THERAPY CAN BE SCARY, BUT I’VE GOT YOUR BACK!
What causes chronic pain and other conditions?
John Sarno MD, a former physician at the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical Center coined the term Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS), also known as Tension Myoneural Syndrome. TMS is a condition that causes real physical symptoms, such as chronic pain, gastrointenstinal issues, and fibromyalgia, that are not caused by structural abnormalities and are not explained by diagnostic tests. In TMS, pain symptoms are caused by mild oxygen deprivation via the autonomic nervous system, as a result of unconscious emotions that need to be brought to the consciousness.
The pain is NOT in your head. TMS symptoms are very much real. All of the people I have worked with (including myself) had debilitating chronic pain and other symptoms. Even though my patients and I were told we would be suffering forever, when we used the ideas first created by Dr. Sarno we became pain free and regained our lives.
Hi, I’m Julie Markowitz, LCSW, MBA
I believe in all people’s innate capacity to heal. To me, all symptoms that we experience whether it be chronic pain, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, etc can be explained by trauma. Trauma does not have to be big events. Trauma can be if we are not attuned to emotionally as children or if our parents have their own unprocessed trauma—this sort of trauma often leads to deep seeded beliefs that we are unloveable and bad. Our healing comes from teaching our parts that we are loveable and accepted just as we are.
I specialize in treating chronic pain and dissociation. I primarily work in a somatic and relational way which means that I deal with what is happening in the moment in the nervous system between us. My work is informed by the idea that we all have different parts of ourselves that are trying to express themselves in the best way that they know how,I look forward to working with you!
My training includes: Somatic Experiencing, Janina Fisher’s Structural Dissociation Model, Internal Family Systems, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and Non-Violent Communication. I also work from the perspective of Dr. John Sarno’s “TMS” framework in which physical symptoms are understood as repressed emotions including anger, sadness, shame, and fear.