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Your MRI Is Clear... Your Feelings? Not So Much.

After 15 years as a licensed massage therapist and more than 1,000 bodies on her table, Christie Szpyrka has some thoughts about what your pain may be trying to tell you.

BY WONDER GIRL | PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 27TH, 2026

ou stretched. You booked the massage. Maybe you tried the chiropractor or acupuncture. Maybe you even got the MRI—and were simultaneously relieved and deeply annoyed when nothing obvious showed up. So why the hell does it still hurt?

Christie Szpyrka has spent 15 years as a licensed massage therapist, working on more than 1,000 people and hearing some version of that question again and again. Early in her career, she reached for the explanations she’d learned in massage school: repetitive posture, repetitive motion, old injuries, physical trauma. Then she started questioning whether the physical explanation was always the entire explanation.

Now, describing herself as a “tour guide to inner healing,” Szpyrka asks clients to consider something far less comfortable: what if there’s an emotional layer to what your body is experiencing?

Well, that’s inconvenient.

Your Body Has Been Taking Notes

Szpyrka’s perspective begins with a cultural habit most overachievers know intimately: shove it down and keep moving.

Don’t cry. Toughen up. Keep going. Be productive. Handle it.

In Szpyrka’s framework, repeatedly suppressing emotions can show up physically, and persistent pain can become a reason to pay attention to what has been avoided. She describes ignored emotions like “whiny children”: the longer they’re ignored, the louder they become.

Her point isn’t that someone should toss their doctors, massage therapists or acupuncturists out the window. In fact, she explicitly describes her approach as complementary and says physical care can remain part of the process.

What she refuses to do is position herself as the magical person who fixes you.

“I’m not here to heal you. I’m here to teach you how to heal yourself and show you the way,” she says.

Translation: no handing your body over and asking someone else to return it emotionally refurbished by Tuesday.

Oh, You Already Healed That? Cute.

There’s another sentence Szpyrka hears from people who have already done serious inner work: But I already cleared that.

Her response? Not exactly soothing.

Healing, in her view, happens in layers. An emotional event can influence how someone responds long after the original experience, creating what she describes as ripple effects. Addressing the original event doesn’t necessarily mean every pattern that grew around it disappears with it.

That’s where Szpyrka incorporates tarot into her work—not as a replacement for physical or medical care, but as a tool she uses to surface potential blind spots and prompt reflection around what someone may be resisting.

Because, according to Szpyrka, the juicy stuff often lives precisely where you’d prefer not to look.

Her process centers on what she calls her Triple A Signature Healing Method: awareness, acceptance and action. First, notice what’s there. Then accept it for what it is. Then do something with that awareness.

Simple? Sure.

Easy? Absolutely not.

The Instant-Healing Fantasy Can See Itself Out

This is where Szpyrka becomes particularly disruptive.

In a transformation industry practically allergic to patience, she refuses to sell the fantasy that one session will unravel years of emotional patterns.

“No, fuck that,” she says of pressure to sell instant results. “I’m gonna be real with you and tell you that this is gonna be a long dirty road.”

Not exactly the shiny marketing promise we’ve been trained to expect.

Szpyrka says she has seen good results working with clients over roughly three months, but she emphasizes that the people who continue showing up and working through layer after layer are the ones who get the best results. Her goal is ultimately to give people tools they can continue using without needing her forever.

That may be the least glamorous part of healing—and the most empowering.

There is no gold star for identifying one childhood pattern. No lifetime exemption because you journaled about it in 2022. And apparently, the universe did not receive your certificate declaring that you have officially Done The Work™... rude.

The Part You Don’t Want to Hear

Szpyrka has built her work around telling people precisely that.

She believes awareness begins when we’re willing to look at what we don’t want to admit, while also recognizing that awareness is only the beginning. There may be more layers. More resistance. More practice. And sometimes, a break.

“You can’t go to the gym every day and not expect to eventually tear a muscle,” she says, comparing emotional work to physical training. Rest doesn’t mean abandoning the process. It means recognizing that healing doesn’t have to become another achievement you punish yourself into completing.

Perhaps that’s the bigger provocation in Szpyrka’s work.

We’re obsessed with fixing ourselves quickly enough to get back to producing, achieving, helping, caregiving and performing. But what happens when the thing asking for your attention isn’t another item for the self-improvement checklist?

Maybe your body isn’t failing the assignment. Maybe there was never supposed to be a finish line.

And maybe the most rebellious thing you can do is finally listen.