Behind the Dark Night
I cover my eyes Shame held tight It’s safe in here But dark as night In fact, darker than night The darkest I’ve known I keep my hands plastered Feel what it’s like It’s lonely, it’s sad It’s absent of light It’s shielded and sheltered But void of life I keep my hands there To let it sink in As safe as it feels It’s empty within I keep my hands there I juggle the two Comfort and solace Versus nothing anew I keep my hands there Longer than wanted I feel it and feel it and feel it It’s haunting What am I missing In a safe—but dark—place? Freedom and love Wide open space This time I look past The deepest of dark Run through it with courage I’m on my mark I pull my hands off The light bright and brilliant Can safety be found In my untethered milieu? Family and friends give their support I’m learning to take it But what’s more important I’m learning to make it Make my own love That I send from my heart To the one in that dark place To help her get out
My Body, My Love
“My Body, My Love” – A collaboration inspired by my memoir, The Invisible Key: Unlocking the Mystery of My Chronic Pain.
Creative expression is one of many ways to help process trauma. When physical pain changed how I could express myself, I had to find new ways to do so. That’s what led me to write my memoir and to create this short video.
This is a representation of my relationship with my body. The introductory poem was written and read by me. The aerial silks routine was performed by my former gymnastics teammate Fritzi Frey, and accompanied by my daughter and vocalist Camille Socolof, and pianist Blair Greene.
The Gymnast in Me
Montage of author Maria Socolof competing in gymnastics (in 1986) and reading lines from her 2020 memoir, The Invisible Key: Unlocking the Mystery of My Chronic Pain.
Driving Through COVID Guilt
September 22, 2020. On this day, the US surpassed 200,000 deaths from COVID-19. Aside from infectious disease scientists—and the people they had warned—the world was blindsided by a novel coronavirus this year. We went into lockdown. So many sick. So many dead. So many more who will die from this scourge.
The world is suffering. Our country is suffering. Physical health. Mental health. Economics. Education. All in turmoil. Lives turned upside down. So many struggling to cope.
That’s why I feel terribly guilty when I dare mention how COVID helped me. Am I a cold-hearted soul? What about paying homage to those who have died? To those suffering. Maybe it’s selfish. Maybe it’s self-preservation.
In my five-and-a-half decades on this earth, I’ve learned that staying positive is a valuable coping mechanism.
I’m fortunate that the coronavirus hasn’t been hard on me. Now that I’ve said that out loud, in spite of feeling ashamed about it, I’ll elaborate for anyone hoping to grasp a little light in a year where darkness reigns.
When the shutdown began, people were told to stay inside. No more commuting to work. No more social gatherings. No more shopping—except to the grocery store.
Order online if you can. Walk your dog, but that’s it.
Welcome to my world, World. You adapt. You get used to it. Granted, years passed before I arrived at this place of acceptance. So I’m not saying it’s easy. I was “fortunate” that chronic pain prepared me for 2020.
I went through sadness and despair in 2005 when I was relegated to my home from a debilitating condition. I went through an identity crisis in 2009 when I had to give up my hard-earned, 22-year career because of pain. I went through isolation and loss in 2016 when my husband’s job moved us 250 miles away from friends and everything familiar. And as I continue to manage my ongoing chronic pain, I’m used to spending much of my time home, alone.
It took a while but I found new things to occupy myself and keep my mind engaged, even if my body couldn’t keep up. In short, a writing tablet became this gymnast’s playground.
So the 2020 quarantine wasn’t a shock to me. Been there, done that.
In fact, it was nice that other people were home more. I could call friends who normally would’ve been out and about socializing, working, or attending their kids’ activities. I enjoyed virtual happy hours with college teammates I hadn’t spoken to in decades. I received more frequent calls from my daughter who was stuck in a foreign country due to international border restrictions. My empty nest was no longer uninhabited when my college freshman was sent back home. The dining room became my husband’s new virtual office. The house was full of life again—my days busier than before the pandemic. More cooking, more cleaning, more companionship.
Then there were those glorious traffic-free days. The Long Island Expressway, the Grand Central Parkway, the FDR Drive, the Hutchinson Parkway. Who could’ve imagined cruising at full speed across New York City highways at 5PM on a weekday?
I used the situation to my advantage.
Since my pain begin in 2005, my ability to drive more than thirty minutes at a time had been greatly compromised. The burning in my back and neck would expand to engulf my skull. The feeling of soldering irons jabbing me in my trapezius muscles would render me unable to hold my upper body vertical. I’d have to stop and lie down.
Then a new wrinkle in my driving troubles came in 2011. After a one-and-a-half-hour flight from Providence to Baltimore turned into a 23-hour trip home (think Planes, Trains, and Automobiles), I started losing cognitive function while driving with my two girls in the car in a downpour at 2AM.
