Pain Reprocessing THerapy in Bothell and Online Throughout Washington State
Chronic Pain Therapy in Bellevue & the Eastside
Your Body Used to Keep Up With Your Life… Now Your Life Revolves Around Your Body.
You moved to the Eastside for your career, the schools, and the proximity to trails you planned to hike every weekend. You used to summit Mount Si on Saturday mornings, paddle on Lake Sammamish in the summer, walk the Bridle Trails loop after work just to clear your head. Your body was the thing you never had to think about.
Now you think about it constantly. You scan for pain before you get out of bed. You calculate whether you can sit through your daughter's recital without shifting every few minutes. You've turned down golf invitations, skipped the Cougar Mountain hike with your neighbor, and stopped volunteering for the physical parts of your kids’ school events because you can’t predict whether your back, your neck, or your shoulders will cooperate.
You've done the responsible thing. You've seen the orthopedic specialist in Bellevue, the physical therapist in Kirkland, the sports medicine doctor in Redmond. Your imaging is clean, your bloodwork is fine, and you've been handed some combination of stretches, anti-inflammatories, and advice to “listen to your body.” But you are listening to your body, and what it’s telling you doesn’t match what the tests show.
Learn more about my approach to treating chronic pain here.
Pain Without a Structural Cause Is Still Real Pain
About 85% of people with chronic back pain don't have structural damage that explains it, and the same holds for many cases of neck pain, migraines, fibromyalgia, repetitive strain injuries, and conditions where doctors use the word "idiopathic," which means they can't identify a cause.
Brain imaging studies show that people with this kind of pain have the same brain activity as someone with a torn ligament or a broken bone. The pain is real, the suffering is real, and there's nothing imaginary about what you're going through.
What's different is what's generating the signal. When pain continues long after an injury has healed, or shows up with no injury at all, your brain may have learned to keep producing danger signals even when there's nothing to protect you from. The brain strengthens these responses through repetition, the same way it strengthens any skill you practice.
And fear of the pain feeds the whole thing: when you brace before bending down to tie your shoes, when you skip the Sammamish River Trail walk because you're worried about how you'll feel afterward, when you reorganize your entire workday around avoiding the movements that might set it off, you're reinforcing your brain's conviction that something is genuinely dangerous.
The result is a life that keeps getting smaller: fewer activities, fewer plans, more decisions made around what your body might do, rather than what you want and care about.
The good news is that this process works in reverse. Your brain learned this pattern, and it can unlearn it.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy: a different approach for chronic pain
I use Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), an evidence-based approach specifically designed to address pain generated by the nervous system rather than structural damage.
PRT works by helping your brain relearn how to read what your body is telling it. When your brain has learned to interpret safe signals as dangerous, specific techniques can retrain that response so that the pain itself can fade.
Most of my clients with chronic pain in Bellevue and the Eastside aren't dealing with pain alone. Underneath the pain, there's often years of high-pressure performance, perfectionism, difficulty slowing down, stress that your body has been absorbing without anywhere for it to go, or difficult past experiences your system never fully processed.
I combine PRT with body-based therapy, trauma treatment (EMDR), and emotional work that helps your whole system, rather than just addressing the pain signal in isolation. Getting free of it means addressing the full picture of what’s keeping your body on high alert.
In a clinical trial published in JAMA Psychiatry, 66% of participants reported being pain-free or nearly pain-free after treatment, and 98% experienced significant reduction. Those results held a year later.
Your life can change after therapy for chronic pain
You drive to the Issaquah trailhead on a Saturday morning without spending Friday night debating whether it's worth the risk. You hike Poo Poo Point with your kids, you eat lunch at the top looking out over Lake Sammamish, and you wake up Sunday morning without paying for it.
You sit through a full day at the Bellevue office, the kind with back-to-back meetings and a working lunch, and you drive home thinking about what you want to make for dinner instead of which stretch might undo the damage from eight hours in a chair.
You pick up your four-year-old when he runs to you at daycare pickup without the flinch, without the hesitation, without the quick mental assessment of whether your lower back can take it. You just pick him up because he’s reaching for you.
Your partner suggests kayaking on Meydenbauer Bay and you say "sure" instead of "let me see how I feel." You paddle for an hour, your shoulders are fine, and you eat dinner on the patio afterward talking about the seals you saw instead of icing your neck.
You stop declining the weekend ski trips to Summit at Snoqualmie. You go, you ski the full day, and on the drive home you're tired in the normal, satisfying way rather than bracing for the flare-up you've learned to expect.
You take on the project at work that requires travel, the one you passed on last quarter because you weren't sure your body could handle two flights and three days of conferences. You take it, and you're thinking about the presentation instead of the hotel mattress.
Schedule Your First Session
Schedule Your First Session
Who is Pain Reprocessing Therapy For?
