's reduce the barriers where we can. Research shows that high stress over long periods of time reduces neuroplasticity. So rather than spending the low energy winter months adding more #2025newyearnewmegoals, I plan on focusing on one thing: reducing stress and my unhelpful responses to stress!...

Hey Reader! It is relatively easy to lose patience with ourselves and with the process along our winding path to wellbeing. I have seen time and again, my clients get exasperated or despondent at a certain point after the initial excitement of the Pain Reprocessing Therapy approach wears off and the initial practice is not yet yielding results. And frankly, this is when some people give up. I am the queen of giving up at this point so I totally get it. As an analogy, when I was a kid I took...

Hey Reader! I am not sure what your mental, physical, or emotional state is like today, but if you are finding it hard to feel settled, feeling anxious, frustrated, hopeless, or just uneasy, YOU ARE NOT ALONE! It is important to know that. It is not YOUR pain, worry, frustration, etc. It is THE pain, worry, frustration. What this language shift does is give that state a bit of distance. It is something we experience rather then something that we possess. It is a passing state. It also becomes...

Happy October, Reader! I just returned from the PPDA Conference in Boulder, Colorado. PPDA stands for Psychophysiological Disorders Association. It actually doesn't matter because they are changing their name (because that was a mouthful) to the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms. (Slightly better, but still kind of a mouthful.) Anyway, I connected with lots of folks across the country and internationally who are helping people recover from chronic symptoms and feel very...

Hey Reader! A friend told me yesterday, "I feel like my brain is boiling." Things are busy! It's hot! There is seemingly chaos all around! Information is coming to us at a record breaking rate and we are trying to process it all! Our brains were never meant to deal with so much content. They are on overload, trying to sort through it all, deciding what is an actual threat and what is a perceived threat, what can I do something about and what can I let go, what is information I need to store...

Hey Reader! After last month's epic newsletter I am going to keep it short and sweet. I wanted to share some helpful science type things that I feel are important. You may or may not know of Lorimer Moesly, Neuroscientist, Physiotherapist, and all around funny guy from his now famous TED talk on chronic pain. He has continued the work since then and has learned even more about how pain works. I recently heard his 4 essential pain pacts and I find them quite comforting somehow. 4 Essential...

Hey Reader! I'm sure you've heard that phrase before. I've been reflecting a lot lately about how the sheer volume of external information, images, and experiences is affecting how much comparison we have going on these days. Think about it. When we have a "problem" we want to fix, who or what do we turn to? Friends, family, Google? From there we are barraged with advice, opinions, studies, horror stories, people who think they know all the right answers and love to tell you how you are doing...

Hey Reader! Have you ever spent over an hour crafting the perfect newsletter email only to lose all your work when you went to edit a design feature, even though you took the precaution of copying your previous content in case you do, only to accidentally re-copy the filler text from the template instead of paste your carefully crafted content in? Yeah. That just happened! Gah! 😫 "You idiot." I remarked to myself. "You knew this would happen and it did. Why did you have to do that? Now...

Hey Reader! After coaching folks with chronic pain and other stress-induced symptoms for the last two years, one commonality I find is a difficulty with uncertainty or the unknown. And it makes sense! Our brains are prediction machines. They like to know what to expect and be ready with the right response. This prediction and safeguarding mechanism can go into overdrive when we are experiencing uncomfortable symptoms. Our brains become hypervigilant and threats exist all around us at all...

Hey Reader! I'm not going to lie. The first half of January felt pretty bleak for me. My normal optimism and ability to do hard things, even though I didn't want to, was minimal at most. I felt overwhelmed with all I had to do and the lack of energy I had to do them. Ironically, I was also signed up for a challenge in my coaching business group that was all about networking and creating referral partnerships. Needless to say, I was in no place to take on that challenge and even being exposed...