Thirty years of severe back pain gone, using mock violence

The back pain I endured for three decades seemed to be a natural result of my profession as a geologist working summers in the most remote and rugged parts of the Arctic wilderness. Carrying 100-pound-plus backpacks of rocks up and down steep, unstable talus slopes, in freezing rain, with high winds batting me around, or bent over for hours extracting fossil specimens from solid rock with a sledge hammer and chisels in freezing weather, or helping load a 400-pound fuel drum into a small bush plane, seemed like a guaranteed way to wreck my back. Turns out it wasn't.


However, once I read Healing Back Pain and thought about my situation, I realized that my back never hurt in the Arctic when I was using it to the maximum. My back "went out" when I was back home doing ordinary things that did not approach in intensity the way I used my back in the Far North. Sarno's ideas about childhood rage struck a chord with me. Up to then I had mentally put my mother on a pedestal. However, after reading and rereading Sarno's book, I took my mother off of the pedestal; then I took the pedestal and mentally beat the hell out of dear old mom (and dad too). They were then long-deceased, so no parents were harmed in healing myself of childhood trauma and bidding goodbye to back pain.


I have read many TMS Success Stories, and none employed the physicality that I did, but it worked like a charm to heal me. When I got tired of pounding mom into mush with the pedestal, I imagined my parents' heads as speed bags/punching bags at the gym and gleefully punched them to simthereens, usually together. You can think of all kinds of creative ways to deal with parent-inflicted trauma once you get going. Example: I imagined myself piloting a P-51 Mustang fighter and strafing my childhood home, with them in it, with .50-caliber bullets and rockets until it was a smoking pile of ruins. Knives and baseball bats also made for colorful parental thrashings.


I dedicated myself to this necessary task of daily venting anger that my inner self had accumulated since boyhood. As time went on, my lower back pain faded away, followed by that ice pick-like stabbing pain beside my shoulder blades, then other misc. aches and pains. The whole process of shedding TMS pain took 2-3 months, which included daily mental savaging of my parents, and reading and underlining and rereading Sarno's book and frequently looking at his DVD showing him lecturing. The whole while I kept firmly in mind that my current bodily pain derived from my raging inner child producing it as a distraction, so that I would focus on the pain and ignore its childhood source. Not a trick I fall for anymore.


I came to realize that several episodes of BS medical crisis in my life, including a lucrative (for the predatory MDs) abdominal operation and long, painful hospital stay for "irritable bowel syndrome") were TMS reactions to stressful events in my life. Sarno got me to stop enriching chiropractors and masseurs. If ever a bodily pain begins to form these days, I instantly make fun of it, including roundly cursing it, and sometimes punching out my parents. At the gym, if my right knee starts being painful I say, "Nice try, stupid, but last time you made my left knee hurt. Can't you even remember which knee you want to hurt?" The pain then vanishes that instant or a few minutes later.


I began my career with an institution I loved, but around twenty years on it changed management and became an unpleasant, stressful place to work. I was forever having gut problems during those later years. Since I was knowledgeable about TMS at this stage of my life, I moved to another institution, where the stress was less, and the gut problems went away; a good tradeoff.


Fighting (literally!) against TMS pain was central to defeating it, for me. I'm very sensitive to what stress does to my body these days, and always watchful of what my inner child is upset about. The events I describe here happened a few years ago and back pain has not reappeared. I haven't read about anyone else resolving back pain with mock violence, but it worked like a charm for me and I'm writing about it because it may be a useful tool for others.

 

What a great post! And timely for me, as I’m going through another layer of my childhood abuse onion. Listened to some good angry songs today. That helped. Had to smile, laugh and even gleefully giggle at the thought of borrowing some of your mock violence examples. (Then I’ll make up my own new ones. Yours are so much more creative than I’ve ever been.) I think Howard Schubiner uses mock violence in his book, Unlearn Your Pain. This is inspiring what you’ve written. Thank you so much for sharing it. And I’m glad to know you’re no longer under the thumb of TMS.

 

Yes, I have used this strategy quite a bit. The Penultimate scene in "Casino" come to mind. (Beaten to death with Baseball bats, after being forced to watch your Brother beaten to death ; then buried alive)

I grew up in a lot of violence. I had a lot of other problems, but no TMS until I stopped being violent.

When I read Sarno it was easy to see how an abruptly checked "ID of a 5 year old", being replaced by "Moses the Rule maker" necessitated the need of a distraction.

It is also very therapeutic to go and blow stuff up with firearms. We used to leave the county with a lot of furniture in the truck. Then we'd line it up against a mountainside and open up a fusillade into old couches, chairs and Pet furniture. It only takes one box of 12 gauge magnum ammo to reduce a 'Cat tower' into a heap of shredded fabric. My Imagination ran vivid movies of people and their possessions that I'd love to annihilate.
I learned how to operate a lot of different vintage and modern guns, learned safety and bruised the Snot out of my shoulder from all the recoil...and my pain was less and less every time we went.

Beating the snot out of bags and stuff while enumerating the alleged offenders violations of your self is very therapeutic. I have always said, getting over TMS requires a lot of imagination and Chutzpa. So very natural, and miles away from the cold, diagnostic 'scientific' crap that we dumped money into for years to only get worse.

The whole world is advertising to you...You need to advertise in your own head to fight it off

 

When I was a wild and very angry divorced mother with a violent ex, I was very in touch with my anger. Painted my nails a color of red that was almost black. It’s the only color I wore. And I always wore it. Then years and years later, I became Aunt B from Andy of Mayberry and problems dumped on in layers, heavier and heavier—and my body blew up in pain. It’s terrible to think that being very into your peace loving religion can make you sick. But I Know God doesn’t want me debilitated and miserable. I’m going to have to light this fuse.