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Geraldine Coffey

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Geraldine Coffey

Mind-Body Coach & Chronic Pain Specialist. Helping people understand and overcome persistent pain through an evidence-informed mind-body approach.

29/10/2026

Taken from the Buddhism page:
WHAT TO DO WHEN IT FEELS LIKE NOTHING IS GOING RIGHT IN LIFE
A man once asked a wise old monk:
“Everything feels heavy lately.
Nothing is working the way I hoped.
I feel lost, tired, and discouraged.
What should I do when life feels like it’s falling apart?”
The monk listened quietly and then asked:
“When a seed is planted in the ground…
what does it look like at first?”
The man replied,
“It disappears into darkness.”
The monk smiled gently.
“Yes.
But darkness is not necessarily the end of the seed.
It can be where growth begins.”
The man remained silent.
The monk continued:
“Many people believe their life is falling apart when they cannot yet see where it is going. Sometimes, difficult seasons create space for us to grow, change direction, or discover what truly matters.”
The man whispered,
“But the pain feels endless.”
The monk nodded slowly.
“When you focus only on what is going wrong, it can become difficult to notice the small signs of progress. Growth is often invisible while it is happening.”
Then the monk pointed toward the trees after a storm.
“Look at those trees. The storm did not ask permission before arriving. Yet after the wind passes, they remain rooted. Some storms damage, some change us, and some simply remind us how much strength we already possess.”
The man lowered his head and asked,
“So what should I do during hard times?”
The monk replied softly:
“Do not abandon yourself.
Rest when you are tired.
Pray or sit quietly when your heart feels heavy.
Take one small step when a big step feels impossible.
Stop comparing your journey with someone else’s.
And remember that not knowing what comes next does not mean you are failing.”
Then he added:
“Some chapters of life are not meant to make you comfortable. They may teach you patience, resilience, wisdom, or a deeper understanding of yourself.”
In Buddhist teachings, difficult seasons are not necessarily punishments. They are part of a life in which everything changes. Pain changes. Circumstances change. And we change too.
So if nothing feels right right now, do not assume that this moment is your whole story.
You do not have to figure out your entire life today. Sometimes the next step is simply to breathe, rest, and keep going. A difficult chapter can be painful without being permanent.

26/10/2026

When you are told your pain is because you are "getting older", "It's wear and Tear", or "What do you expect at your age?", it triggers fear. That very fear and focus on a "broken" body are what keep the brain's danger alarm system active, perpetuating the neural pathways of pain.

If you've been told your spine is deteriorating, you might start fearing certain movements, avoiding activities or constantly checking how your body feels.

Ageing changes your body, but it doesn't doom you to chronic pain. Your nervous system remains neuroplastic—meaning it can learn, adapt, and change at any age.

Perhaps the question isn't simply, "What's wrong with my body?"

But also, "What has my nervous system learned to fear?"

24/10/2026

Do you believe pain is just part of getting older?
We've heard it so often that many of us accept it without question.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

14/10/2026

A small update from me.

Constance Sea Hypnotherapy is becoming Geraldine Coffey.

My work has evolved over the past few years, with a much stronger focus on chronic pain, persistent symptoms and mind-body work, so it felt time for the name and website to reflect that.
I’m still offering the same personal, one-to-one support — just under a name that gives the work room to grow.

My new website is now live at geraldinecoffey.com

You may notice the name, branding and social profiles changing over the next little while, but it’s still me.

09/10/2026

Advice if you're living with chronic pain.

No.1: Stop Googling your symptoms, especially late at night.

I used to be sooo guilty of this one.

Herniated disc: How long does it take to recover?
Muscle spasms.
Best exercises for back pain.
And the searches went on into the wee small hours, night after night.

I was really feeding the beast.

Here's what that search actually does.

It gives your nervous system a fresh reason to believe something is wrong, and a brain told to watch for danger gets very good at finding it.

Searching rarely settles a worried nervous system. It feeds it. You end up more vigilant, sleep worse, and tomorrow's pain has turned up a few notches.

05/10/2026

It can be so frustrating when you’re dealing with chronic symptoms, and someone tells you, “There’s nothing more we can do.” It’s exhausting, and honestly, it can feel incredibly lonely.
Yet, so many people hear those words from a healthcare provider when there is no clear medical explanation.
But a clear scan doesn't mean your symptoms are a mystery—it just means the answers aren't on an X-ray or scan.
They are hidden in the deeper stories keeping your symptoms going.
Those "deeper stories" are the chronic stress, the buried emotions, the perfectionism, and the daily habits that keep your nervous system stuck in a loop of danger.
When medicine runs out of explanations, it’s usually because it stopped looking at you as a whole person.
Refusing to accept that "nothing more can be done" means you are ready to look at those deeper layers. And because of neuroplasticity, changing those inner stories will begin to change your brain's pathways.

