I hurt my back in July and it was a small herniation. I had planned a trip to Las Vegas and the Mohave desert on the weekend before Halloween and was very stressed about not being able to enjoy myself. The Mojave desert tour was going to require a lot of walking and it seemed like a daunting task. My pain decreased enough and I took a combination of Advil and Tylenol for the entire time I was on the trip Saturday through Monday. The day after I got back from the trip, my back loosened up considerably and I was able to get back to the gym to lift weights. So I completely agree that stress can contribute to back pain.
It was an eye opener for me as well. Led me down the path of self examination. I had a lot of time lying there on my back. I went deep into my past since I've had back problems for close to 40 years. Each time it could be associated with some sort of trauma anxiety. I even realized why it seemed to happen before I went on vacation. Now that I'm on the other side its so easy to see why it happens to my friends. Each on is going through some sort of sh\*tstorm and can't understand why their back is in pain. I also connect it to 1st and 2nd chakra issues.
I was skeptical at first. But after 9 months of debilitating pain (couldn’t ride in the car more than 20 minutes, could only work from bed) and months of PT and epidural injection and nothing so significant on my MRI (minor herniation, should have already healed). The doctors had nothing for me - just some people have more back pain than others, no other suggestions or guidance. And I was only getting worse for no reason.
I thought there is no harm in trying this book. I had progress right away and after 8 weeks I was 80% better. Now 6 months later I am 90% better. Changed my life and changed my outcomes.
I have struggled with depression and anxiety, so I was no stranger to these feelings, but I did a lot of therapy, so I thought I was past a lot of it.
I think this time around I had to do some “shadow work” which is addressing the anger I felt embarrassed about, feelings of entitlement, being angry about work, even though from the outside it looks like I had a good job, sad that I’ve been single for 14 years, why doesn’t anyone like me? This back pain is preventing me from meeting people which felt very unfair. How did I get so old. why I I grow up poor? Everyone else is ahead of me in life in a thousand ways.
All the stuff that I felt like I should have grown out of, all the stuff I would feel embarrassed to tell my friends I was feeling. All the stuff I didn’t believe I felt because I already worked through it and didn’t think I that I was still that person.
It can be kinda ugly to dig around in there. I had to ask my back, what are you mad about? and just lay there, quietly, no music, no internet, no tv and focusing on my breathing. Some of it dredged up, some caused tightness in my jaw. It’s not easy to tap into it, because I had been blocking it off.
Maybe half was how unfair I thought I was that my back hurt and how much it was preventing me from living life. I felt like I was still living in Covid jail while everyone else retuned to regular life because of my back pain.
Just a lot of ugly petty stuff that I wished wasn’t me. But once I let myself feel and express it, I started to let it go and move past it.
What helped you more you think…journaling like like he talks about in the book or was it asking your body what was wrong and just feeling whatever emotion that popped up? A lot of emotions I’ve ran from for so long I’m afraid to face them cause I know mentally it’s gonna be hard. But I have to do this I’ve spent the last 7 years being a prisoner to my own body.
I’ve found when his philosophy worked for me , and it totally has ….that I don’t really need to dissect my psychology and do to much . Just simply knowing it’s not a physical injury or wearing away of my discs or anything physical …that’s it’s mental and I’m totally fine outside of the pain , that knowledge in itself relieves everything for me .
Probably first by relieving my stress , because as people do, when dealing with chronic pain, I’ll theorize and convince myself of what’s going on inside my body and how it’s injured or aging prematurely . So then that probably becomes a self fulfilling cycle with stress to keep pain going .
I think the basics and general ah-ha of Sarnos approach is enough usually to untangle that and get relief .
Like I’m doing now after a few days of aches and tightness , I’ll start looking up Sarno again and reading other success stories , just to remember and become optimistic again . Because appropriately , when I’m having pain the doom and gloom start etc .
So that’s helped me in the past
About 95% better. I still have daily pain, but I can walk 10,000 steps, walk around Manhattan with a backpack (for carrying my laptop to/from work). I work in and office for 8 hours a day, where before I was barely able to sit at a desk for 1 hour. So worlds better than where I was a year ago.