Stormy weather had delayed our flight for hours. When the plane finally took off, we were diverted to Philadelphia. With no flights between Philly and Maryland, I had the crazy notion that I could drive the two hours home. My pain was barely tolerable at that point, but I kept pushing through. I rented a car and headed out on the road. I was in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar vehicle, a hundred miles from home driving through blankets of rain on a dark deserted highway.
My pain escalated to the point that my brain began shutting down. I couldn’t remember how to operate the car. I felt as thought all the blood had drained from my head. Confused, I considered what my right foot was supposed to be doing. It was on the accelerator, but I felt the need to consciously direct it through the action of pressing the pedal. But what if I had to brake? Would my foot know what to do?
Unnerved, I pulled over at the nearest rest stop and tried to take a nap. Not an easy task when you’re alone with your precious cargo in a foggy, darkened parking lot worrying about the mass murderer or rapist who was just waiting for bait like us. After an hour of anxiety-punctuated dozing, I felt less confused and drove the remaining hour of our trip. But not without feeling unsettled and scared.
Since that August night in 2011, I’ve had similar, albeit not as bad episodes where I’d be in an unfamiliar place feeling like I couldn’t remember how to drive. When we moved to Long Island, NY in 2016, and all the roads were new to me, I was challenged again. I kept my radius short and quickly became familiar with the local roads around my town. But longer distances were still out of the question. Happy to live near a plethora of public transport options, I reasoned: Who needs to drive that much anyway?
But when COVID hit and public transit was off limits—for an unknown length of time—how was I going to visit my daughter when she would move back into Manhattan? Given my fifteen years of driving troubles, I had ruled out motoring myself into the City.
But now was my chance. March, April, May. The roads were eerily clear. I started one exit at a time. Port Washington to Great Neck. Sweaty palms and an uneasy feeling in my body began as I merged into the Long Island Expressway—the LIE.
Breathe. Tell myself, “I’m safe. I know how to drive.” And in the vein of reverse psychology: “Panic NOW!” It actually helped.
The next day, I repeated the same route. Slowly the funky sensations subsided. Next day to Little Neck. Same drill. Once the cognitive deficit was absent, I travelled another exit farther, becoming familiar with each segment of the road.
Don’t panic. Build stamina. Like training for a marathon. Thank goodness the roads aren’t too busy. One less factor to navigate and negotiate.
At the end of May 2020, I’m on the LIE, the Horace Harding Expressway, the Queens-Midtown expressway, then the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Hello, Manhattan!
It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t without palpable panic, but it was manageable. Enough that I tried it again. And again. And each time, the driving felt more normal, until I finally made it without the strange bodily sensations that try to tell me something is wrong—that I’m not safe. My physical body finally learned what my cognitive mind knew to be true. That I am safe. I’m fine. I’m perfectly capable of driving. I can do it.
I’m truly sad and devastated for the ravage COVID has placed on the world, but I have to admit that I’m thankful for the conditions it provided to help me overcome something I didn’t think I could do.
I say a prayer for all of us who are healing from that which ails us—COVID and otherwise. And maybe we’ll ultimately see that there were some positive outcomes from the changes inflicted upon us by COVID-19—even if they may have paled in comparison to the negative.
Fifteen Years
The anniversary passed right by
I didn’t even blink an eye.
This year was different from the past
Back when I couldn’t forget, alas.
My mind, once holding tight the pain
The fear, the hate, the anger, the shame
At last decided to set me free
To live my life; be all I can be.
This year, all prepped with a COVID mask
I was more consumed with my current task.
I’d planned a trip to the oceanside
An hour away; could I handle the drive?
The distance had been beyond my reach
Would pain and panic again unleash?
But on this day — September One,
I made it there with no despair.
My scared subconscious . . .
No longer there!
Without thinking or being fully aware
Something released from my mind’s comfy lair.
After fifteen years of not traveling that far
I could fin’lly drive sixty minutes by car.
The sweaty palms, the burning pain, the pounding heart, the panicked brain
No longer had me so upset on the day I thought I’d never forget.
A world I’d almost forgotten existed
A freedom so sweet to which I now re-enlisted.
Absorbing this life that I know I can live
I still haven’t conquered the long, scary bridge.
I embrace each win one day at a time,
It takes patience, persistence, and practice I find.
So “never give up” is something I say
To anyone feeling discouraged today.
And even if it takes a very long time
Our brains and our bodies can make the steep climb.
What, Me? Publish a Book?—Confessions of a Self-Published Memoirist, Part 2
The behemoth that I’d pared down into a digestible manuscript sat waiting. As cathartic as the writing process was, I hadn’t written it only for myself. I had an inkling it might help others, too. Yet I had no experience in book publishing. Thank goodness for the internet.
