Family Relationships and Mind-Body Medicine
Video: Watch the full session here → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojPuPwSHBZM
Dr. John Stracks: Welcome, everyone. I'm Dr. John Stracks, one of the founders of Cormendi Health, a mind-body medicine practice here in Chicago. You can learn more about us at cormendihealth.com.
Lisa Stracks: And I'm Lisa Stracks, co-founder of Cormendi Health. I manage much of the administration, communications, and operations of the practice, and I spend a lot of time thinking alongside Dr. Stracks about how to help people understand mind-body medicine, health, parenting, and relationships.
Dr. Stracks: We are also married. This webinar is part of a short series on interpersonal contributions to chronic pain and physical symptoms. Most people who follow this work know a lot about how personality traits and individual stressors contribute to symptoms. But relationships with family members and intimate partners are also frequent contributors — and that doesn't get discussed as much in mind-body medicine. Tonight we want to talk about how we can leverage those relationships to help us heal.
Lisa's Story: Migraines and the Discovery of Repressed Emotion
Dr. Stracks: Lisa's experience with mind-body healing is less well known publicly, but equally dramatic. Let's start with your history of migraines.
Lisa: The first time I had a migraine I was about 12 or 13, on a camping trip in unfamiliar surroundings. The pain was excruciating — I genuinely thought I was going to die. Over time I learned to recognize the warning signs so I could get somewhere safe before the full pain hit. First I'd lose vision in one eye, usually my left. Then numbness would move up my arm from my fingertips to my elbow. That gave me about a half hour to get home, turn off all the lights and sound, take medication, and try to fall asleep before the worst of it arrived.
When the pain hit, it felt like being stabbed in the skull, and it would go on for hours. Severe nausea, too. So I can see why the first time you witnessed it you thought I was having a stroke.
Dr. Stracks: You were completely unresponsive, all the lights off — I was genuinely about to call 911. You just quietly said, "It's just a migraine, I'll be fine."
When I first started learning about mind-body medicine — we were dating at the time — I became fairly obsessed with it and talked about it constantly. Was that helpful?
Lisa: I thought it was a wonderful idea in theory and was genuinely excited that it was helping you, because I'd lived through your healing alongside you. I even started reading Dr. Sarno's book. But it was all about repressed anger, and since I was a "good girl" who didn't get angry, I didn't think it applied to me.
The Breakthrough
Lisa: The breakthrough came when we were living in Hyde Park, across from the University of Chicago. You were in medical school. I was working as an editor, and somehow I'd gotten elected to the board of our co-op building — full of, shall we say, colorful university types.
One beautiful spring afternoon something happened in the building and I got pulled into a situation. I started feeling the aura and the numbness, so I headed for bed. You asked me to tell you what I was upset about. I said I wasn't upset. You gently pushed back. Finally you challenged me to write down just one thing that was bothering me.
I figured I had a few minutes before the pain hit, so I indulged you. I wrote one thing — something pretty tame, like you not hanging up your coat. But then I wrote something else. And then something else. Before I knew it I'd filled three full notebook pages.
And the migraine was gone.
I wasn't sure what to do with that. I wasn't sure what to do with the fact that I'd written three pages of things I was upset about, because I didn't even know how to say I was angry yet. I wasn't sure how to make sense of the migraine being gone. And I wasn't sure how to trust that it had actually happened.
Dr. Stracks: And that was about 20 years ago — before our daughter was born. Do you remember what kinds of things were on the list?
Lisa: It went from small things — you not hanging up your coat — deeper and deeper. A work situation where I'd been merged into a job I didn't like, where three of us from my company were brought into a fully staffed organization and routinely ignored and patronized. The co-op board characters. A fraternity in our backyard throwing loud parties. Any one of those might have been manageable on its own — it was the whole package together that was too much.
That was the first time I recognized I was genuinely angry about things.
Dr. Stracks: Did the migraines stop completely after that?