Highly recommend!! The audio books are free on YouTube.
It’s a matter of reminding yourself constantly that your back has no structural abnormalities and that the pain is harmless— it’s just from pent up emotions because your brain is distracting you physically so you don’t consciously have to deal with said emotions. I always thought I was a carefree person with no anger or stress— but I’ve come to realize that is not the case. I just don’t address those feelings.
Also, breathing exercises really help too.
I wish you a speedy recovery!
Can this help if I got back pain from gaming on a bad chair? I also have cervical and lumbar problems in MRI
I got back pain in 4 different spots, have no idea what to do tbh
From your post history I would really really recommend you read Sarno's book, The Mindbody Prescription. I had a lot of poorly understood chronic issues after COVID like you, obsessively researched possible organic causes for months, and his book was the only thing that helped, and it really helped immensely.
As for your back issues, all of this is very much within the realm of psychosomatic pain. Most chronic back pain begins with a perceived injury, like in the case of your gaming chair, when in reality there is no structural damage. As for your spinal abnormalities, the majority of the population has all kinds of stuff screwed up with their back: slipped discs, spondylosis, you name it, but most of them don't have pain. In fact, there isn't really an established correlation between chronic back pain and spinal abnormalities whatsoever. Sarno addresses all of this and more in the book, I would really give it a chance!
Interesting, my pelvic floor issues began a few years before my post covid issues as well, after a very stressful semester at college. I did get a small amount of relief from reading the book, but it really took me a while to get over my symptoms. I think for me the two biggest issues that I needed to address were the underlying emotional issues, and especially that my thought processes and basically the way my mind worked made it *very* difficult to stop obsessing about symptoms constantly.
I had to address both these things: Nicole Sachs' podcast was very helpful for the former (I would start with the first few episodes, she explains everything about the journaling process), and for the latter I listened to Claire Weekes' advice on how to recover from nervous illness -- she specifically refers to anxiety/depression/phobias, but her advice applies 100% to somatic symptoms too. Alan Gordon, Dan Buglio also have good advice for this. It's not just the emotional repression but also the fear of symptoms that sustains the symptom cycle imo, and you basically have to teach your brain to stop fearing the symptoms and learn to accept them as they come, which can take a while since those neural pathways can be very embedded at this point. Your brain will continue to default to fear at first, but if you teach it to default to acceptance (which requires practice) you can find the way out. Also trying to resume some normal activities was very helpful in building my confidence -- I went slowly with this, building my way up because I knew going out and running a marathon my first day would crash me and just make the fear worse.
I wish I got the book cure that some other people seem to get, but I was (and still am to a degree) so wound-up I had to work through things slowly and methodically. I had a lot of ups and downs. I also tend to think people with a ton of different crazy symptoms typically take longer to recover than those with a single symptom like back pain. tmswiki.org is an amazing resource with a recovery program and a forum that has a lot of very helpful people who have themselves recovered and just want to help others out of this pit, so you can always go there if you want advice or support. Probably the only 'chronic illness' forum that uplifted me instead of dragging me deeper. All in all I had a pretty bumpy recovery, my brain played a lot of tricks on me to keep me stuck in fear throughout, and it was a process learning to accept when that happened and to let it go. I'd see a slight remission, become immediately fearful of symptoms returning...which of course caused them to return, and then I'd beat myself up for blowing it. Breaking that cycle was for me the path to real recovery. Good luck!!
Great post thank you for sharing this. Can I ask what your symptoms were which were helped with this? Fully agree that delving deep into chronic illness communities only worsens things - which alone points towards there being an obsessive component in regards to symptoms which makes it worse
I had many different symptoms - dysautonomia, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, pelvic floor dysfunction, rashes, hair loss, neuropathy, and the list goes on. One of my weirder symptoms was frequent cloudy urine. They’re all gone now. I think it’s not really helpful to think of each symptom as its own issue, really they’re all interchangeable with one another. Even in the process of healing my symptoms ‘moved around’ - one symptom would disappear, and another that I hadn’t gotten in a while would come back. It’s all one thing
I did have to slowly reintroduce activity. Immediately I stopped wearing my heart monitor, and after I gained more confidence I stopped monitoring my heart rate entirely. I noticed improvement on that front pretty quickly. Fear is imo more important than rage in a lot of cases. You’ll have to figure out a pace that works for you, don’t go out and run a marathon the first day because the inevitable crash will just scare you worse, but you’ll find you can push it further as you regain confidence.
