Living with endometriosis can mean carrying pain others can’t see—and navigating a healthcare system that sometimes doesn’t believe you. If you’ve ever been gaslit by doctors, dismissed by providers, or told that your symptoms were "normal" when they never felt that way, you are not alone.

Julie Sliga, LPC offers mind-body therapy for endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, and chronic illness in Portland, Oregon, and statewide via telehealth. She specializes in supporting adults living with pain that is intertwined with trauma, medical experiences, and long-term nervous system dysregulation. Her approach integrates EMDR, Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and somatic practices to help clients process what the body has been holding and build a different relationship with pain. Julie provides in-person sessions on Fridays and telehealth across Oregon. She is in-network with PacificSource and CareOregon (OHP/Medicaid), and offers a limited number of sliding-scale therapy sessions based on availability.

Therapy for Endometriosis

Honoring the Full Story of Your Journey with Pain

Tending to the Story Your Body Has Been Carrying

Chronic Pelvic Pain Changes Things—You Don’t Have to Pretend It Hasn’t

Endometriosis isn't just a medical condition—it’s a story your body has carried, often in silence.
The tension in your muscles. The guardedness in your breath. The instinct to brace before you even know why.

If you’re tired of explaining your pain—or have had your experience minimized so many times you wonder if it’s even real—please know this: you are not making it up. Your body has been working so hard to protect you, even when it hasn’t felt like protection.

In therapy, we move at the pace of your nervous system, not the pace of expectation. We make room for the anger that has nowhere to land, the grief that feels too heavy to name, and the hope that you may have tucked away for safekeeping.

I draw from Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), EMDR, Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)—approaches that offer ways to listen more gently to your body’s signals, soften the patterns of self-blame, stay close to your values, and build a steadier relationship with pain.

There’s no checklist for how this work should look.
Only the next breath.
The next choice to move with care.
The next small place inside you that says: I get to matter, too.

What I’ve Learned From Listening

Living with endometriosis or chronic pelvic pain takes strength.
The kind of strength that often goes unnoticed because it’s quiet, daily, and invisible.
It lives in the decisions you make—how to move, how to rest, how to keep going when everything in you wants to stop.

I’ve listened to your stories:
Stories of years spent being dismissed.
Stories where the only "solutions" offered involved removing parts of your body, as if that could erase the complexity of your pain.

It’s not just the illness that is painful.
It’s the way the world has treated your pain—as a problem to fix, a body to control, a voice to quiet.

Therapy can offer a space where you don’t have to explain why you’re tired, or defend why you’re grieving, or justify the choices you’ve made to survive.

You deserve a space where you can listen inward and reclaim what matters.
You deserve the chance to tend to what hurts—with more care, more fierceness when it’s needed, and more hope when it’s possible.

Sessions are Curently Offered by Telehealth.

Begin the Inquiry Process.

We Often Talk About:

Anger • Agency & Choice • Anxiety • Body Image • Brain Fog • Canceling Plans • Chronic Pelvic Pain • Creativity • Disconnection from Sexuality • Dyspareunia (Painful Sex) • Fatigue • Fear of Flare-Ups • Flexibility • Gastrointestinal Pain and Flare-Ups • Grieving Fertility Choices • Internalized Ableism • Intimacy and Touch Challenges • Medical Dismissal • Medical Trauma • Mindfulness • Pain Reprocessing Therapy • Pacing • Pre- or Post-Surgical Grief • Reclaiming Joy and Pleasure • Relationships • Religious or Cultural Pressures About Illness • Self-Compassion • Shame • Shifting Friendships • Somatic Awareness • Systemic Barriers to Care • Values-Based Living

Helpful Resources

https://www.endofound.org/endometriosis-a-to-z

LGBTQIA+ Support: https://endoqueer.com/

BIPOC Groups: https://www.endoblack.org/

Psychotherapy for diaspora communities including Asian diaspora, South Asian diaspora, Pacific Islander diaspora, African diaspora, Black diaspora, Latinx diaspora, Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) diaspora, Jewish diaspora, and multiracial or bicultural individuals. Therapy for third-culture kids (TCKs), immigrants, expats, and transracial adoptees. Support for identity, belonging, intergenerational trauma, cultural disconnection, and bicultural navigation.

Philosophy of Care & Cultural Humility

Endometriosis doesn’t affect everyone in the same way.
Each body carries its own experience of pain, resilience, and survival.
And the larger systems that shape medical care—including bias, racism, and structural inequities—shape who gets heard, believed, and treated with dignity.

Women of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and other historically marginalized groups often face greater dismissal, misdiagnosis, and harm in medical settings.
Pain is doubted. Voices are minimized. Bias shapes care.

The resources included here were chosen with that reality in mind.
They center patient voices and offer spaces that are more attuned to a range of lived experiences.

In therapy, too, cultural humility is not an add-on.
It’s a core part of how I practice: listening for what’s spoken, what’s unspoken, and how systems shape the stories our bodies carry.

You deserve care that sees the whole of you.