My Story
A pain story
My name is Kristen Pierce. I am a wife and mother who overcame years of chronic pain. As a certified life coach and certified Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) coach and practitioner, I work with individuals who experience chronic pain and other chronic conditions. I also use PRT to assist those dealing with mild to moderate anxiety and depression in order to help regulate the nervous system without the use of drugs.
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An accident in 2001 left me with a fractured neck, bulging discs, stenosis, degenerative disc disease, arthritis, and all the other labels that doctors had put on me. With that diagnosis ingrained in my brain, my pain grew worse over the next sixteen years. Each time my neck would flare up, it became harder and harder to get out of pain. After using up all of the tactics that were used to get me out of pain, one day, the pain just wouldn’t go away. I had exhausted every therapy suggested by my doctors, including physical therapy, yoga, massage, Egoscue postural therapy, stretching, ice/heat, acupuncture, pills, laser therapy; you name it, I tried it! After six epidurals and a spinal surgery later, I was still in horrible, debilitating pain.
At this point, I could barely hold my head on my neck and would pace back and forth if I were not lying down flat in bed. I stopped living and doing all the things that I normally did because they brought me pain. I started to rule out many activities and ended up mostly bedridden. At this point, I could barely take care of my children, who were babies at the time. It was heartbreaking. I felt like a failed mother, and I was anxious and depressed. I had officially hit rock bottom. I knew I could not live like this anymore. I needed to get help. This is where pain psychology comes in. I started to research pain psychology after randomly hearing Howard Stern discuss Dr. John Sarno on the radio
(Videos and Resources page). I read several books on the subject of TMS (Tension Myositis Syndrome) and Pain Reprocessing Therapy. I found a therapist who could help me, and that is where my pain recovery journey began.
Can you imagine a life free of pain without doctors or surgery?
I couldn’t at the time, but my faith in God gave me the peace in knowing that one day, somehow, I would eventually get out of pain. I believe that God designed us perfectly with a body that can heal itself. He did not design the body to be in pain. And so I went for it and followed the protocol.
It was mesmerizing to think that I had held the power to create the pain-free life I wanted that whole time. I simply didn’t have the tools! I had been creating the pain all by myself with my negative, anxious, repetitive thoughts. I was paying attention to the pain and reinforcing it by focusing my whole day on it. In the past, I was always waiting for some miracle medical cure band-aid to come and save me. But those are just temporary fixes for a much bigger problem....Your Mind! It’s not the body that needs fixing, it’s the brain! The bulging discs, degenerative disc disease, arthritis, stenosis, unfused disc, etc., are all still very present today in my body and most likely worse. However, I have been completely pain-free for eight years.
Now is my time to pay it forward. I believe so wholeheartedly in the pain recovery process I went through to get out of pain that I want to share it with other chronic pain sufferers. I am here to help give you the tools to change your life forever. Not only do I want to help get you out of pain, both physically and emotionally, but I also want to give you tools you can use for many aspects of your life moving forward.
