Day 10 Healed from Tennis Elbow but no results with lower back pain

Hello everybody,

I'm a musician from Brazil that have suffered with Tennis Elbow from 2012 to 2014 and have healed from it since i've became in touch with Dr. Sarno's books.
I've had such complete healing that i became a very enthusiastic proselytizer of Dr. Sarno's books to my friends who are suffering from illness no one seems to figure what is.
I'm a great believer in TMS diagnostics and in the fact that i have all the personality traits to be prone to it.
I'm a typical goodist, very religious, kinda perfectionist, overly conscientious, low self-esteem/narcissist , very sentimental and always afraid of being emotionally wounded.

Since the beginning of the year (2017) i've been suffering with a very disabling lower back pain.
I'm pretty sure i know the emotional circumstances that's causing it.
I'm temporarily living with my wife and daughter in my mother-in-law's home since my wife is pregnant of our second child and our apartment is rented so we can have money to go to a bigger apartment.
(That's a lot of pressure, i know)

Besides that, i've suffered a lot of moral/emotional abuse (not sexual) from my alcoholic father and my overly protective mother since my early childhood (since they were divorced when she was pregnant of me).

I've reread of Dr. Sarno's books, have seem his lecture in DVD and i'm on day 10 of this Wiki page structured educational program but although the pain shift from one side to the the, in intensity and sometimes it irradiates to numbness on my leg(s), it don't seem to be working this time and i'm loosing faith.

Sorry to be so open and emotional, but i just can't stand (literally, since the pain almost always begins after i'm sitting down for sometime) feeling any more pain....

I have no more energy through the day, not much willingness to do anything and i'm almost always in a bad mood.

This time it's seeming so much hard to treat this TMS and i can't figure out why.

Please, any encouragement and tips for my treatment would me much appreciated.

Thank you so much for your attention and support!
May God bless all of you always!

P.S: Sorry about my english.

 

Boy, that sounds familiar and similar to my own childhood conflicts. Wonder if that's a common element in the personalities of people who develop TMS?

Sounds like a classic case of symptom substitution where you got rid of your so-called tennis elbow and then developed lower back pain (LBP) as an equivalent.

 

I agree, the pain seems to have moved to a new place, and is fighting hard to protect you from dealing with the stress and past traumatic events.

Some great advice I've gotten so far:

Read the 12 daily reminders by Dr. Sarno to help solidify the belief in the TMS diagnosis

Test your pain. Do something that makes you fearful that the pain will return. Overcoming fear of physical activity help reinforces the truth that the problem is psychological, not structural

Journal as much as possible

Listen to Dr. Sarno's audiobook (it helps that it's narrated by the good doctor himself) I like to listen to it in the car and before going to bed

List any facts about TMS that convinced you to seek this treatment. For me, it was the realization that many people without pain have herniated discs or other structural abnormalities. Why do those people feel no pain? The supposed "structural problem" is found in both pain-free people and chronic pain sufferers. This is one fact that keeps affirming my belief in TMS.

Read success stories. I'm 4 years into my pain. I read stories about people living decades with chronic pain, that found relief when accepting the TMS diagnosis. Some of them read Sarno's book and immediately felt relief. Some experienced less and less pain over the course of weeks or months. I've never read a success story that didn't give at least a glimmer of hope for my own life.

- Matt