Healers of Ann Arbor: Psychologist Christi Bemister—Healing Trauma and Chronic Pain

By Laura K. Cowan

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone in chronic pain, myself, who doesn’t have a history with trauma,” Christi Bemister said as she opened up a weekend retreat on trauma and chronic pain. The retreat covered the work of healing the mind and body together through the Realization Process created by Judith Blackstone. “They’re very intricately related, because chronic pain is actually a brain issue versus simply a physiological one. It’s a very complex issue,” she added.

Christi Bemister is an Ann Arbor-based psychologist and therapist also trained in holistic healing modalities, who works with people healing from trauma. She has co-hosted retreat weekends working with Judith Blackstone material on healing the mind and body with Marcia Haarer, whom I have previously interviewed for this column. 

Bemister’s work fascinates me, because of my own history that can’t seem to unhook chronic illness from trauma triggers. I have learned a lot over the years about the biological mechanisms of how trauma and chronic stress can alter your body’s response to stress and trigger chronic illness in different ways. This means a lot to me because it helped me understand that there are very real physiological changes at work here and it isn’t helpful to blame myself for being anxious or try to force myself to pretend to be okay when I don’t have answers. Science has made great headway lately into understanding trauma and the brain, and how traumatic stress affects physical health. I believe work like Christi Bemister’s will help many people.

I run into people all the time who have a problem with chronic or sudden illness triggered by traumatic stress, so I wanted to learn more about what Bemister offers through these weekends to see if it might help some of the many people out there who may find relief through mind-body therapies. I hope that through learning about the Realization Process, you will find something that speaks to you as well and offers a way forward to a healthier and more pain-free life. 

Laura Cowan: So, Christi, tell me how you got into this work. What led you to working in mind-body healing therapies? 

Christi Bemister: I have my own long healing journey having been 60 percent burned when I was four years old. I was in the hospital for two months before returning home. [This] resulted in touch being very painful for me for many years. Additionally, I grew up in a home with an autistic brother who was verbally and physically abusive, yet he was the protected one. This did a number on my self-esteem and sense of identity. I often wondered what was wrong with me that I was not protected from his abuse. I was told I ‘should’ just be grateful that I was normal and that he can’t help what he is doing. No one’s fault… however to a kid, abuse is abuse, and this confused me. I learned I was not worth protecting. I learned to hate myself.

Laura Cowan: How did this journey lead to the particular modalities you are working in now? How do these therapies help people? 

Christi Bemister: I work with individuals much the way I learned to recover from my own history of trauma. There is a path of very practical kinds of things that can help someone feel better right away while doing the deeper, more painful work.

Laura Cowan: Tell me how the process works. 

Christi Bemister: I start out listening to why someone has come and the issues they’d like to work on. In the first session I ask them to touch something and to describe the sensation as best they can, then to check in with themselves about any emotional reaction—like it, not like it, neutral? I suggest they do this with focus and purpose once or twice a day. Just to begin a practice of connecting and being present in their body.

LC: That’s interesting. We hear a lot about connecting and being present—mindfulness for chronic pain. Isn’t that hard if you don’t want to be aware of the pain you’re in at the moment? Tell me about the process you work with to help clients through that.  

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CB: So, here’s what I do with people. It works in cycles, but a lot of it is linear. I emphasize that your body and life belong to you. We do sensory integration exercises—using the senses to experience being in a body. 

First things first: boundary setting. Go through your closet/life to finish projects and clean  closets. Practically speaking, how do you care for yourself and your personal environment? Do the colors on the wall reflect you, do you like the colors? Do the things you bring into the house reflect you, do you love them? All things hold good/bad energy. We feel best when things in our environment are in order and we love the things/colors in our environment.

What small thing can you do to take something out that you don’t love, or bring something in that you do love? I teach about choice: yes, no, maybe. Choose no matter what, then experience it. People will often say, “I don’t know,” to questions. The question then is, “What do you know?” To have people begin to become aware of the many things they do know. This helps with self-validation.

LC: I see, so you’re helping people connect with the part of themselves that feels connected and empowered to make choices. 

