About me
Hello and welcome!
My name is Zélie Cleaver, and I am a qualified counsellor and chronic pain recovery specialist. I have many years experience in helping people to discover that a life free from pain is possible.
I first discovered this approach whilst recovering from chronic back pain. After thirty years of suffering, I didn’t believe recovery was possible but it was!
If you are interested in working with me, you can book a 30 minute discovery call to help you decide if my approach is right for you.
My qualifications
SIRPA Practitioner (Stress, Illness and Recovery Practitioners’ Association)
BA (Hons) Developmental Psychology, University of Sussex (developmental and attachment trauma)
Counsellor CPCAB (Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body)
Accredited Breathworks mindfulness teacher (no 41695)
Graduate member BPS (British Psychological Society) (no 697268)
Insured by Holistic Insurance (member ref HIS55719)
“Zélie was recommended to me by my physiotherapist. It was difficult for me to think positively but I connected with Zélie straight away. I felt like I’d found someone at last who understood what it was like. Each session I’ve taken on a new tool to help me live a happier life.”
My story
As someone who spent 30 years in chronic pain, I understand what it is like to suffer without hope of a solution. I write my story to demonstrate that I really do ‘get it’, and to encourage you to believe that things can change. Recovery from chronic pain is possible.
My journey with chronic pain began in the early 1990’s. I was living with my partner and eight month old daughter, had gone part-time at work and I was looking forward to a full and active life with my new family. I had a good job, friends, a great social life and loved walking, bike-rides and camping holidays. Life was hectic and full of promise.
I was very busy, holding down a stressful job managing a team, but I felt I was coping well with the usual juggling of motherhood, job and finding my feet as a wife and mother. I was looking forward to the future but I also felt apprehensive about being good enough in my new roles.
I know now that I was much more stressed, anxious and driven than I realised, being a perfectionist, having very high standards, feeling overly-responsible for the people I loved and cared for, and fearful of failing and disappointing others.
Then the pain began.
One sunny July day I woke with the most excruciating back pain which I couldn’t explain. I’d done some gardening a few days before so I put it down to that but the debilitating intensity of the pain didn’t make sense.
Desperate to recover for my family, I tried everything in those first few weeks, a pattern that continued for many years. I saw osteopaths, chiropractors, physiotherapists, pain consultants, alternative practitioners, but no-one and nothing seemed to help.
After four years I was diagnosed with Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome and Facet Arthritis but by now I felt stuck, bogged down with destructive MRI images and any number of dire medical predictions about my future. I was told by one consultant that my back was permanently damaged and structurally unsound. Another concluded that I’d lost half my lower back muscle and told me that I’d never return to normal life or work again. Another consultant advised me to ‘Go home and reconcile yourself to a life of pain’. It’s hard to overstate how fearful, isolated and despairing I felt as the decades passed and my pain and disability stubbornly stayed put, impacting not only me but my daughter, husband and friends. My sense of loss was profound and deeply painful, as was theirs.
As time passed, some interesting patterns emerged. The pain always seemed to reduce when I went on holiday, or when I moved away from chronically stressful situations. My mobility improved. I noticed these things but didn’t question them, accepting that they were aberrations rather than clues pointing me to another explanation for my pain.
Eventually, I began to find answers.
The turning point came in 2016 when my physiotherapist suggested that I needed to manage my stress better if I wanted to see her less. This came as a huge surprise. I thought my pain was causing my stress! It had never occurred to me that stress itself could be causing, or even contributing to, my pain.
I had so many questions. What kind of stress was she talking about? How was it affecting my chronic pain? Where did that leave all the diagnoses of structural and tissue damage I’d been given by the experts? Had stress played a part in the failure of hundreds of treatments and injections over the years?
I began to investigate. I started with breath-work, meditation and mindset and made some important changes to reduce and manage other sources of stress in my life. This was hard but at least I was engaging with the pain instead of fighting to fix it and I found, to my surprise, that I wasn’t so fearful. I was still in pain but these small advances encouraged me to keep going.
Then a friend mentioned ‘Curable’ and I signed up for their course where I met other long-term pain sufferers. Together we supported each other as we learned about the mind-brain-body connection and how to heal ourselves.
I was sceptical but I was also intrigued – there were simply too many stories of recovery to ignore.
To begin with I practised Somatic Tracking several times a day, learning to be with my pain without fear or judgment, confident now that it was being mistakenly produced by my brain. Within weeks I felt calmer and safer, and the deep spasms and inflammation that had plagued me for over 25 years had begun to dissolve. My movement and mood improved. I felt more optimistic than I had for decades. I could hardly believe it.
“For 30 years I thought my pain was just in my body and now I know my brain and mind play a big part too. It helped that Zélie had experienced chronic pain and I felt she really understood what I was going through. The course was extremely useful in helping me to understand the mind-body connection and reducing and managing my pain better. I would recommend it”
Slowly, I began to recover.
My progress continued. I knew I needed more support to unravel my complex and lengthy relationship with chronic pain and I began to work with a SIRPA practitioner. Over the months, with her skilled and patient support, we examined my history of early trauma and life-long chronic stress. I discovered self-compassion and befriended my pain, practising techniques and choosing the SIRPA strategies that best suited me.
My pain levels reduced and over the months I found I wasn’t monitoring my symptoms as much – sometimes I even forgot they were there – and when I did notice them they didn’t frighten or bother me in the way they used to.
I knew they weren’t harmful or dangerous; there really was nothing wrong with my body which had healed long ago. Rather, they were messages from my brain that there was something bothering me that I needed to acknowledge and process. After decades of believing that my body was my enemy, I saw it was my friend. It was trying to help me, and it needed my help in return, not my anger, punishment or rejection. We were working together at last.
Eventually, I came off my painkillers, including an opioid prescribed nearly thirty years before. The day I took my last tablet felt like my Everest moment, the day I planted my flag of recovery at the top of the longest and hardest climb. I ws free of chronic pain, free of painkillers, free to live my life the way I wanted to, free to be the person I’ve always wanted to be!
I still feel that joy every day.
I learned many things along the way.
I learned that the causes of chronic pain are very complex but the solution – to rewire the brain to unlearn its pain – is relatively simple. The challenge has been to allow myself to look inwards and identify and process those experiences, traumas and stresses that were fuelling my fearful brain. And to learn to move again with confidence and enthusiasm.
My biggest challenge was to accept that my pain wasn’t structural or caused by tissue-damage. After so long being told that it was, this was hard to believe even though it was, by any logic, surely what I wanted to hear.
Then I had to trust the process and do the work. It soon dawned on me that it wasn’t going to be a Miracle in a Month, it was going to be a long journey with enormous ups and downs. One minute I could be flying high, the next wading through treacle. Sometimes I won, sometimes I learned; I came to see that it was all part of my recovery.
Today I’m living a life free from chronic pain and able to share it in the way that I want to with my family and friends. Now it is my absolute privilege to accompany and support others on their healing journeys.
I can support you to recover too.
Whether you have been living with chronic pain for many months, years or decades, my approach can help you to be free from pain and reclaim your life.
My approach is informed by my own experience and by all I have learned through my training with SIRPA and as a Breathworks practitioner.
“Zélie immediately put me at ease with her calm and understanding manner. It was helpful to know that she genuinely empathised due to her own experience of living with chronic pain. I looked forward to each weekly online session with Zélie and I am grateful as I now have a toolkit of strategies and practices to carry with me into the future.”
Get in touch
To book a 30 minute discovery call or ask me any questions you might have, use this form or email me at zeliecleaver@gmail.com.