Heal Your Brain Heal Your Pain

Amy Kossoff, MD

Dr. Amy Kossoff treats chronic pain through Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET). These are techniques pioneered by Dr. John Sarno in the 1970’s and validated through controlled trials by Drs. Howard Schubiner and Mark Lumley more recently. These therapies explore the mind-body connection, beginning with the understanding that all pain is created in and produced by the brain, and that all pain is real.

Patients are taught PRT techniques that can train the brain to stop creating aberrant painful stimuli, and using these techniques can eliminate or greatly reduce pain quickly. Other cases require EAET, which helps patients to express long-standing and unconscious emotions that are confusing the brain, resulting in the brain producing pain or other undesirable symptoms.

These techniques work and have been validated for multiple types of pain, including back pain, fibromyalgia, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. The treatment includes a thorough evaluation to rule out structural causes of the pain, and then follow-up sessions for PRT and EAET if necessary. Let’s work together on your journey to become pain free.

About me: I am an Internist with 40 years of experience, and spent the bulk of my career working in homeless shelters in Washington, DC. I always felt that my ability to treat chronic pain was sub-optimal. I did an Integrative Medicine fellowship from 2015-2017 and was intrigued by alternative methods of treating pain, such as hypnosis, acupuncture and mindfulness. Over the next few years I used these modalities, and then discovered Pain Reprocessing Therapy / Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy. This, to me, is a process that combines all the modalities that I had previously used (except acupuncture) and the more I studied it the more miraculous it seemed to me.

When I’m not working, I enjoy reading, being outdoors, and hanging out with friends and family and my dogs.