Day 3

Funny timing on the topic of today. The last time I exercised was this morning actually. I'll come back to how I currently feel in a little bit.

I have had chronic back pain on and off for the past 13 years. It comes, it goes, but ultimately it always passes. It was 2+ years ago that I had been living with severe pain for several months. I had gone through the entire ringer of treatments (physical therapy, epidural injections, facet join injections, medication), everything but surgery. When my orthopedic looked at my x-rays he repeately told me the same thing; I have a slight herniation in my L5/S1 and that it will cause slight discomfort, but it shouldn't be debilitating. Still, I was in agonizing pain throughout the work week.

I read Dr. Sarno's book 2 years ago and felt immediate relief. As is almost always the case, it came back because I had not dealt with the underlying issues living in my subconsciousness. One day, after nearly a month of slow progress in feeling better, I made the pledge to return to the one activity that makes me the happiest in the world, rugby. I vowed that I would use that as my last barrier of not letting my TMS handcuff me into doing what I want to do. For 1 month, I trained for an upcoming fall season. I lifted weights, ran, did agility exercises, the whole 9 yards. I went through the entire fall season with almost no back pain. What's more, I hadn't felt that "alive" in years!

That winter (2016), as I continued to train for the upcoming spring season I "tweaked" my back while doing power cleans in the gym. I took a couple of days off of work and started reading TMS material as well as journaling. I was back to lifting weights (heavily I might add) within a month. For the most part, 2016 was a great year in that I had close to zero setbacks in my TMS experience. I played and trained for two seasons of rugby (spring & fall), hiked, golfed, skied, ran, etc. There were no physical limitations to what I would do. Even though I was 35, I felt just as good as if I were 21 again (to a certain degree).

The only true setback that I did have in 2016 came at the end (November) and I would consider myself still going through it. It was a Friday, and I felt the "twitch" coming on early in the morning, and progressively growing as the day went on. As I walked to the train station, I felt it "peaking". As my walk continued, a lady stopped abruptly in front of me, which required a hard stop and swerve in order to avoid running into her. I felt my lower back kick into full tense mode. However, I was back in the gym, lifting again within a month.

Last week, while lifting, it went again. A couple of days off, and I was back at it. However, the pain has been coming back pretty hard this week. Today has been pretty bad. I lifted this morning and the pain has every so suddenly increased as the day went on.

I'm breathing, I'm journaling, I'm believing, but still that pain!

 

Hi, jjnyc. I think you diagnosed yourself accurately. You need to do more journaling to discover the emotions causing your pain. It's great that you are exercising and playing rugby again. Now get to those harmful emotions. Looks to me like they are in your past... something or things or relationships that you are repressing.
Maybe write down a list of things or people that make you happy and those that give you anxiety or cause fear or anger.