My story
I know firsthand that recovery is possible
For much of my adult life, pain was an almost daily blight — frustrating, intrusive and something I constantly had to plan around or push through.
For me, it was largely abdominal and pelvic. Over the years there were many different explanations, investigations and diagnoses — including genuine gynaecological conditions — but nobody ever stood back, or had the time, to look at the whole pattern.
Why did the pain behave so unpredictably?
Why did one problem seem to settle only for something else to appear?
Why could the level of pain change so dramatically when the physical problem itself hadn’t changed?
At the time, I didn’t know those were useful questions.
The searching was exhausting
I was the eternal detective: endless books, diets, therapies, theories to work out what I had done differently on a ‘good’ day. I remember the frustration of being told I was ‘a mystery’ by my GP — and how easily that can leave you feeling either disbelieved or somehow responsible for not getting better.
Pain and symptoms affected my relationships, work, social life and confidence.
Sometimes the pain disappeared, and I would assume it was because of some tiny thing I had done or avoided and try to recreate the same conditions, only to follow another red herring.
I didn’t yet understand that these changes were clues.
Then came a very different kind of pain
Years later, a bad fall added another chapter. This time there was a clear injury and, eventually, evidence of genuine nerve involvement. But the pain became more and more severe, and far beyond what the eventual physical findings seemed to explain.
I was prescribed nerve-pain medication, morphine patches, anti-nausea medication and sleeping tablets, and I tried physio, acupuncture and massage. The pain at times was completely unbearable. I was constantly searching for proof that something structurally wrong had been missed.
At times I questioned my own judgement and resilience. I felt dismissed, frightened and increasingly unsafe in my own body.
And yet, there were moments when the pain would almost disappear into the background. It would shift, it would behave differently at times. It would change intensity depending on what I was doing.
Looking back, I realise these symptoms were following a pattern.
Pain isn’t always one thing or the other
My own experience taught me something I now think is very important: pain presentations can be mixed.
A genuine physical condition can coexist with a brain and nervous system that have become highly protective. Structural changes, sensitisation, stress physiology, expectations, attention, movement, emotion and life context can all interact.
The presence of a physical finding doesn’t automatically explain the whole pain experience and the absence of a dramatic finding doesn’t make pain any less real.
What matters is looking at the whole picture, including how symptoms behave over time.
What changed for me
Eventually I realised I needed to take matters into my own hands.
I started studying the brain, the body, pain science, stress, hypnosis, CBT, mindfulness and current neuroscience. That journey changed the way I understood pain, changed my relationship with my body and, ultimately, changed my career.
I began to understand that my brain and nervous system had become very good at protecting me. And that, because the brain can learn and change, those responses didn’t have to stay that way.
That understanding helped me stop treating every sensation as evidence that something was wrong, and start feeling safer in my body again.
Why I’m telling you this
I’m not sharing my story because I think yours will be the same. It probably won’t be.
I’m sharing it because I know what it’s like to search for answers, to feel frightened by symptoms that don’t make sense, and to wonder whether anyone is really seeing the whole picture.
That’s why, when I work with someone, I’m interested not only in where they hurt, but in how their symptoms behave, what has happened around them, what they’ve already been told, what they’ve tried, and what their brain and body may have learned to expect.
Your story matters — and so does the life you want, or want to get back to.
The wider pattern
When I eventually looked back across nearly four decades of my own health history, I realised the pain that dominated my life hadn’t existed in isolation.
There had also been tinnitus, restless legs, GERD, bruxism, plantar fasciitis, throat and voice problems, sensory sensitivities and other persistent physical symptoms.
I can’t retrospectively prove one neat explanation for every symptom I have ever had. But looking back, I can see patterns that are very consistent with what I now understand about neuroplastic pain and persistent symptoms. I can see how symptoms changed across different chapters of my life.
Why? Because the brain, mind and body are not separate: what happens in one system influences the others.
Where I am now
My attention is now on my life and all the people, activities and experiences that make it feel good to be alive, rather than constantly monitoring pain and symptoms.
If a symptom does appear, I don’t panic, I get curious instead. Is there something physical that genuinely needs attention? Is there something I need to acknowledge emotionally? Am I depleted, stressed or ignoring something important? I try to listen like a friend and not a detective.
I now listen to my body without fear, and I know how to help myself settle when I need to.
And I am no longer in pain.
Why I retrained to help people move beyond pain and fear
Discovering that recovery could be possible changed so much for me that I wanted to understand the science properly.
I now work as a Pain Recovery Specialist and Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist, specialising in persistent pain and symptoms — bringing together Pain Reprocessing Therapy, clinical hypnosis, CBT, ACT for Chronic Pain, mindfulness and modern pain science.
My aim is to help you understand what may be contributing to your individual pain pattern, test that understanding together, and build practical ways to help you find the way out of persistent pain.
If my story resonates with you
You don’t need to have the same history as me for this approach to be relevant. What matters is whether your symptoms show patterns that suggest the brain and nervous system may be playing a protective role, and whether you feel ready to explore that possibility.
If you would like to understand how I work, you can visit the Work With Me page. If you would like to understand the science and the framework behind my approach, you can read more about the pain matrix.
Or let’s have a quick chat and see if we’re a good fit.