First decision: Should I try to land a literary agent who would then pitch my book to a publisher? Should I pay for a vanity press? Should I self-publish?
I threw a few Hail Mary’s to some agents. Most of my query letters garnered no reply, but I was thrilled to receive a couple “not bad but no thanks” responses. Maybe my work had some merit if these professionals made the effort to send some positive juju my way. After ultimately amassing no takers—not surprising for a no-name, first-time memoirist—I decided against the “traditional” route. I didn’t want to be subject to someone else’s deadlines anyway, as I was already juggling kids and chronic pain.
I also preferred not to pay for a vanity press, even if it would’ve provided editing and design services. I’d already indulged in a professional editor and decided I could figure out how to do the rest on my own for cheap. Indie author, here I come.
Next question: Which self-publishing platform would be best? The beast that is Amazon won my vote. It had the market share of book sales and I found lots of online assistance from its self-publishing site (Kindle Direct Publishing, KDP) and from posts by other KDP users who’d generously shared information to help newbies like me.
Formatting the interior of the book had its own challenges. I could’ve hired someone, as many self-publishers suggested. But being eminently frugal and up for the challenge, I forged ahead on my own. Thanks to bloggers and vloggers out to help us DIY-ers, I found enough guidance to pull together something that looked, felt, smelled, and tasted like a book. I researched what was typical for my genre to help guide me in creating an aesthetically pleasing paperback. Choices included text margins (top, bottom, inside, outside), header margins, page number placement, line spacing, font, book dimensions, and paper color.
With my edited and formatted manuscript ready for prime time, I then searched the internet for any books that shared my chosen title, Defying Gravity. Two new Defying Gravity books had recently been published, adding to the long list that already existed. So began my manic search for a new title.
I solicited the opinions of family, friends, and acquaintances. I tortured myself (and likely them) trying to find the right one. Almost everything we could think of was either used, over-used, too campy, or just not quite right—Silent Knots, My Powerful Mind, A Natural High, The Rollover Accident, My Long Neck, Full Twist, Ruptured, Unsticking, Unwinding, Creases in My Forehead, No Restrictions. This list went on and on. After considering and rejecting 122 options, I was finally struck with the title while walking my dog one afternoon: The Invisible Key.
I hurried back into the house, shuffled the dog inside, sat at the computer and typed “T-h-e I-n-v-i-s-i-b-l-e K-e-y” into the search bar. No results. Bingo!
“What does ‘The Invisible Key’ mean?” several of my title consultants queried.
“Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out.” But I also knew a more informative subtitle would help. I threw around several ideas to describe my healing journey. Following the “Key” motif, I decided on: Unlocking the Mystery of My Chronic Pain.
Intriguing, enticing, I hoped.
Now that I had a title, I could work on the cover. Conventional wisdom suggests this should be left to the professionals. But with so many free resources now available, I dared myself to try. With the help of a computer application called Canva, I managed to produce a cover that, in my humble opinion, looked like a book cover. Please note, however, this process involved a great deal of angst. After all, everyone knows the cover is the most important thing!
Done and ready to go, right? Not quite.
I wanted my book to appear as professional as possible, so I decided to publish under an imprint name (a publishing company that I’d create for myself). Another name game ensued.
My company’s moniker had to be unique, and for marketing purposes, I wanted to keep it simple. I settled on Fringe Tree Press. Named after a native tree I planted in my back yard, it represented my vision for the book—a creation that was both hardy and delicate. My artistic daughter drew the tree for the logo, and I created a simple website to validate the existence of my business to the online world.
I chose to structure my company as a sole proprietorship instead of an LLC. This meant less paperwork to establish and maintain it, but also less protection against getting sued. Hopefully, that won’t happen.
Through Fringe Tree Press, I purchased the needed ISBNs to publish and own the rights to my work. I also chose to request a Library of Congress number to provide my book another level of authenticity and possibly expand its reach. This is a free service, but requires the author send a complimentary copy of their book to the Nation’s Library.
At long last, my book was done. But wait a minute. People read eBooks now. The electronic version required undoing most of the intricate formatting I’d done for the print book—stripping headers, page numbers, line spacing, font, etc. Then came the maddening task of figuring out how to properly place the photographs from my manuscript into the electronic file without causing errant page breaks. Success—I ultimately deposited them at the end of each chapter. Finally, both books were done.
Last steps: I entered the book categories, keywords, author bio, and other sundry items into the Amazon KDP site. I uploaded the files, set the prices of each book, prayed I found every typo, took a deep breath, and clicked “Publish.” In an instant—more precisely, twelve years—I became a published author.
When I proudly announced to a friend that I’d published my book, she asked, “Is there an audio version?”
