New Program Day 1

Hello!
I read Dr. Sarno's book Healing Back Pain this past weekend, after someone told me about it...ahem...over a year ago. I've had intermittent low back pain for about 15 years, and for the last two years I have had sciatica, with numbness and tingling in my right leg and foot.

About every two years my back goes completely "out;" I have intense and debilitating muscle spasms, to the point where I have fainted from the pain. When it happened two years ago and I had sciatica for the first time, and I've never regained feeling in my right foot.

A year and a half ago I had surgery (microdiscectomy) to "fix" the disk bulge that the doctors said was impinging on my sciatic nerve. Nothing changed after the surgery.

Over the years I have had physical therapy, acupuncture, massage, adjustments, steroid injections, and finally a failed surgery. I (of course) started to read this book just as another one of my biennial back spasms was kicking in (I couldn't have picked this up, like, a month ago??). Everything I read in the book, and everything I've devoured online in the last two days makes sense to me. My back pain changes (I had forgotten that I had intense upper back pain when I was 17, explained away by my mild scoliosis), and I think some of the personality traits mentioned in the book apply to me.

I don't consider myself a perfectionist, but I definitely am a people-pleaser, and I take on a lot of work and activities. My job has been fairly stressful for the last 15 years, although everyone notes how I never seem stressed out. I'm pretty upbeat most of the time, and I think I tend to bury any feelings of unpleasantness. I can't say I have had any remarkable traumatic life events, but I feel like the little bumps in life never throw me, and that's probably because I am pushing things way down (like down into my lower back, damn it).

I'm nervous about this process. I feel like intellectually I understand the concept and I believe it, but I don't know how to teach my subconscious to get with the program. I think I am being impatient too, since I am in the middle of one of these episodes right now. It's hard to ignore pain.

I'm not sure what to do next. Wow this was a long post.