Heal Your Chronic Pelvic Pain

She saw the most eminent experts in the field of chronic pelvic pain in Western Medicine. And nothing worked. This week, my client Jessica shared her story.   After years of chronic pelvic pain, countless medical appointments, pelvic floor physical therapy, and being told to stop exercising, Jessica felt like she'd reached the end of the road. She'd exhausted every option she knew, yet her...

If you've ever been told your symptoms are "all in your head," this episode is for you. Today I'm joined by health psychologist, cognitive behavioral therapist, EMDR therapist, and author Dr. Sula Windgassen to discuss her incredible new book, It's All in Your Body. Sula has become one of my favorite educators in the mind-body space because of her unique ability to explain the science behind chron...

One of the most common pieces of advice in the mind-body healing world is: "Just allow the sensation." But what if allowing feels impossible? What if a large part of you is screaming that this isn't okay, that you want the symptoms to stop, and that you wish things were different? In this episode, I'm sharing why allowing symptoms often feels so difficult and the missing piece...

What do you do when healing is taking longer than you want? When you're doing the work, showing up consistently, making progress... and you're still not where you want to be yet? In today's episode, I'm joined by my client Sarah, who shares her experience healing her chronic pelvic pain through a mind-body approach. Sarah lived with pelvic pain for over 20 years. Along the way,...

Let's talk about the part of chronic pelvic pain that doesn't get discussed nearly enough. Sex. Intimacy. Navigating Relationships. The fear that your partner might leave. The pressure to push through discomfort. In this episode, I'm joined by my friend and colleague Vanessa Blackstone, Executive Director of the Pain Psychology Center, for an honest and nuanced conversation about se...

In this episode, I’m joined by my friend and colleague, Anna Holtzman, for a conversation about self-trust, visibility, nervous system healing, and what happens after symptoms stop being the center of your life. We talk about the often-overlooked phase of healing where life starts opening back up again… and how terrifying that can feel when your nervous system has learned to associate visibility,...

Shawna spent nearly three years doing everything right. She saw the specialists. She did the rounds of antibiotics (eight of them). She cut out every food on the IC list and tracked her symptoms by the hour. She had a compassionate pelvic PT in her corner. She had done everything she was supposed to do. But she was still having debilitating symptoms. And she was still terrified. Her healthcare pro...

Last week I talked about the concept. This week, I'm giving you the practice. The Future Self Visualization is a guided imagery practice that up until now has only lived inside my program, Beyond Chronic Pelvic Pain. It was a big part of my own healing. I listened to some version of this almost every single day for years. Until I healed. Until I became my future self. In this episode: Why you...

There's a version of you who has already healed. Who feels safe in her body. Whose life is no longer consumed by pain.  Who is living the life you've been dreaming of. And, she's closer than you think. In this podcast episode, I discuss practice that changed everything for me in my own healing: connecting with your future self. Not as a theoretical concept. As a decision-making tool...

If you’ve been doing everything right… and you’re still in pain, this episode is for you. In this short episode, I’m directing you to a free masterclass I created: “Why You’re Still In Pain, And What To Do About It.” What you might be missing Most providers are only trained to treat pain from a structural perspective. So when nothing shows up on testing, or your symptoms continue after something h...

In this episode, I’m talking about something I see all the time with my clients, and something I personally experienced for a long time: The push-pull between validation and empowerment. And how the very thing that once helped you survive… might now be covertly blocking your ability to move forward. In this episode, we talk about: Why the need for validation makes so much sense (especially after m...

If you’ve been doing the work: ✅Regulating your nervous system,  ✅Responding to symptoms with safety ✅Practicing self-compassion …but you’re still not feeling better yet, this episode is for you. Because one of the hardest parts of the healing journey isn’t learning what to do. It’s continuing to do it when it feels like nothing is changing. In this episode, we’re talking about lagging results...

If you’ve been approaching your healing like something to figure out, fix, or do perfectly… this episode is for you. In this conversation with psychotherapist and mind-body coach Lauren Garchow, we’re talking about something that doesn’t get nearly enough attention in the healing space: that fun, play, joy, and lightness are POWERFUL healing modalities . We explore why so many of us struggle to ac...

