Re-injured an old injury and trying to figure out how to not allow it to become chronic pain.

Hello,
I slipped and fell on icy steps about 5 days ago and hurt my lower back and si joint. The pain I had in my neck (for 2 years) has faded away to almost nothing. I know it's done that as my mind has been focused on the back pain and I'm wondering if the back pain will become chronic, similar to a back injury I had 20 years ago. I'm about to finish reading The Way Out and then read it again to see how to avoid that! Hope this makes sense. If anyone reads this and has experienced something similar, please chime in.

 

@Rinkey! A name from the past!

I know you know that our wonderful TMS docs, starting with Dr. Sarno, continue to assure us that our bodies are designed to heal from physical injuries - and that after healing takes place, residual pain is TMS, which becomes chronic when we obsess about it instead of addressing what's really going on. The key is to figure out, acknowledge, and take care of what's going on, whether that's repressed emotions, or neural pathways that are stuck as a result of chronic anxiety - or any combination of reasons in between. For most of us, I believe it's a combination, which is being exacerbated, I also believe, by the multiple dysfunctions of modern technology, world affairs, and, of course, the pandemic that never ends.

I haven't been doing so great since about 2016, but I maintain faith that nothing I experience needs to be chronic - even my RA diagnosis, which I blame 100% on the stress of 2020, on top of four years of growing societal dysfunction. We'll see.

~Jan