What, Me? Write a Book?—Confessions of a Self-Published Memoirist, Part 1
I knew nothing about how to write creative nonfiction when I first put pen to paper. In school, English class didn’t excite me the way math and science did. For twenty years as a health scientist, I masterfully prepared technical reports by formulating dry, convoluted, lengthy sentences that were factually precise and grammatically correct. But telling an engaging story? I wasn’t sure I could pull it off.
When I started writing my memoir in 2008, people asked me about my story arc. I’d heard this phrase before, but I had no formal training in how to construct one. All I knew was my life was playing out like a suspense novel, and I wanted to document it—arc or no arc.
I began by converting my haphazardly scrawled journal entries into more cohesive and coherent prose. Over the next several years, I edited and rewrote, edited and rewrote, edited and rewrote. As I reread each draft, I wondered when I’d no longer stumble over my awkwardly worded sentences. Free of any deadlines, I worked on honing my skills, trying to create words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that flowed seamlessly. I continued to read other memoirs, and even a few how-to books.
Four years and innumerable drafts later, the completed manuscript stood at 375,000 words—seven hundred single-spaced pages. I discovered that this was four to five times longer than a typical memoir of 75,000 to 90,000 words.
So began the chopping process. Two years later, I had a “second” (more like five-hundredth) draft, weighing in at 130,000 words.
Heeding the advice on the internet, I hired a professional editor to offer an independent eye.
“I’ll review it when it’s closer to 90,000 words,” she insisted.
More slashing and burning.
Finally, in 2017, nine years into the endeavor, I handed the shorter version to the editor. Unfortunately, she had to stop mid-way through the job due to a family crisis. My second editor said she had to start from the beginning to ensure consistency. She helped me reduce redundancy, tighten the text, and generally clean up the manuscript.
Once I’d completed multiple back-and-forths with the editor, early readers, and charitable individuals who agreed to endorse my book, I sat down to the agonizing task of writing a summary blurb. Then, having selected the Amazon keywords and book categories in preparation for the final reveal, I was ready to upload the manuscript and click the “Publish” button. But first I needed to will myself into reading it yet another time. And I’m happy I did, because even after a million reviews, I found two mistakes.
Then there was proofing the eBook version. As much as I loved my book, I struggled through those final proofreading sessions. I’d been patient with my deadline-less approach for years, but now I couldn’t wait to be done.
Would this baby, whom I’d coddled in my literary womb for 144 months, survive the final push? On my 55th birthday, twelve years after I began pulling together my story, I self-published my 289-page, 77,000-word memoir.
I was prepared to gently cradle this newborn in my arms. Instead, she emerged not as an infant, but as a high school graduate—heading out into the world, ready to make a life of her own.
Speaking Out Through a Traumatized Mind
[Note, I wrote this eight years ago while preparing my memoir. I was saving it for when or if I had the guts to publish my memoir, which is currently being edited prior to publication; however, now seems like the right time to share it.]
They told me to write. They said it helps people with chronic pain. So I started writing. Then, intrigued by my own story, I couldn’t stop. It was time for the words to come out. Yet is it fair to share a child’s inner thoughts—those held captive for 32 years and released through the pen of a 45-year old woman? Or is it fair to have to hold in those thoughts?
Facing my traumas and feeling what they were doing to my body were essential to my healing journey, and what I want to share with others living in chronic pain. Yet can I ever print my story and show it to the world? What will it do to him? Could there be unintended negative consequences that would affect his well-being or his career? Would he lose his sanity from overwhelming guilt and shame? Would he be identified as a molester? But can a one-time offending young teen really be identified as such?
He is now a loving father and a successful professional. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his career or his mental or physical health, but what about my life and career that have been uprooted and are in ruin because of emotionally charged chronic physical pain? I held a secret for three decades; is it still my job to protect him? Am I the sacrificial lamb?
A career (my career) lost due to physical pain is presumably more acceptable than one lost from being viewed as a molester, even if that person was too young and confused to understand the ultimate consequences. Maybe this societal stigma has to do with how I ended up with this story to tell, but still scared to tell it. Or is it my inherent need to protect my perpetrator and not want to cause him harm?
What if finding my voice and needing to speak the truth precedes his coming to terms with his traumas. What if my speaking out causes him to suffer more than he already is? I don’t want anyone to suffer. Does my resolution require waiting for his?
My words are not a personal attack against him. In fact, I would hope they are a validation of the feelings all of us have who have been violated. This is not to punish him; it is to free myself, and help free others. But can I share it for what it might do to him? The purpose of telling my story is to reveal the power of trauma and emotions and their effect on chronic physical pain, and to help all victims heal.
I say to him: Hear/read my words as your own toward the person who abused you, not as chastisement for your own confused reaction. No doubt he has learned his own hard lessons. I hate what he did, but I forgive him. I hate what was done to him that caused a chain reaction that dramatically affected my life (and his, of course). At least the cycle has been broken.