It’s very possible journaling isn’t as important in your case, but it’s also possible you still have deeper unaddressed issues. It’s something only you can figure out. I kept journaling until I was better, even when it felt like I’d already gotten most of the significant stuff out of the way. I do think after that initial period of journaling, which did give me some remission in symptoms, addressing fear of the symptoms themselves, fear of reinfection etc. became more important to get me the rest of the way out. This whole thing is a bit like a Chinese finger trap — you can’t brace against it. Even when your heart is pounding out of your chest you should try reach some kind of mental peace and acceptance despite the symptoms. Urgency is a killer. It’s difficult, and it takes time and practice to be able to do that but it can be done.
Her advice was in a similar vein to Dan Buglio, but I found she really clicked with me a lot better. I listened to a series of recordings she made called ‘How to Recover’ where she really just explains everything. She’s very assuring. I think you can find them on tmswiki, they’re about an hour long in total. I could also send them to you, I compiled them into one file for convenience since I listened to them many times.
What you describe is my situation. I first read Dr. Sarno's books ten years ago for excruciating leg pain. I had a "book cure". That particular pain never came back. Since then, weird symptoms pop up. I know that they are classic TMS. They last awhile, subside, and appear in some other form. The key seems to be not believing the pain signals that the brain is sending. Whenever I have a symptom, google it, and find out that doctors don't know the cause, I know that I am having what I call a Sarno Symptom. Thank you for your post. It's good to know that my situation isn't unique!
I hurt my back in July and it was a small herniation. I had planned a trip to Las Vegas and the Mohave desert on the weekend before Halloween and was very stressed about not being able to enjoy myself. The Mojave desert tour was going to require a lot of walking and it seemed like a daunting task. My pain decreased enough and I took a combination of Advil and Tylenol for the entire time I was on the trip Saturday through Monday. The day after I got back from the trip, my back loosened up considerably and I was able to get back to the gym to lift weights. So I completely agree that stress can contribute to back pain.
It was an eye opener for me as well. Led me down the path of self examination. I had a lot of time lying there on my back. I went deep into my past since I've had back problems for close to 40 years. Each time it could be associated with some sort of trauma anxiety. I even realized why it seemed to happen before I went on vacation. Now that I'm on the other side its so easy to see why it happens to my friends. Each on is going through some sort of sh\*tstorm and can't understand why their back is in pain. I also connect it to 1st and 2nd chakra issues.
Yes, he’s a saint and it was a game changer for me too. I think a lot of people in this sub could benefit from reading the book and giving it a go
I was skeptical at first. But after 9 months of debilitating pain (couldn’t ride in the car more than 20 minutes, could only work from bed) and months of PT and epidural injection and nothing so significant on my MRI (minor herniation, should have already healed). The doctors had nothing for me - just some people have more back pain than others, no other suggestions or guidance. And I was only getting worse for no reason. I thought there is no harm in trying this book. I had progress right away and after 8 weeks I was 80% better. Now 6 months later I am 90% better. Changed my life and changed my outcomes.
I’ve read the book but I can’t identify my repressed anger and anxiety. Really suffering from pain. How did you do it?
