Serena Sterling - Pain: A Love Story

Pain: A Love Story

Serena Sterling, MA, PsyD

PAIN: A LOVE STORY. Copyright 2021 by Serena Sterling

This book has been through editing, copyediting, and proofreading. I have read this book too many times. Despite multiple rounds of proofing and editing, there might still be some errors enclosed, which are my responsibility. I have also gone to great lengths to change the names and identifying details of my clients, whose stories I share in these pages. It has been an honor to participate in their healing journeyand I value their courage and privacy above all else.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Printed in the United States of America First Printing, 2020

ISBN: 9798698075158

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020924489 Summit Press

Summit Press Publishers 411 Walnut Street # 12515

Green Cove Springs, FL 32043-3443 author@summit-success.com

Book Layout Unauthorized Media, LLC Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity

purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact author@summit-success.com

DEDICATION

Dedicated to those who think they are unlovable, those who think there is something wrong with them, and those who think they are not good enough.

You are lovable, there is nothing wrong with you, and you are good enough.

Table of Contents

You own everything that happened to you.

Tell your stories.

If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

-Anne Lamott

She needed someone to heal her,

so she became a healer.

-Alex Myles

PREFACE

Three weeks into my dream job as assistant editor at Spirituality & Health magazine and Im agitatedthe subway is crawling, and Im going to be late. Some guy rubs up against me, but I figure this is New York City; its part of the experience.

Finally, we arrive at my stop, Wall Street Station, but we just sit there. The doors remain closed, the engine shuts off, and smoke fills the train. Were told to head toward the rear.

As we do, the doors open.

When we finally reach the street, I can see no more than five feet in front of me. Normally, I can see all the way to the end of the block and beyond. But that day, everything is gray; papers swirl past me, my feet are covered in ash, and smoke fills my lungs.

Out of nowhere, FBI agents in gas masks appear and yell, Run... run for your life... RUN!

There are any number of versions of the 9/11 story. This one just happens to be mine. But its just part of my story.

In the weeks that follow, I become progressively tired and stiff; Im in constant pain, even more so than usual. Sleep feels better than being awake. I lose my drive, focus, and motivationI risk losing everything I worked so hard to gain. When my boss tells me to do something, I need him to repeat it multiple times just to remember it. A few more weeks of this and Id be out of a job.

I go to my medical doctor and he tells me I have chronic fatigue syndrome. Theres no cure, youll have to learn to cope with it.

Having dealt with chronic pain since I was nine years old, the idea of living with debilitating fatigue and joint pain for the rest of my life is beyond depressing.

I decide to find a doctor who can really help me. Ive been to a million doctors before. Most were ineffectual or made me feel far worse, so I recognize it will be no easy task.

I find one, but she does woo-woo, out-there stuff. Thanks to juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, Ive been seeing chiropractors for over a decade; shes different. She does hand mudras: she presses on my arm and it changes from weak to strong, depending on the question. Helpless, she says, and my arm goes weak. She tells me to explain how I felt helpless on 9/11.

Look lady, I think most people felt helpless on 9/11.

She encourages me to tell her anyway. Then she presses my arm again and starts counting, from birth to ten, ten to twenty, ten to fifteen. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. She stops pressing when she has some sort of answer. OK, what happened at fourteen where you felt helpless? she asks.

And just like that, a flood of tears wells up and pours down my facesomething rare for me, because Im very good at holding everything in, never showing weakness.

I remember my best friend telling me, I dont want to be friends with you anymore. You suck! Then she turned all our friends against me, leaving me helpless to change their minds. For the first time in my life, my grades plummeted. I always got As and Bs and now I was getting Cs and even a few Ds. My ambitious parents were furious. Colleges start looking at transcripts beginning in ninth grade, so get your act together! Since I wasnt close to them, I bottled it all upjust like I bottled up my feeling of helplessness on 9/11.

Dr. Linda Randazzo, with her weird techniques, was able to find the emotions I had buried on 9/11. She found helplessness and a whole bunch of other feelings I wasnt even aware I felt that day and didnt express.

Once I identify and express how I felt negative emotions back then, I dont have to feel them anymore.

I feel lighter. I have more clarity. I have more energy and the achiness in my joints goes away. I walk home after my appointment. I walk three milesthis after not being able to walk more than three blocks without feeling fatigued. Im intrigued. I continue seeing her.

Dr. Randazzo gets me all better in three weeks. Three weeks! I dont have to learn to cope with debilitating fatigue for the rest of my life or take medications.

That healing experience changes everything for me. It is the inciting incident that launches me on the journey to not only heal myself, but others. It drives home the fact that our mental health affects our physical health, and what happens to our bodies affects our mental and emotional well-being. The cycle is inexorably linked. Suddenly, my journalism career matters not one whit, and I want nothing more than to learn how to do for others what Dr. Randazzo did for me.

Like many experts who had to learn to help themselves first, I began helping others identify stuck emotions so they too could take action to solve their own chronic pain issues, be they physical or emotional. I help them understand how their thoughts and beliefs affect their bodies; how their relationships harm or heal them; how their reactions to the people in their lives, and the way they repress or express their emotion, influence their health, create their experiences and their chronic pain. Their stories, and how they interpret them, are what create their perceptions and their realities, their pain. The whole goal is to get at those stories, which are usually buried six feet deep. Examples of such stories I share herein.

But its not enough to understand that trapped emotions create illness of some form in the body. We must also understand how that dynamic sets up, not just in clinical terms, but in day-to-day interactions. When we look at life with these lenses, we have a better shot at addressing our pain. And that starts with understanding that we humans store emotions in our body for a whole host of reasons, and they need to be released or well continue to be in pain. We need to better cope with the never-ending stream of stressors that come our way because theres no escape.