Maybe the lamb must be sacrificed for new doors to open. The caterpillar’s life must end before the butterfly can emerge, fly freely, and do its worthy job of pollinating flowers to give life to a new generation of living organisms. But only with his blessing can I move forward. If he is not yet ready to dive into this abyss, I am once again stuck. Stuck swallowing my words that have taken decades to emerge. Shoving it all back down. Condoning the silent suffering of so many of us.
I feel the words must come out. Maybe I can share my story under the guise of a pseudonym, and tell every bit a true tale. Or do I omit critical details to avoid hiding behind a name? Or do I hold my silence?
What is it that compels me to speak out? Why can’t I do it privately? Why a public forum?
But how can I—how dare I—sit on the sidelines knowing of all the suffering—all the pain held inside of those who have experienced similar traumas? Others who have bravely shared their stories and their words have helped me immeasurably. The authors of each book I’ve read on sexual abuse beg us to speak out. Take this out of the closet. Make the world see the reality that goes on right under our own noses. Make the world see the suffering. Maybe then changes can be made.
If I speak this only to myself, maybe I can resolve or reduce my own suffering, but what about the many (thousands? millions?) who are afraid to speak? Maybe by speaking out I can help others to do the same—in their own way and in their own time, but in hopes of them finding greater peace and healing. Otherwise, what can I offer the world? I can’t let my pain be all in vain.
-ML Socolof
Will This Treatment Work? —My Stab at Acupuncture
Who was the first person to think of sticking someone with needles to make them feel better? Did some poor soul straggling in pain through the desert fall onto a cactus and lay there until they miraculously started to feel better?
By the end of 2017 I’d lived with chronic pain for over twelve years, and maybe unbelievably, I’d never tried acupuncture. I tried almost everything else, save chiropractic, but because I didn’t want someone jerking my injured neck around, I left that to braver souls.
Back in 2007, two years into my debilitating neck pain and just before I was ready to try ancient Chinese medicine, my pain levels dropped precipitously after I attended a two-week intensive of specialized, mind-body-based myofascial release treatment (MFR). So I decided I didn’t need to try acupuncture. Thankfully so, because I don’t like needles and I feared they would cause my body to tense up—the last thing my myofascial pain syndrome needed.
Even though MFR helped to dramatically reduce my physical pain, I still live with daily, chronic pain. After learning that my pain was trauma-based (a long story for another time), I tried a myriad of treatment techniques (described here) with little success. Since none of these satisfactorily erased my pain, in the fall of 2017, I was ready to subject myself to scary, sharp little needles.
I searched the internet for practitioners of Five Element acupuncture because a trusted MFR friend swore by this method. She said it addresses mind, body, and spirit. So maybe it could help me since my mind, body, and spirit seemed to be tangled up in nasty knots.
My distaste for needles and spending more money on something that couldn’t be guaranteed to work kept me away from acupuncture all these years. But like many times over the past twelve years, I was again desperate for more pain relief.
So I gave it a shot. Over a period of five weeks, I met four acupuncturists and was treated by three of them on four different occasions. On three of the days, I felt a small bit of increased energy for a short amount of time and one day a very brief decrease in pain and stiffness in my neck. Other than that, all it got me was less money in my pocket and a six-week spike in my pain. Like with so many other things I’ve tried, I’ll never know if I gave it enough of a fair chance, but spiking up my pain for that long has my body and mind not ever wanting to try acupuncture again. Here’s how it went down…
Finding Mr. Right
At first I was stymied trying to find an acupuncturist that practiced Five Element acupuncture, was on my insurance plan, and wasn’t too far away from where I lived. So I went looking for the closest match I could find.
On September 15, I had a free consultation with Mr. Chan, whose practice was only a few miles from my home. He wasn’t on my insurance plan, but I figured I might gain some useful information from the consult. His website said he performed acupuncture in a holistic way, so I thought it might be similar to Five Element acupuncture.
He took my pulse and asked me to stick out my tongue. He told me my digestion wasn’t good and that my blood and nutrients weren’t flowing to my neck enough, thus causing me to be in constant pain.
He said he could tell this because of my “weak and thin” pulse and because I had teeth marks on the sides of my tongue, which meant my tongue wasn’t receiving adequate nutrients to hold its shape. With a language barrier between us, I didn’t inquire further, even though I didn’t quite understand. But I could imagine that if my digestion were slow, it might not be allowing all the nutrients and blood to flow to my neck, thus keeping my neck tense and knotted.
Mr. Chan told me that if I chose to be treated by him, he would very precisely insert needles in my neck region. He said it’s better than what hands can do with manual therapy (I told him I’d had MFR bodywork). He said the acupuncture would also help with inflammation. But through my twelve years of researching and evaluating my condition, I’m pretty sure that inflammation is not causing my pain, but that’s a conversation for another time.