In this episode, Rachel introduces a powerful framework: Stop Healing Thoughts vs. Keep Healing Thoughts You’ll learn how to identify the thoughts that pull you out of the process of healing, and how to gently shift into thoughts that help you stay in it long enough for healing to actually happen. In This Episode, You’ll Learn: Why your thoughts are not the problem, but how you relate to them is H...

Many people living with chronic pelvic pain hold onto the hope that if they just wait long enough, their pain will eventually just go away.  You rest. You avoid certain activities. You give it time. But months pass. Sometimes years. And the pain is still there. In this episode, Rachel explains why time alone doesn’t heal chronic pelvic pain, and what actually creates healing. If you've been s...

This is a special episode. It's the first time I've had a guest on the podcast.  I sat down with Jill Mueller, a pelvic health physiotherapist with over 20 years of experience, whose own journey with endometriosis, period pain, and fertility challenges led her to dedicate her career to this work. Jill brings together pain science, nervous system education, and deep clinical expertise in...

Hope can feel almost dangerous when you’ve been living with chronic pelvic pain for months, years, or even decades. If you’ve been dismissed. If you’ve been misdiagnosed. If you’ve been told your condition is “chronic” (and framed as permanent). Then… Of course hope feels naive. Of course it feels embarrassing. Of course your brain wants to protect you from getting your hopes up again (and potenti...

What’s the best tool for healing chronic pelvic pain? Is it journaling? Somatic tracking? Pelvic PT? Breathwork? Visualization? If you’ve spent any time in the mind-body healing world, you’ve probably heard someone confidently say: “This is what healed me.” “This is the thing.” “If it’s not working, you’re not doing it right.” And it’s confusing. In this episode, I’m breaking down the truth: All t...

This episode covers one of the most important and most resisted concepts in healing chronic pelvic pain: radical responsibility. This is not about blame, fault, or doing everything on your own. It’s about what shifts when you stop waiting for someone or something outside of you to fix this, and take the lead in your own healing. If you’ve been holding out hope for the next doctor, test, medication...

If you’ve been feeling powerless or stuck on your healing journey, this episode is for you. In this episode of The Heal Your Chronic Pelvic Pain Podcast , Rachel talks about one of the most important shifts you can make when healing chronic pelvic pain: learning how to tell the difference between what is and isn’t in your control, especially in moments when symptoms are loud.  When so much of your...

In this episode, I’m talking about uncertainty tolerance , why your brain hates it so much, and why learning to tolerate uncertainty is actually one of the most important skills required to heal chronic pelvic pain. If you deal with anxiety, OCD tendencies, reassurance-seeking, flare fear, or constantly wondering “What if this doesn’t work?” , this episode is for you. We’ll talk about: Why anxiety...

Accepting a neuroplastic or nervous system based explanation for chronic pelvic pain isn’t just intellectually challenging, it can be emotionally loaded, especially for women who have already experienced medical gaslighting, dismissal, or invalidation. In this episode, Rachel explores why resistance to a mind-body approach makes so much sense, and why difficulty accepting a neuroplastic diagnosis...

When you’re healing chronic pelvic pain, there are moments that feel terrifying, discouraging, and defeating, moments where it feels like you’re back at square one and nothing is working. In this episode, I share one simple phrase that carried me through countless moments of panic and despair on my own healing journey: “This is part of it.” This phrase helped me stop interpreting flares, fear, and...

If New Year’s feels more devastating than hopeful, this episode is for you. For many people living with chronic pelvic pain, January 1st doesn’t feel like a fresh start. It can feel like a painful marker of how long you’ve been in pain and how much you wish things were different. In this episode, I talk about why arbitrary time points like New Year’s often work against your nervous system, and how...

If you’ve ever started healing work and felt more anxious, activated, or symptomatic, this episode will help you make sense of that experience. We’re talking about why healing can feel unsafe at first — and why an increase in symptoms or discomfort doesn’t automatically mean something has gone wrong. In fact, it’s often a sign that your nervous system is changing.  You’ll learn the five phases of...