I have struggled with depression and anxiety, so I was no stranger to these feelings, but I did a lot of therapy, so I thought I was past a lot of it. I think this time around I had to do some “shadow work” which is addressing the anger I felt embarrassed about, feelings of entitlement, being angry about work, even though from the outside it looks like I had a good job, sad that I’ve been single for 14 years, why doesn’t anyone like me? This back pain is preventing me from meeting people which felt very unfair. How did I get so old. why I I grow up poor? Everyone else is ahead of me in life in a thousand ways. All the stuff that I felt like I should have grown out of, all the stuff I would feel embarrassed to tell my friends I was feeling. All the stuff I didn’t believe I felt because I already worked through it and didn’t think I that I was still that person. It can be kinda ugly to dig around in there. I had to ask my back, what are you mad about? and just lay there, quietly, no music, no internet, no tv and focusing on my breathing. Some of it dredged up, some caused tightness in my jaw. It’s not easy to tap into it, because I had been blocking it off. Maybe half was how unfair I thought I was that my back hurt and how much it was preventing me from living life. I felt like I was still living in Covid jail while everyone else retuned to regular life because of my back pain. Just a lot of ugly petty stuff that I wished wasn’t me. But once I let myself feel and express it, I started to let it go and move past it.
Belatedly posting to say thanks. I could identify with a lot of what you wrote.
What helped you more you think…journaling like like he talks about in the book or was it asking your body what was wrong and just feeling whatever emotion that popped up? A lot of emotions I’ve ran from for so long I’m afraid to face them cause I know mentally it’s gonna be hard. But I have to do this I’ve spent the last 7 years being a prisoner to my own body.
I’ve found when his philosophy worked for me , and it totally has ….that I don’t really need to dissect my psychology and do to much . Just simply knowing it’s not a physical injury or wearing away of my discs or anything physical …that’s it’s mental and I’m totally fine outside of the pain , that knowledge in itself relieves everything for me . Probably first by relieving my stress , because as people do, when dealing with chronic pain, I’ll theorize and convince myself of what’s going on inside my body and how it’s injured or aging prematurely . So then that probably becomes a self fulfilling cycle with stress to keep pain going . I think the basics and general ah-ha of Sarnos approach is enough usually to untangle that and get relief . Like I’m doing now after a few days of aches and tightness , I’ll start looking up Sarno again and reading other success stories , just to remember and become optimistic again . Because appropriately , when I’m having pain the doom and gloom start etc . So that’s helped me in the past
How're you now?
About 95% better. I still have daily pain, but I can walk 10,000 steps, walk around Manhattan with a backpack (for carrying my laptop to/from work). I work in and office for 8 hours a day, where before I was barely able to sit at a desk for 1 hour. So worlds better than where I was a year ago.
There IS a mind body connection it is undeniable. Will get the book. I’m strung out asf.
Highly recommend!! The audio books are free on YouTube. It’s a matter of reminding yourself constantly that your back has no structural abnormalities and that the pain is harmless— it’s just from pent up emotions because your brain is distracting you physically so you don’t consciously have to deal with said emotions. I always thought I was a carefree person with no anger or stress— but I’ve come to realize that is not the case. I just don’t address those feelings. Also, breathing exercises really help too. I wish you a speedy recovery!
Can this help if I got back pain from gaming on a bad chair? I also have cervical and lumbar problems in MRI I got back pain in 4 different spots, have no idea what to do tbh
From your post history I would really really recommend you read Sarno's book, The Mindbody Prescription. I had a lot of poorly understood chronic issues after COVID like you, obsessively researched possible organic causes for months, and his book was the only thing that helped, and it really helped immensely. As for your back issues, all of this is very much within the realm of psychosomatic pain. Most chronic back pain begins with a perceived injury, like in the case of your gaming chair, when in reality there is no structural damage. As for your spinal abnormalities, the majority of the population has all kinds of stuff screwed up with their back: slipped discs, spondylosis, you name it, but most of them don't have pain. In fact, there isn't really an established correlation between chronic back pain and spinal abnormalities whatsoever. Sarno addresses all of this and more in the book, I would really give it a chance!