He said I can get better, and that it’s especially important for me to get better now, before I get older (I’m fifty-two). I also don’t fully agree with that philosophy, but I won’t bore you with that discussion at the moment either.
In an attempt to discern how much he was going to address both my body and mind, I asked, “What if it’s not just my neck that’s causing the tension; what if it’s my subconscious mind?” (I happen to know this is much of my problem.)
He said he would focus on my digestion to help nutrients flow to my neck to make it healthier. I don’t think he understood my question, but he insisted acupuncture would help me. He said it would allow me to be more comfortable and manage the pain. What he didn’t realize was that I don’t want to manage it. I’ve been managing it for over a decade. I want to conquer it.
I wasn’t completely sold on Mr. Chan. As kind as he was, I didn’t feel I would be getting the Five Element treatment I was hoping for (though I hardly knew what it was). After I left, I read that checking your pulse and tongue is not part of Five Element treatment. I concluded that Mr. Chan probably performs “traditional Chinese” acupuncture, which according to my research doesn’t incorporate the mind and spirit as much as “Classical Five Element” acupuncture does. I decided to try someone else.
Treatment #1: Uncertainty
The next day I met with Ms. Wong who was recommended by my doctor and who participates in my insurance plan. She systematically explained what she was doing as she pressed on points on my upper forearm, my hands (between my knuckles), and my feet, asking if they were tender. They were. It felt like she was pressing on bruises, with an occasional shot of pain beyond where she was touching me.
She said the spots were tender because nutrients were trapped in my neck and were not reaching my arms and legs. She took my pulse and looked at my tongue, just like Mr. Chan did.
I told her about my twelve-year pain saga and she said it’s good I came to her now, because this will make me better. I never got around to asking if it was Five Element acupuncture. There was hardly a pause in the conversation where it felt like the right time to ask.
She pointed to a chart on the wall that illustrated the acupuncture meridian lines. There were two lines that traveled from the neck down the arms. She said because I was tender in all the places where she pressed on my arms and hands, I was blocked on both those meridians. She said because the neck is narrow, there’s lots of congestion there. There are also direct lines from the neck to the feet, she said. The tender spots between my metatarsal bones on my feet confirmed blockages down those meridians, too.
After she decided that the entire route on the direct lines from my neck to my hands and feet were in need of nutrition, I felt a small poke. She said she didn’t want to disturb my sensitive neck and would work on my extremities so that nutrients would flow from them to my neck. But Mr. Chan said it was my stomach that needed to initiate the flow of nutrients and he was going to poke my neck and stomach. I didn’t understand these contradictions. Which approach was correct? Which would be more effective? Maybe this is more of an art than a science. Maybe there are different paths to the same outcome.
I felt a tiny sensation—like a bug bite—as Ms. Wong tapped one finger on top of another to force the needle into my forearm, and then into my left hand, followed by my right hand. I didn’t particularly care for the sensation as I felt my body bracing against the petite stings. I wasn’t nervous at first because I didn’t even know she was going to start inserting the needles until I felt the first prick. In fact, I wasn’t even sure she was going to do the treatment that day at all. As friends who’d had acupuncture before promised, the needles didn’t really hurt. Then she put one into my right hand that sent a shooting pain down into my finger.
“Ouch, that one hurt!” I told her.
She extracted the troublesome needle and started prodding me again with her finger looking for a better location to place the needle.
“Does this hurt. Does this hurt?” she asked as she moved her finger to various spots on my hand.
“Yes it hurts,” I said. It hurt everywhere she poked.
“It’s not even the needle, but it still hurts?”
“Well, it’s tender,” I said.
She told me to close my eyes and breathe or hold my breath when she popped the little suckers into my skin. I felt my body tensing and bracing against this affront. And with each new needle she inserted, I tensed up a little more. She said that after a while (maybe next treatment?) my body likely would get used to being stuck with needles and wouldn’t feel the need to brace against it. She re-inserted the one retracted needle a little farther back on my hand and it didn’t shoot pain this time. She proceeded to stick needles into my feet and then I felt a warm sensation.
I opened my eyes at the end of the needle injecting ceremony to see that she had placed a heat lamp near my right foot. I think it’s supposed to assist the flow of blood, or qi, or whatever is supposed to be flowing. She then set a timer for thirty-five minutes—the amount of time it takes the blood to make a complete cycle, she told me. She turned off the lights, put on soothing music, and exited the room.
I—the pincushion that I was—lay there wondering if this was going to work, and if so, how. Do the needles help the blood flow better? How deep do the needles go? Can they affect blood flow? I felt a bit of pain when they were inserted, so they might cause blood to flow to the area. After all, my body wants to protect me from the pinprick assaults, and increased blood flow is a protective response. In between my thoughts, I tried meditative breathing because maybe spending mental energy trying to figure out if this treatment was going to work or not wasn’t very productive.
