Author: katiekaufmann

Happy August Reader! This month I am taking on a month long challenge focused on self care. I am inviting you to join me. Self Care Defined People often confuse self care with pampering, but it is so much more than that. It is really about supporting yourself in body, mind, and spirit so that you can move out of survival mode toward a more sustainable, flexible, calm, safe, connected, and responsive state, often referred to as ventral vagal. There are many ways to do this of course, and I am...

Hey, Reader! Much of the work in recovering from chronic symptoms is about working with fear of the symptom rather than the symptom itself. Learning to listen to the fear and meeting the needs of the fearful parts of myself has been the most important part of my own healing and and that of my clients. But most of us are never taught how to do this or, even more than that, don't recognize that there is a part of us that is deeply fearful in the first place. Fear may be showing up in different...

Hey, Reader! You may or may have not noticed, but it has been a few months since I last emailed. I have no good excuse, just that perfectionism got in my way. I think up stuff that I want to share or could share and then immediately judge it for not being right, or the right time, or enough, or useful or, or, or...! Then instead of sending a short and helpful email to you that says, "Hey. I'm thinking of you and here is a little nugget to chew on this month." Three months go by. Perfectionism...

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...