Lisa: I wish I could say yes, but it took a few more years to get rid of them completely. What changed immediately was frequency and intensity — from four or five a year down to one or two, and shorter and less severe when they did happen. Just by recognizing what was really going on emotionally, I could make them shorter and less frequent.
The Last Major Migraine
Lisa: The last significant migraine came when you were finishing your fellowship and job searching during the 2009 recession. We had two little kids, things were highly stressful, and your parents came to visit, which was wonderful. On this particular occasion, your mother brought a squeaky toy duck, and that duck squeaked all afternoon. Who was I to disrupt this beautiful grandmother-granddaughter time? So I didn't say anything. And I came down with a migraine with no warning — no aura, no time to head it off.
I sent everyone off to dinner, crawled into bed, and dealt with it. But I vowed in that moment that I would never have another migraine because I didn't speak up for myself. And I haven't. That was 14 years ago.
(And Julie — I truly adore you. But that toy went in the garbage as soon as you left.)
Learning to Be Angry
Dr. Stracks: Most of my female patients weren't encouraged to be angry when they were young. What was your experience?
Lisa: This is a difficult story, and I wear my heart on my sleeve. Growing up, everything was always "fine." Strong emotions weren't part of our family culture. When I was in seventh grade — right around when I started getting migraines — my parents began fighting constantly and eventually divorced. I came to associate anger and conflict with devastating outcomes. If you got mad, people left. So I didn't get mad. I didn't even know how.
Learning that the anger doesn't disappear just because it doesn't come out — that it was sitting in my skull, essentially — was a revelation. And then learning how to actually be angry — how to be angry respectfully — that was a long process.
Dr. Stracks: And you probably overcorrected at first.
Lisa: I definitely overdid it for a while. Thank you for hanging in there while I figured it out. What helped most was a quote from Mark Epstein: anger is a signal that something needs to change. Learning to see anger as a motivator rather than a destroyer changed everything. Something is triggering this feeling, and it deserves to be addressed.
Navigating Emotions in Partnership
Dr. Stracks: One of the things I think we've gotten good at over time is allowing each other to have our own feelings. Your anger doesn't have to become my anger, and vice versa.
I remember walking in the door from work one evening, genuinely in a good mood — good day, good music on the walk home — and within 60 seconds we were fighting. I grabbed the dog and walked around the block, and about halfway through I realized: this is not my anger. I came back in and said, "You sound really angry — tell me what's going on." Whatever it was worked itself out in about 30 minutes. At an earlier point in our marriage, that probably would have taken three days.
Lisa: And there were two things I had to learn about anger. One was that my own anger wasn't going to destroy me. The other was that when you got angry with me, that also wasn't going to destroy our relationship. I needed a lot of reassurance about that second part. I'm much more comfortable with it now, but it took real work.
Dr. Stracks: The formula we've landed on is: one person states the feeling — I am really angry about X — and the other responds with "thank you for telling me, tell me more." That keeps the emotion with the person who's having it. It allows me to engage with kindness and empathy without taking the feeling on as my own. It usually moves things forward much more quickly while still honoring what the other person is experiencing.
And I've worked hard on my own end to remember that it's just as effective to say "I'm so mad I could scream" as it is to scream — and a lot easier for the people around me to receive.
Our Own Mind-Body Moments
Dr. Stracks: Lisa and I both still have these moments, even knowing everything we know.
One that I tell regularly: we had to move out of our townhouse when the owner wanted it back, and since we were just moving across the alley, I decided to be my own mover. Ten days before the move, I threw my back out. I worked on it, told myself I didn't need the pain — nothing helped. Finally I came to Lisa and said we needed to hire movers. She said, "That's interesting, hotshot, since you don't believe in physical explanations for pain."
About a week later I was leading a writing class, and while everyone wrote I took out a piece of paper and wrote a letter to the landlord. Dear Landlord, I am going to kill you. Was I proud of being homicidally angry at a man who was moving back into his own property? No. But within a couple of days, the back worked itself out.