She came back into the room after thirty-five minutes to remove the needles. When she was done, she grabbed a little glass jar. I heard a cigarette lighter flick and felt heat and suction on my back. Was she lighting me on fire? She apparently began “cupping” (suctioning) the skin on my neck and upper back with the jar at several locations.
The fire-aided cupping was a little too hot for comfort. Plus, the slight stretching of my skin from the suction hurt at one particularly sensitive spot.
When she was done, she asked me to move my head side-to-side. Moving my head to the end of my range of motion caused pain, as usual. She asked whether my neck felt better. It didn’t.
After over a decade of living with physical pain, I’ve learned not to expect an immediate cure. So I made three follow-up appointments. I wanted to give acupuncture a fair chance and see if my body could relax enough during treatment to allow nutrients to flow more easily. I still had hope that it could have a positive effect on my body, mind, and spirit.
The day before my next appointment, which was two weeks later, I started to freak out. I was already anxious about repeatedly being poked again, but I was even more nervous because a friend with epilepsy told me that acupuncture had triggered her epilepsy. My appointment was the next day and I was getting more anxious by the minute. When I succumbed to tears the more I thought about going, I decided I wasn’t in the right frame of mind and I cancelled my appointment. To try to figure out why I was reacting so strongly, I quieted myself and closed my eyes to dig deep into my feelings. My gut told me that the needles felt like a violation to my body. I don’t like being violated.
Treatment #2: Energy Boost
I thought maybe I should try acupressure instead. I made an appointment at a place where I thought that’s what they did, but I was wrong. So I ended up at another acupuncture appointment sixteen days after my first session with Ms. Wong, and three days after my originally scheduled second session with her. Since I was already at this new location, and my anxiety from three days earlier had calmed down, I decided to stay.
Jane, the acupuncturist, brought her clipboard into the treatment room to take notes while I told my story. I felt comfortable enough that I even told her that past trauma was associated with my chronic neck pain. For some reason I’m not always able to disclose this to a stranger, or sometimes even friends for that matter. But with Jane, I dumped the whole story on her. I felt like she understood the mind-body link that was crucial to my healing. So even though she said she didn’t perform Five Element acupuncture, I decided to let her treat me.
Like the others, she looked at my tongue (she said it was white, whatever that meant) and she took my pulse (she said it was “deep” and that she couldn’t discern anything specific about any particular organ or area of my body).
At first she said because of my chronic neck pain she would stick the needles in my neck. But after I told her the whole story, she decided to start with “trauma points”—ankles, stomach, shoulders—for fifteen minutes. Then she said she would add more needles to my ears, between my eyes, and on top of my head.
The needles didn’t feel too bad going in. When she left the room I lay motionless, not wanting to disturb the carefully placed spikes sticking out of me while trying to notice if anything was happening in my body. After a little while I first felt pressure at my temples, then my forehead, and then back at my temples again. I wondered if this was my Qi moving around my body.
She returned after about twenty or thirty minutes and removed the needles. I gathered my belongings, and since I didn’t feel any better or worse, I made two follow-up appointments, hoping I’d feel some positive effects eventually.
When I got home, I had the strange and long-overdue feeling of having a couple hours of more energy than usual. Since chronic pain drains my energy on a daily basis, I was excited to feel a surge of energy and made sure I went to my next appointment.
Treatment #3: Hopeful
A week later I returned to the place where Jane had treated me. This time Samantha was the acupuncturist. I gave her a condensed version of my story; she said she had quickly read over my notes from my session with Jane, who said I was treated for anxiety. I told Samantha I didn’t feel anxious but that a childhood trauma was linked to my neck pain. She asked if I wanted to address the anxiety/trauma or the neck. My neck pain was flared up since I’d overworked my body recently, and given that Jane had worked on my trauma the previous session, I said let’s focus on the neck.
I lay face down and she put a bunch of needles in my neck, upper back, and lower legs. The ones placed in my neck further aggravated my pain. If I tried to move my head, with my face uncomfortably positioned in the face cradle of the treatment table, the muscles in my neck where the needles were hurt even more. So I tried to stay as still as possible and relax.
She said to try to take a nap but throughout the treatment (that is, lying there doing nothing with needles in me), I wasn’t relaxed and certainly didn’t nap. I tried to breathe slowly to calm down my body. Instead I felt both my heart pounding and my neck throbbing the whole time.
Immediately after the treatment, I felt a little less stiffness and pain in my neck. When backing out of my parking space when I went to leave, I could turn my neck a little farther than usual. After I got home, I felt a little more energetic (similar to after the previous session with Jane). I was hopeful.
Samantha said my neck might hurt a little more the first day or two, but after that, it might start to feel better. I felt good for the first couple hours. Then that night my neck started to stiffen up, which continued for the next two days. It was also rainy on the second day, so maybe that was contributing to my pain and stiffness, which it often does.