Your defiance is your ultimate superpower,

01/10/2026

“I’ve tried everything. Why do I still have pain?”
Many people ask this after months or years of physiotherapy, medication, injections, stretching, strengthening, and other body-focused treatments.
When none of it brings lasting relief, it’s easy to assume something is still wrong with the tissues.
But persistent pain can be more complex than that.
Pain is not simply a readout of tissue damage. It is a personal experience, shaped by the nervous system and influenced by many factors, including sensory input, previous experiences, predictions, fear, attention, stress, emotions and context.
This helps explain why two people with similar physical findings can have very different pain experiences.
In some cases, the mechanisms maintaining the pain may no longer match those that triggered it.
The nervous system can become more sensitive, and pain can continue or even intensify even when ongoing tissue damage doesn't fully explain what the person is experiencing.
This is where terms such as nociplastic or neuroplastic pain come in.
The pain is still real.
But if tissue damage is no longer the whole story, repeatedly trying to “fix” the body may be missing an important part of the picture.
The whole person, their personal experience and the mind-body unity.

29/09/2026

Flip-flops were not the root cause of my recurring back pain.

80% of back pain episodes have no specific physical cause.

For years, I looked for a physical explanation, found more than one, and took it as the truth.

But persistent back pain is often more complex than that. Tissue health matters, of course, but so do the nervous system, previous pain experiences, fear, stress, expectations, and what is happening in our lives.

At that time in my life, that was the part I didn't want to hear or never really considered. Emotions and beliefs play a key role in back pain. The mind and body are very connected. This means that what we feel emotionally can greatly affect our pain.

For me, the important work wasn't finding the physical thing to fix or ditching the flip-flops. It was understanding the fear, the patterns, the stress, and the wider story my nervous system had been responding to.

25/09/2026

For years, I had sought out explanations whenever I experienced pain.

A herniated disc, suggested many times by GPs as the probable cause, led me to believe my back was fragile and damaged. I would be in spasm for months & had to plan toilet visits up to 2 hours before I needed to go. Fear of movement and wanting to p*e sent me into panic mode.

Flip-flops were the best suggestion; try getting me out of them in the summer. I may need to move somewhere warm.

Neck/shoulder pain, hip pain, sciatica. As a body worker for over 20 years, I truly believed all my pains were from damage to my tissues or joints.

Twenty years ago, ideas about neuroplasticity and the role of the nervous system certainly weren’t part of the conversations I was having.

And now, looking back, I can see there was so much more going on.

The fear around pain. The way I monitored my body. The expectation that certain movements, seasons or situations would set it off. The stress I was carrying without really recognising it as part of the picture.

None of that made the pain any less real.

But it did influence how I understood it.

Focusing only on physical solutions meant I was addressing only one part of the picture, while missing the fear, beliefs, expectations and nervous-system responses that had also become part of my pain experience.

I've stopped seeing my body as something fragile that kept letting me down, and now understand how much the brain and nervous system can learn, predict and protect.
That is a very different story to the one I had been living with for years.

Now, after extensive training, I help other people understand their experience of pain differently and how they too can heal and become pain-free.

23/09/2026

Why work with a pain coach?

Persistent pain is rarely about the painful body part.

Pain is a whole-person experience.

I help you understand the bigger picture - how your nervous system, fear, stress, beliefs, past experiences, habits and avoidance can all influence your pain experience.

The work is practical. It might involve pain neuroscience education, changing unhelpful patterns, reducing fear around symptoms, gradually rebuilding confidence in movement and learning tools to regulate the nervous system.
But perhaps most importantly, coaching looks at you, the person experiencing the pain — not just the diagnosis.
Your history, your life, your pressures, your relationships and your story all matter.

It’s not about dismissing the body or replacing appropriate medical care.
It’s about addressing the parts of persistent pain that scans, treatments, and physical interventions alone may not reach.

If your curious about whether pain coaching could help you, I'm here to answer any question you may have.

Address

Brighton

Opening Hours

Monday	12am - 8pm
Tuesday	10am - 6pm
Wednesday	10am - 6pm
Thursday	11am - 7pm
Friday	10am - 6pm
Saturday	10am - 1pm

Website

https://geraldinecoffey.com/

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