From Bladder Pain to Empowerment:Dr. Lauren Stutman's Journey with OCD, Chronic Pain, and the Science of Healing

My first memory of bladder pain comes from a summer day camp when I was about five years old. We were making beaded bracelets—beautiful, intricate creations where we strung beads on safety pins and connected them with two long threads. I was nearly finished when the counselor called out that time was almost up. A wave of panic hit me. Suddenly, it felt as though my bladder had a heartbeat.

I didn’t fully remember this moment until decades later, during therapy in my twenties. Another memory surfaced of sitting for a test at school, I noticed other kids finishing before me. Again, the “heartbeat” started. These weren’t just isolated incidents—they were early signs of the intersection between my anxiety, my body, and what I would later learn to call interstitial cystitis.

Even as a child, my mind was restless and curious. I can remember lying awake at night, crying to my father about infinity: “What are we in? If space goes on forever, does it end in air? In a solid? What’s beyond that?” He didn’t have an answer—few people do, even Einstein—but those thoughts consumed me.

I also began noticing my thoughts wouldn’t stop. I even invented a game: I would shake my head to see if I could “shake off” my thinking. For a moment, I’d feel relief—“It’s working!”—only to realize the very thought of it working meant I was still thinking. This was my first encounter with what I later learned to call existential OCD.

As a child, I also tried to make meaning of my bladder pain. I believed it was a punishment or some cosmic bargain. On the bus to camp, I once made a deal: “Five days of pain for a puppy.” Looking back, I see this as a sweet but painful attempt to control the uncontrollable—a hallmark of scrupulosity OCD.

By adolescence, my rituals had expanded. Dropping a shampoo bottle upright meant I’d “win” a million dollars; sideways meant losing half. Later, it meant my boyfriend would break up with me. By high school, I was picking up stray bottles on the street to “protect” myself. I counted manholes, held doors open, and performed secret races on certain tasks to prevent bad things from happening.

One ritual stands out. Every morning, when I poured milk for cereal, I would kick the refrigerator door open and leave it that way while I poured my milk. In my mind, if the door closed before I finished, something bad would happen. Breakfast became a kind of race: me versus the refrigerator door. If I “won” and finished before the door closed, I felt safe. If I “lost,” I was certain catastrophe was coming. That’s the cruel trick of OCD—it convinces you that meaningless actions control your safety.

Eventually, I caught myself mid-ritual and thought: If there really were a higher power who punished me based on whether a refrigerator door closed, is that a system I even respect? That moment cracked something open. I saw how irrational and cruel the rules of my OCD were, and I decided not to play along anymore. I slammed the door shut. From then on, I called my OCD “The Slammer”—because that was the day I slammed the door on its hold over me.

Still, the suffering continued. My bladder pain often felt like someone had sliced me from my belly button down and poured lemon juice into the wound. Every bathroom visit reactivated the agony. I begged doctors for help, cycled through antibiotics, and even asked my father if he would forgive me if I ended my life. On the outside I looked healthy; on the inside I was drowning.

Then came time for my dissertation. Initially, I planned it as an angry rebuttal to Western medicine’s treatment of chronic pain. But as I immersed myself in the research, something shifted. I discovered the biopsychosocial model of pain—the idea that pain isn’t just a physical sensation, but a dynamic interplay between the body, the mind, and the environment.

One study stood out: participants were split into two groups asked to walk a long distance. One group was given clear markers of progress; the other had no feedback. The first group finished significantly more often. Knowing where you are and how far you have to go changes your endurance. This applies not only to distance but to pain.

I began to notice my own “automatic thoughts” during flare-ups:

   •   “Why is God doing this to me?”

   •   “I can’t handle this.”

   •   “I’m being punished.”

   •   “I want to die.”

Research shows that these catastrophic thoughts activate the sympathetic nervous system, increasing inflammation and amplifying pain. In neuroscience terms, I was deepening a “pain memory”—a well-worn neural highway of fear and suffering that my brain traveled automatically. If I wanted to heal, I needed to build new roads.

So I tried something different. When pain arose, I began telling myself, “Right now, it’s like this.” I breathed into the sensation, imagined white light softening my bladder, and practiced kindness toward my own body. Through several rounds of very gently inviting (never demanding) each part of my body to soften, I addressed my perfectionism and need to please in a natural way. If any part of my body was unable to soften, it would have another chance in the following round, until I was completely relaxed.

The first time it worked, I felt like a witch. I was exhilarated. But neuroscience explains this, too: mindfulness and visualization can downregulate pain pathways, reduce inflammatory cytokines, and even alter how the brain’s pain matrix responds (Zeidan et al., Journal of Neuroscience, 2011). Over time, I wasn’t just soothing my pain; I was literally reshaping my brain.

Slowly, the flare-ups became less frequent. I no longer needed pain medication. I no longer feared the bathroom. I no longer defined myself by suffering. When I finally graduated and got my first job—terrified that the pain would return—I discovered something profound: focusing on healing others kept me healthier than I’d ever been.

Today, I run CARE-LA, a mental health clinic that specializes in anxiety, OCD, perfectionism, giftedness, and related conditions. We use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and a multidisciplinary approach—exactly the kind of holistic care I wished for as a child.

I tell my patients that my OCD once had a name: The Slammer. I slammed the door on it when I stopped playing by its irrational rules. This didn’t cure my OCD—I still have intrusive thoughts—but they’ve become far more manageable. More importantly, I’m free from the time-consuming compulsions that once controlled my life.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The same applies to chronic pain, when we learn to shift our thinking, to treat our bodies kindly, and to understand the science behind our suffering, we create space for healing.

I share my story not because it’s extraordinary, but because it’s common. So many people live with invisible illnesses, feeling unheard or disbelieved. If you’re one of them, trapped in pain that no one else can see, I hope this offers something: a reminder that the mind and body are partners in both suffering and healing. With the right tools, you too can build new roads and find your own way forward.