You have pain that doesn't have a clear structural explanation, or pain that has persisted long after an injury should have healed. This includes back pain, neck pain, migraines, IBS, fibromyalgia, repetitive strain injuries, pelvic pain, post-surgical pain that continues despite successful surgery, and conditions where doctors haven't found a definitive cause.
You might suspect there's a connection between your pain and the stress you carry, the way you handle emotions, or something going on in your body that standard medicine hasn't been able to explain. Or the mind-body connection might be a newer concept for you, and you're willing to explore it because what you've tried hasn't given you lasting results.
You want your identity back. You remember what life felt like when your body wasn't the first thing you thought about in the morning, and you want to get back to making decisions based on what you want rather than what your pain will allow.
This approach isn't the right fit if you’re involved in ongoing legal matters related to your pain, such as disability claims, worker's comp, or lawsuits. It also isn't the right fit if you're looking exclusively for medical or pharmaceutical solutions and aren't interested in exploring how your brain and body interact, or if you haven't had a medical evaluation to rule out conditions that need medical treatment.
You don't need to be fully convinced your pain has a mind-body component. What matters is openness to exploring the possibility.
Get Started in Chronic Pain Therapy
I work with clients throughout Bellevue and the Eastside via telehealth, so you can access chronic pain therapy from Kirkland, Redmond, Sammamish, Issaquah, Woodinville, Mercer Island, Newcastle, or anywhere on the Eastside without fighting 405 traffic or sitting in a waiting room.
I also see clients in person at my Bothell office, which is a short drive from most Eastside locations.
If you're dealing with pain that doctors can't fully explain and you're looking for a different kind of answer, reach out. We'll talk about your situation and whether this approach makes sense for what you're dealing with.
Serving Bellevue and the Eastside
Including Kirkland, Redmond, Bothell, Sammamish, Issaquah, Woodinville, Mercer Island, Newcastle, and surrounding areas.
Questions?
FAQs About Chronic Pain Therapy
-
Individual sessions are $300 for 50 minutes. I don't accept insurance directly, which means I'm not limited by what an insurance company decides is medically necessary or how many sessions they'll approve. You pay at the time of the session, and I provide a superbill you can submit to your insurance for potential out-of-network reimbursement. Many PPO plans reimburse a portion after your deductible is met. I recommend calling the number on the back of your insurance card before your first session to ask about your out-of-network mental health benefits.
-
Most pain management programs assume the pain is permanent and teach you to cope with it: pacing strategies, relaxation techniques, medication, learning to accept a smaller life. Pain Reprocessing Therapy has a different goal. Rather than helping you build your life around the pain, PRT works to reduce or eliminate the pain itself by retraining the brain patterns that are generating it. In the clinical trial published in JAMA Psychiatry, 66% of participants were pain-free or nearly pain-free after treatment, and those results held a year later.
-
No. You can continue with any medical care, physical therapy, or other treatment you’re receiving. Some clients find that as their pain decreases, they naturally need less of their other interventions, but that's a decision you make with your other providers over time.
-
A few indicators: your imaging or tests have come back normal or don't fully explain the level of pain you're experiencing. Your pain has persisted long after an injury should have healed. Your pain moves around, or it started during or after a stressful period in your life. You've noticed that stress makes it worse and distraction or relaxation makes it better. You don't need all of these to be true, but if a few of them sound familiar, your pain may respond well to this approach.
-
You don’t need to be convinced, you just need to be open. Many of my clients come in skeptical, and that’s fine. The research is strong enough that you don’t have to take it on faith. What matters is a willingness to try something different after the conventional route hasn't given you lasting results. Where this approach tends not to work is when someone is certain that only a medical or surgical solution will help and isn't willing to explore other possibilities, or when there's an active legal case connected to the pain, like a disability claim or lawsuit, because the incentive structure works against the recovery process.
About Ingrid Johnston, LMFT, MDFT
Bellevue chronic pain therapist
I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Washington State, specializing in chronic pain therapy.
I’ve completed Pain Reprocessing Therapy training and hold advanced certification in Medical Family Therapy and Collaborative Medicine. My approach combines somatic therapy, trauma treatment, and nervous system regulation.
I understand this work both professionally and personally. I've navigated my own path through chronic pain and learned firsthand how pain can take over your identity, your plans, and your sense of what's possible for your life.
I’m a member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) and the Washington Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (WAMFT).
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist: Washington State License #LF61033631
Get started in chronic pain therapy today in Bellevue or anywhere on the Eastside.
If you’ve tried other approaches and you’re still in pain, this might be the missing piece. Reach out to ask questions or schedule a first session.
Get In Touch
Contact Ingrid
Please complete the form, and I will be in touch within 48 business hours.
Office and mailing address:
19803 North Creek Parkway, Suite 205
Bothell, WA 98011
In-person in Bothell & online across Washington