CB: Yes. We’re exploring: What’s it like to make a clear choice? Structure is a good thing for safety and consistency, and we want to engage and learn something new to develop new resilience, clarity, self-satisfaction, and structure. Flexibility is a good thing for resolving anxiety.

LC: You’re helping people explore ways of being structured and safe.

CB: It’s also self-inquiry about ways of being that are rigid, inflexible, our expectations of others. We do a self-review of what life would be like if you were more relaxed. 

Then I work with people to resolve or stop the what ifs. Almost all of life’s problems are solvable in the moment—not in the future. 

LC: Okay, so if they get through that point in the process, how can they feel more comfortable in the choices they need to make? 

CB: The Realization Process I work with focuses on presence, emptiness, and groundedness. Build a dream of your best life and continue to think about it. Co-create with the universe. You have to teach your brain to create. This uses both sides of the brain and is an integrative healing process.

LC: The visualization and planning process itself is part of the healing? 

CB: Yes, then we do exercises to unify and reconnect aspects of the brain to work together. We work with “I know what I know, and it’s okay.” We can face pain, physical or mental, and talk through the hurts. 

LC: This is starting to make sense to me, because it involves both the visualization process and getting out of your head and trying new things.

CB: All of this together works to help people clearly identify what is not working in their life and to create a way to be self-responsible to make choices that are healing. The work then opens a person up to experience and claim their body/mind/spirit as their own while resolving unhealthy adaptations they have made through life, often just to survive.

LC: So, the process gets them out of the PTSD loop of survival mode and into a healthier way of being in the moment and taking action.

CB: Yes, I help people with expressing emotions, teaching that those emotions are like waves and will resolve. The Realization Process is about learning to breathe into the core self, learning to be with pain by feeling it, breathing into it, in order for the body to relax. 

LC: Isn’t that hard if it’s chronic or severe pain or if we are choosing to take action others won’t approve of? 

CB: We validate that bad or painful things happen, and they can be accepted. We also learn that it’s okay to like what we like, even if no one else does. Learning that it’s okay to be different or to experience and accept that you like what you like. 

We also learn to see red flags when one is being taken advantage of or being asked to adapt in some way that is not healthy, or when someone wants to merge and lose individuation. We learn how to recognize this as codependent and a relationship to say no to. 

LC: A core idea here seems to be that you are teaching people that they know what they want and what they need better than others do. 

CB: Yes, I know what’s going on in my body better than you do. Many Realization Process practices are to get one connected to all aspects of their body, mind, and spirit, the experiences of their own unique qualities, and deepen their connection to themselves and thus to others. 

Through the weekend retreat, Bemister walked participants through several key points from the exercises above, to understanding what parts of the brain are at work in trauma and triggered chronic pain. Because of neuroplasticity, our brain can change. “We have a thing called mirror neurons. They help us learn. We can watch somebody tie their shoe and learn by watching. Those are mirror neurons in action. It also means we’re wired for connection. What we see and experience, we want to connect to that and have an experience in our own body.” What  happens in trauma is that we get rewired for protection, Bemister said. “We lose that ability for connection, and now we are in a state of protection. We lose that ability to connect. But we can unlearn it. We can have lots of difficulty in relationships if we’re not dealing with an open-hearted connection but are instead interacting defensively.” 

Bemister and co-host Marcia Haarer ran participants through an exercise to become aware of the sensations in their body. I don’t want to run you through the exercise without being able to support you through the followup, but I encourage you, if this sounds like a process that might help, to come try one of these retreats or work with Bemister in an individual session. The days are finally here when chronic pain doesn’t have to be a life sentence. I do wish you well and hope that wherever you find answers for chronic pain and illness, you will remember to be proud of yourself for getting through the journey. You did this, you got yourself this far. You can do it. 

To connect with Christi Bemister PsyD PLLC, visit drchristibemister.com. 

Laura K. Cowan is a tech and wellness journalist, a former meditation and reiki coach and practitioner, and co-founder of Ann Arbor-based content marketing agency and media outlet Cronicle Press at www.cronicle.press.

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