My Story

Hi, I’m Nisha!

On this page you can learn more about my personal and professional background.

Professional Degrees & Skills

B.Sc, Psychology, University of Calcutta, India
M.Sc, Clinical Psychology, University of Calcutta, India
M.Psych, Clinical Psychology, University of Tasmania, Australia
Advanced Certificate, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Morphic Minds (an Albert-Ellis Institute affiliate), India
Certified Practitioner, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Pain Reprocessing Therapy Center, USA
In addition to the above, my coaching work is also informed by Mindfulness practices, Psychodynamic Therapy, Self-Compassion Focused Therapy and Internal Family Systems Therapy

Areas of Interest

Childhood adversity
Self-doubts
Self-criticism
Perfectionism
Shame
Procrastination
Low self-confidence
Chronic pain
Chronic illnesses

I have walked a long, hard road to reach where I am today.

I grew up in an environment where harsh criticism was considered normal, even essential for character development. Confidence was frequently mistaken as arrogance and looked down upon. Free will and independent thinking were considered disrespectful and rebellious.

Like most children, I was a free thinker and had my own ideas on navigating my life. Owing to the fact that this was a complete opposite of societal norms, I faced disapproval, judgment and frequent personal attacks.

I genuinely believe that the people who were chastising me had my best interest in their hearts. They wanted me to mold myself into the traditional gender role of my culture. It was the only acceptable way of life they had known.

Unfortunately, when one hears something long enough, one starts to believe it.

I believed the narrative that was fed to me: I was not good enough. I was selfish, inconsiderate, and ill-mannered. People did not like me. If they did, that was because they did not know how awful I really was.

By the time I turned 18, I had become a perfectionist with unrelenting standards. I believed if I wasn’t the best at everything I did, I was a failure. I had difficulty trusting that people actually liked me, which led to people-pleasing, having poor boundaries and making bad relationship choices.

I tied my life choices to my sense of worth and happiness. I believed I’d feel fulfilled if I could just reach the next milestone, whether the milestone was a relationship, an academic degree, a prestigious job or more money.

The truth is, no matter how much I achieved, I never felt good enough.

I found that the happiness from my accomplishments was very short-lived. My attention would soon shift to achieving the next milestone, or outrunning others. I was focused on external things to find fulfillment, while my internal world was dysregulated and chaotic.

The truth is, if we go out in the world believing that we are not enough, we will always find the evidence. However, if we believe in ourselves and our abilities, we are more likely to take risks, persevere through challenges and carve a reality that matches our dreams.

Learning this lesson did not make the task of implementing it any less difficult. While many mindset coaches preach about the power of positive thinking, I quickly found out that repeating positive affirmations that I did not believe in was useless, frustrating and even toxic.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right.” - Henry Ford

Thankfully, this is when I learned about Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). CBT is an amazing therapy that teaches logical, realistic and helpful thinking patterns using a systematic methodology. It is like a foundational life skills course on how to think!

Learning to believe in myself was the biggest turning point in my life. It was hard work, but I was able to pull myself out of persistent depression, develop realistic beliefs about myself, and foster self-compassion.

I then established a successful career in clinical psychology, married the love of my life and eventually moved to Australia. This is when I decided to pivot in my career, start a second master’s degree and focus on helping people with chronic pain and other health-based presentations.

Relentless chronic pain, anger and disappointment with the system!

My husband and I both had chronic pain for over a decade before we met each other (me: Scoliosis, low back pain, Migraines, Fibromyalgia, Persistent Pelvic Pain; husband: Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, Adhesive Arachnoiditis). But after 20 years, chronic pain wasn’t merely a part of our lives. It was our lives. Hope, meaning and joy were disappearing out of our lives like sand slipping through fingers.

The two things I valued the most at this point, my husband and my career, both started to go south. My husband had exhausted all the symptom management options with no long-lasting relief, and we started to have heart-breaking conversations, planning the end of his life.

As for my career, my excitement to learn about pain management fizzled out quickly. I was hoping to learn something groundbreaking that could help alleviate pain and suffering. But during my second masters in Australia, all I learned about was symptom management and helping patients develop a positive mindset.