By the third day, it didn’t feel as bad as the first two days, but nonetheless, it hurt more than usual. I still had an appointment the morning of that third day with Ms. Wong because I’d never gotten around to canceling it. Since it was too late to cancel without having to pay, I went back to her. I was also interested in finally asking her if she did Five Element acupuncture, and to see if her approach (of not sticking me in the neck) would be better than the treatment I got from Samantha, which had increased my pain.
Treatment #4: Six-week Spike
Back with Ms. Wong, I’d hoped to ask her more questions about her approach, but just as with the first time with her, I never found the opportunity to.
When I entered the room, she asked how I was feeling and if my neck hurt.
I said, “Yes, it always hurts, but I’m not in horrible pain.”
“What number, 4, 3?”
“Three, maybe 2,” I answered. She told me to lie on my side.
She gave me a pillow so I could get comfortable and then took my pulse and looked at my tongue. Before I knew it, she started tapping the needles into my neck. No time for chitchat.
“Just lie there and rest,” she said.
I so very much wanted this to work because in the past I’d done endless, exhaustive work digging into my emotions and traumas to try to heal and I was ready for something easy. And acupuncture is easy. Once you get past the uncomfortable pokes, all you have to do is lie there.
When she began popping the needles into me, my heart started pounding. My reptilian brain was priming to confront the assault on my body. It took maybe fifteen minutes before I felt my heart calm down and I was finally resting. This required some meditative breathing on my part, but I managed to calm down.
After about a half hour, she removed the needles and then cupped two jars onto my back and left me there for a few more minutes.
When she came back in, she took off the jars and said, “You’re done, you can get dressed now.”
After I sat up, I noticed two dots of blood on the treatment table. I didn’t think this work was supposed to draw blood. I left with a slight uneasy feeling.
About an hour after the treatment I felt a slight surge of energy, but my neck pain didn’t feel any different. However, a few hours later, my neck was hurting more. By the early evening, it felt even worse and, in fact, different from my usual pain. Extreme tension was gripping the back of my neck around where she had put the needles. It felt like someone was squeezing the back of my neck just below my skull. My neck hurt more than usual all that night and my pain stayed flared up for the next six weeks.
On My Own Again
After recovering from the flare-up, I decided not to go back. In the four experiences I had, my body and mind simply did not react positively to this treatment. Maybe I could have given it more time, but I just didn’t want to spend more money only to hurt more.
Or maybe I should find a Five Element acupuncturist, even if I have to drive far away (which aggravates my pain). I’ve also been advised that if I seek out another acupuncturist to ask how they cultivate their own qi, because acupuncture is energy medicine and how they cultivate their qi matters more than needle placement. I never managed to ask this of the practitioners I saw. For some reason it’s often hard for me to question the professionals I see, and even more so with a language barrier.
I might try qigong, which, like acupuncture, is based on the concept of blockages of the flow of qi. But unlike acupuncture, it doesn’t involve needles. Plus, I have a book (101 Trauma-Informed Interventions: Activities, Exercises and Assignments to Move the Client and Therapy Forward by Linda A. Curran) that explains ways to do this at home.
Or maybe I just need to keep addressing the emotions underlying my chronic pain to finally let go of my pain. I still don’t know what’s going to finally work for me. So the saga continues.
Stay tuned for the next episode of Will This Treatment Work?
Note: Names have been changed in this piece to ensure anonymity.
Feel free to comment on your acupuncture experiences. I’m always interested in anecdotal data to add to my brain’s library.
For more on myofascial pain and my journey, go to my full website: http://www.healingfromchronicpain.com/home.html
September 1, 2015
Ten years ago
From today
A simple roll
In bed that day
Popped a disc
Out of its place
Brought on the pain
And then the race
To stop the pain
And heal this bod
To finally find
I’d been a fraud
I lived my happy
Little life
Free from nearly
Any strife
Until my neck
It just gave way
I learned I had
A price to pay
Long lost pain
Deep and dark
Came to me
Like a shark
Stealthily cruising
Through the sea
It took a bite
Right out of me
The pain, so sharp
It would not stop
Until I faced
The dreadful part
Of my life
That scared me so
The truth can be
So hard, you know
And here I am
Ten years gone by
With all the work I’ve done
I cry
The tears still come
They say let go
I try and try
But somehow, no
The pain, though less
It won’t give up
It still resides inside; no rest.
Ten years ago
From today
The journey started
Now I say
Oh please, oh please, oh please
Let go
I’ve done my time
Don’t you know
I’ve done the work
I’ve paid my dues
It’s time to end
This lengthy ruse
The power sits in me
I know
So come on baby
Let it go!
Healing From Chronic Pain 
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