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Interesting, my pelvic floor issues began a few years before my post covid issues as well, after a very stressful semester at college. I did get a small amount of relief from reading the book, but it really took me a while to get over my symptoms. I think for me the two biggest issues that I needed to address were the underlying emotional issues, and especially that my thought processes and basically the way my mind worked made it *very* difficult to stop obsessing about symptoms constantly. I had to address both these things: Nicole Sachs' podcast was very helpful for the former (I would start with the first few episodes, she explains everything about the journaling process), and for the latter I listened to Claire Weekes' advice on how to recover from nervous illness -- she specifically refers to anxiety/depression/phobias, but her advice applies 100% to somatic symptoms too. Alan Gordon, Dan Buglio also have good advice for this. It's not just the emotional repression but also the fear of symptoms that sustains the symptom cycle imo, and you basically have to teach your brain to stop fearing the symptoms and learn to accept them as they come, which can take a while since those neural pathways can be very embedded at this point. Your brain will continue to default to fear at first, but if you teach it to default to acceptance (which requires practice) you can find the way out. Also trying to resume some normal activities was very helpful in building my confidence -- I went slowly with this, building my way up because I knew going out and running a marathon my first day would crash me and just make the fear worse. I wish I got the book cure that some other people seem to get, but I was (and still am to a degree) so wound-up I had to work through things slowly and methodically. I had a lot of ups and downs. I also tend to think people with a ton of different crazy symptoms typically take longer to recover than those with a single symptom like back pain. tmswiki.org is an amazing resource with a recovery program and a forum that has a lot of very helpful people who have themselves recovered and just want to help others out of this pit, so you can always go there if you want advice or support. Probably the only 'chronic illness' forum that uplifted me instead of dragging me deeper. All in all I had a pretty bumpy recovery, my brain played a lot of tricks on me to keep me stuck in fear throughout, and it was a process learning to accept when that happened and to let it go. I'd see a slight remission, become immediately fearful of symptoms returning...which of course caused them to return, and then I'd beat myself up for blowing it. Breaking that cycle was for me the path to real recovery. Good luck!!
Great post thank you for sharing this. Can I ask what your symptoms were which were helped with this? Fully agree that delving deep into chronic illness communities only worsens things - which alone points towards there being an obsessive component in regards to symptoms which makes it worse
I had many different symptoms - dysautonomia, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, pelvic floor dysfunction, rashes, hair loss, neuropathy, and the list goes on. One of my weirder symptoms was frequent cloudy urine. They’re all gone now. I think it’s not really helpful to think of each symptom as its own issue, really they’re all interchangeable with one another. Even in the process of healing my symptoms ‘moved around’ - one symptom would disappear, and another that I hadn’t gotten in a while would come back. It’s all one thing
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I did have to slowly reintroduce activity. Immediately I stopped wearing my heart monitor, and after I gained more confidence I stopped monitoring my heart rate entirely. I noticed improvement on that front pretty quickly. Fear is imo more important than rage in a lot of cases. You’ll have to figure out a pace that works for you, don’t go out and run a marathon the first day because the inevitable crash will just scare you worse, but you’ll find you can push it further as you regain confidence. It’s very possible journaling isn’t as important in your case, but it’s also possible you still have deeper unaddressed issues. It’s something only you can figure out. I kept journaling until I was better, even when it felt like I’d already gotten most of the significant stuff out of the way. I do think after that initial period of journaling, which did give me some remission in symptoms, addressing fear of the symptoms themselves, fear of reinfection etc. became more important to get me the rest of the way out. This whole thing is a bit like a Chinese finger trap — you can’t brace against it. Even when your heart is pounding out of your chest you should try reach some kind of mental peace and acceptance despite the symptoms. Urgency is a killer. It’s difficult, and it takes time and practice to be able to do that but it can be done.
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Her advice was in a similar vein to Dan Buglio, but I found she really clicked with me a lot better. I listened to a series of recordings she made called ‘How to Recover’ where she really just explains everything. She’s very assuring. I think you can find them on tmswiki, they’re about an hour long in total. I could also send them to you, I compiled them into one file for convenience since I listened to them many times.
What you describe is my situation. I first read Dr. Sarno's books ten years ago for excruciating leg pain. I had a "book cure". That particular pain never came back. Since then, weird symptoms pop up. I know that they are classic TMS. They last awhile, subside, and appear in some other form. The key seems to be not believing the pain signals that the brain is sending. Whenever I have a symptom, google it, and find out that doctors don't know the cause, I know that I am having what I call a Sarno Symptom. Thank you for your post. It's good to know that my situation isn't unique!