Lisa: And I have a good one from when I was six months pregnant with our son. Our daughter was being a handful in the grocery store. I got her to the car, buckled her in, wrestled the groceries in, slammed the hatchback — and as I slammed it I thought, how the hell am I going to do this with two? Slammed it. Threw my back out instantly. It was so clear in that moment. I went home, got into bed, worked through it, and by the next day I was fine.
Dr. Stracks: It's not always that clear. But sometimes it really is.
Talking to Extended Family
Dr. Stracks: Extended family conversations about mind-body medicine can look a lot like conversations with partners who don't know about any of this. Some go beautifully.
My uncle Will — who unfortunately passed away a few years ago — was wearing a neck brace at a family gathering, taking medications for terrible neck pain. We started talking about this work, and at some point he stopped me and said, "Wait — it didn't really start hurting until after I got the MRI results, not before." That moment of recognition — that something other than the disc was driving the pain — was right there in his own story.
Other conversations haven't gone as well. I once offered to talk with a cousin about her back pain, and she simply said, "Nope." And that's okay. Not everyone wants to hear it, and I've learned to be very attuned to where someone is and what their reaction is when I start to raise it. If there's interest, I'm happy to talk about it. If not, I can own my own experience and let it go.
Lisa: And sometimes people come back years later. We've had clients return five years after their first consultation and say, "Now I get it." Sometimes it's a much longer process, and that's perfectly fine.
Raising Kids with Emotional Language
Dr. Stracks: One of the things I'm proudest of with our children is how we've worked to help them name and express their emotions from a very young age. We gave them a spatula as a talking stick when they were little — one person talks, the other listens. We've tried to use emotional language consistently and to frame physical symptoms in emotional terms.
A couple of years ago, we were at a family event, and one of my cousin's children spent the entire afternoon on the sofa with an ice pack and a migraine. It hit me then: I genuinely don't remember the last time our kids were completely out of commission with a pain issue. It's rare that they have anything that lasts more than an hour.
Lisa: I think the key has been a very light touch. If one of the kids has a headache, we might gently ask, "Are you mad about something?" And then leave it there. We don't push. We name a feeling and let them think about it on their own. We consistently validate that their pain is real, we never dismiss or ridicule it, and we let them know we're available to talk in emotional language when they're ready.
Emotions are very physical — especially for kids. When they have a feeling they can't quite name, being available to help them find words for it is one of the most helpful things we can do. Once there's a name for the emotion, they can start to think about what they'd like to do about it.
We also give them imagery. We talk about anxiety as being like our rescue dog Rossi — always on high alert, ready to bark at a leaf blowing against the window. The anxiety is there to signal that something's going on. The job is to figure out whether it's a real threat or just a leaf, and then let the system come back down.
Dr. Stracks: I had a teenage patient once — 58 minutes into a 60-minute appointment — who suddenly said, "Wait. International Baccalaureate. These headaches started a week after I got into the IB program." That click of recognition, that non-physical factors were involved, changed everything for her.
And there was a girl — I saw her probably ten years ago as a child, and she just emailed as an adult to schedule an appointment — whose mother had learned about this concept and shared it with her daughter. The daughter thought about it and said, "Wait. My headaches started after that stupid soccer party." She went upstairs, journal-wrote for five minutes, came back down, and said, "Thanks, Mom." And that was that.
Giving kids the opportunity to understand how their bodies work really makes a difference. Light touch, availability, and taking their concerns seriously.
Lisa: And then there's Harrison losing at Monopoly around age six or seven. He stomped to his room, came out, yelled "I have a headache," slammed the door, then came back out ten seconds later to say "And I am NOT mad" — slammed the door again. He was out ten minutes later, headache gone. He knew what it was, even if he wasn't going to give us the satisfaction of admitting it.
Q&A Highlights
Q: Any steps to gradually reduce the fear of our own anger? It always feels like I'm about to release the Kraken.