While I understood the importance of having a positive mindset, I could not help but fantasize about letting my instructors experience CRPS or Fibromyalgia pain for one day, have them go through the associated judgment (e.g., “If only you’d stop focusing on your pain, you’d feel better”), labels (e.g., “drug-seeker”) and losses (where do I even start…), tell them there is no “cure” and then ask them how positive they felt about their lives!

“Dum spiro spero” ( translates to “While I breathe, I hope”)

This is when a close friend of ours led us to the Spero Clinic in Fayetteville, Akansas, US. I had never heard of the clinic before, but I bawled my eyes out when I watched their “Hope” documentary. I felt hope…finally!

Long story short, we flew to the US, and my husband reluctantly started treatment at the Spero Clinic in Feb 2020. After 16 weeks of treatment, he “rang the bell” with his CRPS in remission. The joy and relief from this combined with some treatments at the clinic, and I started to feel better too!

At the Spero Clinic, I learned about different kinds of trauma (emotional, physical, chemical, viral) that can lead to nervous system dysregulation, which in turn becomes the basis of any emotional, psychological and physical disorders including chronic pain. This perspective was mind-blowing!

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" - John Lennon

Life was finally taking a beautiful turn. I was excited to see my husband thrive, I felt better, and I looked forward to pursuing my newfound knowledge of chronic pain once we were back in Australia. But that never happened…

My husband no longer had CRPS, but he started the long and arduous journey of withdrawing from 24 years of prescription use, which turned out to be almost as hard as enduring CRPS pain. Australia had shut its borders indefinitely in 2020 owing to the Covid pandemic. We were suddenly homeless, unemployed, poor and lost everything we owned. I lost my career and most importantly my belief that everything turns out for the good eventually.

I felt very angry and wronged. I was mad at God and life for playing this cruel joke on me and my husband. This was the most difficult period of my life where everything came crashing down. We still struggled with health issues, most “friends” melted away, I took refuge in the US in the middle of the pandemic with no work rights and no ability to earn any money, while worried for the health of my family back in India, amidst all the fear and one of the darkest times in our society.

When life shatters us into pieces, we discover the beauty of humility in slowly, patiently, and humbly putting those fragments back together, one small step at a time.

I will spare you the details of the year-long soul-searching I did before I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It took some serious introspection and many changes in my thinking and behavior, but I finally made peace with my spirituality again.

I took many small steps to settle into my new life in the US. One of these steps was attending the treatment program at the Spero Clinic, and reclaiming my life. After 16 weeks of treatment, I was almost pain-free! But pain is not the only symptom when one is dealing with a complex condition like Fibromyalgia.

My pursuit for better health brought me to the Sheen Family Chiropractic in Nebraska, where I received treatment from Dr James Sheen. After 1 week of treatment, I felt unbelievably good! After decades of living with chronic pain, I had forgotten that my body and brain were capable of feeling so energetic and strong!

Unfortunately, I contracted a viral infection soon after, and many of my symptoms came back, thankfully, much milder in intensity. But I developed intense fatigue, and other neurocognitive symptoms such as confusion, difficulty finding words, inability to learn or retain new information, etc., which took away my ability to function, work or socialize.

Like a chrysalis embracing transformation, the struggles we face serve as our cocoon of growth, from which we can emerge as something beautiful and empowered.

It was initially very upsetting to go through what I thought at the time to be a setback. But looking back, it forced me to slow down and reflect on the health of my nervous system, my mindset, feelings and habits.

You see, nervous system dysregulation is our brain’s way of protecting us from danger. Instead of listening and tuning in to the message, I was running in the opposite direction, which only made the alarm sound louder. I was trying to “fix” my nervous system which in reality needed healing, patience and transformation from within.

A key turning point came when I understood that my life’s journey does not have to wait until I am completely healed, that the joy, growth and meaning lie within the process itself, and not the final destination.

“You can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” - Nightbirde

Life has taught me much about finding happiness and meaning, learning to be positive, patient, accepting and resilient, and adapting to whatever circumstances I am faced with. It is my life’s mission to help others work through their life experiences, so they too can turn their lives around!

Work With Me

Are you ready to take charge of your life and embark upon a transformative journey of healing? Join me on a path towards personal growth and fulfillment.