Lisa: Give yourself grace. You're not going to get it right the first time, or the second, or the third. Before you address anger with another person or situation, it helps to physically burn off some of the energy first. Take the dog for a stomp. Write a furious letter you never sent. Swear at the top of your lungs in an empty room or in the car — it's a very contained space. Get some of that physical energy out, and then you'll be better positioned to address whatever triggered it. And tell the person you're working through this with: "I'm learning how to do this. I'm going to get angry, and I need you to be okay with that. If I overdo it, I'll apologize — but this is important for me to learn."
Two books worth reading: The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner, and The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren — the latter is a bit esoteric but has excellent strategies for working with intense feelings in a way that makes them much safer.
Q: What do you do when your partner has no interest in hearing about your feelings?
Dr. Stracks: So much of this work can be done entirely on your own, without anyone else's participation. Journal writing, physical movement, sound and movement exercises — a colleague of mine at the Conscious Leadership Group encourages people to express anger through sound and movement, and it's remarkably effective. A few years ago, I was furious about a weekend seminar that turned out to be a complete waste of time. I couldn't calm down. Finally, I went downstairs and just became angry — embodied it fully for a few minutes. Came back upstairs calm. Whatever I needed to do next became completely clear.
Lisa: And you can share your feelings without requiring anyone to engage. "I need you to listen. I don't need you to do anything — I just need to say this out loud."
Q: How do you express strong emotions respectfully when there's fear of damaging important relationships?
Dr. Stracks: Start small. Share a tiny piece of emotion and gauge the response. Build from there. Know what you're trying to get out of the interaction — is the goal to share how you feel, or to create a change? Sometimes you can process the emotion privately and then address the behavioral issue separately, without incorporating the emotional component at all.
Dr. David Burns has a good example of this: expressing to a client that when they consistently arrive late, it generates real frustration — not as a punishment or a sign of dislike, but because you know how much more is possible and you feel the loss of that when the time is cut short. Owning the emotion, naming the behavior, and clarifying the intent all make it much safer to receive.
Lisa: And think about framing it as an appointment. "There's something I need to work through with you. I know you have your own things going on right now — can we find a time to talk about this?" It signals respect for their situation while still honoring your own need to be heard.
Q: What about sharing difficult emotions with adult children who are already stressed?
Lisa: Respect their capacity. Ask if there's a good time to talk, rather than ambushing someone at the end of a difficult day. Be clear that your goal isn't to add to their burden — it's to work toward a better situation for both of you. Our feelings aren't punishments. They're our own experience, and sharing them is ultimately about connection, not about offloading onto someone else.
Q: What do we do when a conversation goes sideways — how do we reel it back in?
Lisa: Time-outs are genuinely useful, even for adults. If a conversation is going nowhere, name it: "I need to step away for a few minutes and come back to this." Five or ten minutes of deep breathing is often enough to re-regulate and come back to the conversation more productively.
Dr. Stracks: We also use what we call the speaker-listener technique — we learned it from Fighting for Your Marriage and from a marriage therapist early in our relationship. One person speaks, the other listens — no talking over each other. When things get heated, and we both want to talk at once, one of us will say, "We need to move this into speaker-listener." Knowing you're going to be heard de-escalates most conflicts immediately. It's been one of the most useful things we've learned.
Q: Can this approach help with interstitial cystitis and chronic bladder or pelvic symptoms?
Dr. Stracks: Absolutely. We hold a tremendous amount of emotion in the pelvis. I've experienced it myself — the burning sensation I described earlier. One of my patients had chronic bladder infections that wouldn't resolve. She finally saw a urologist who said to her, somewhat sheepishly, "I can't fully explain this, but when you get mad, you get a bladder infection." She immediately said, "That makes complete sense." And then she didn't have any more bladder infections. Chronic pelvic pain and interstitial cystitis are very amenable to mind-body approaches.
Dr. John Stracks and Lisa Stracks are co-founders of Cormendi Health, a mind-body medicine practice in Chicago. Dr. Stracks practices nationally via telehealth, focused on the reduction and elimination of chronic pain and physical symptoms. For information about working with Cormendi Health, visit cormendihealth.com.