New member here and already some success. Here is my story :)

Hello to everybody,
I am a new member to your group. This is my story!

I am in my late 30ies. In my 20ies (15years ago) I had some acute episodes of low back pain after days of extreme stress, like the day after a very important exam, so extreme that I could not move or do anything. I would suffer on my bed with excruciating pain for a couple of days until the incident would pass. Could not eat, drink or even breathe for a day or so. And then I would go on with my life, feeling a bit sensitive for up to 2 weeks but returning slowly to normal.

Since the last 11years, I am working in radio-oncology (treatment for cancer), and I used to work in a pediatric clinic. That means that I would see really nasty stuff. Babies or young kids, with very bad prognosis. This thing really gets into your skin. Being surrounded by people younger than you, being treated for cancer, some of them dying or knowing that some of them had only a few months to live, I slowly became hypochondriac. Actually not hypochondriac against all diseases. Seriously scared only of cancer. I was not afraid of death, heart disease, covid, but I was terrified of cancer. Around the time that I started realizing that I was hypochondriac 7 years ago , I felt a tumor in my arm and the MDs told me that they could only know if it is cancer or not after the surgery.
For the next 1 month, until imaging, surgery and biopsy were done, I was terrified. Both the surgery and the biopsy went fine, and it was a benign volume. However, I felt that getting cancer myself was not something farfetched. It kind of confirmed that me being hypochondriac was justified. It can happen to anybody to get cancer. But I got obsessed. In the next months I started getting back pain, that would not go away, trigger points like small nodes in my back, and of course after any pain, no matter where and how strong, my first terror was "could that be cancer"??
I went to MDs who examined me and were not concerned about my symptoms. They prescribed physio but It did not help. The last 6.5 years I have been dealing with daily constant upper back and shoulder pain and the last 2 years I started having problems with my neck and I started having a skin eczema, that would not go away with any cream. My pain would always change in intensity and location. Mostly on my right side, and it would get worse unpredictably without a pattern (sports or running, or standing or sitting). I have tried physio, gym, chiropractor, massage. Nothing has helped, or nothing has helped for longer than a few days.

The last 3 years, while I am still in radio-oncology, I am not anymore in a pediatric clinic. I see that the vast majority of patients are older people, and this kind of detached me a bit from my phobia. It is much more scary to be older than your terminally ill patients. I know I am still a bit more aware/afraid than most people about cancer, but I would say that the biggest part of my phobia is not there anymore. However, I have learned to live with my chronic pain. I think that my pain, was created out of my fear of cancer. I learned to live with my pain, I got obsessed with my pain, so at some point, although I was not afraid of getting cancer anymore, I was afraid of my muscle pain not going away or intensifying and that would feed my muscle pain which would then feed my fear and so on.

I am one of these people that would always look at the symptoms in Internet. That also does not help your psychology if you have a phobia of cancer
I had seen in many forums/google/reddit many suggestions on how to work on my chronic pain, and some people suggested that it could be psychosomatic. I would not even accept to google it, because I thought my pain is real. But I guess that I became desperate enough, to look at it and I was happy to read that my pain is indeed real, it is just that the origin might be in my head.

Since the last 2 weeks, I have read 3 books (Sarno MBP, and healing BP and the way out from Gordon. I have started the SEP, and I can say that I love journaling. I have found myself in a lot of the things I read. Pain that started out of nothing, there seems to be a connection with stress levels, no structural damages, pain that has persisted for so many years, but changing location and intensity.

However, I do not really believe that my back pain really came from any repressed anger or rage. I think that in my case, my pain came because of my phobia for cancer. At some point my phobia decreased, but it had fed the cycle of my backpain. I also think that the back pain in my 20ies and some small GI issues that I had through my whole life show that as a person I am susceptible to TMS.

I am not sure that journaling helps me combat my back pain, but it makes me feel better. It is so nice to find deep feelings you had. A couple of things that I felt traumatized as a kid, when writing about them, I understood that hey were trivial, but also for those that were not trivial I found some resolution or I thought of the perspective of the other people involved.. I feel that journaling is a very nice way of self psychotherapy and I plan to continue it.

As for my pain, it has decreased so much. In these 10 days, my back in perfect, shoulders are perfect, neck is probably 50-60% better. (For that I got a diagnosis for a herniated disk, so I think that my mind is a bit more stubborn to accept it is TMS ) The most important thing though is that I have stopped thinking about my pain. I have really embraced that it does not matter. That it is nothing serious. That feeling is so liberating! I am still "checking" my pain from time to time, but without any fear or stress. More to check if it is still really there.

What is even more exciting because it is visible, is the eczema I used to have for the last 2 years, you can now barely notice it. I think that in a few more days, it will be completely gone.

So that was my story, my plan is to relax a bit now. I studied TMS so intensely the last 2 weeks, and I do not want to be obsessed with it! I want to follow the SEP. I am currently on day 10, I want to take it easy and finish it and continue journaling as part of my "homework". Over the next few weeks, I am planning to give my brain some time to assimilate all the new info and give my body the chance to relax. Hopefully my symptoms will also further improve!

I am happy to have found you, and we will be in touch

Cheers!

 

Welcome. Glad to hear you doing so well.

Have you explored this while you are doing your writing/journaling? I mean, you have nothing to lose to write on your piece of paper, "What am I angry about it? Is there something down deep that I could be angry about? Something that my little self might be mad about?" And then write and answer that.
If you read that and thought, "no, I don't want to do that" or "I don't need to do that!" then that is probably a clue that your unconscious wants to continue to protect you from those thoughts.

Note that you don't have to be an angry person to have repressed anger. You don't even have to have had anything to be really angry about.
Many of us were certain we didn't have any anger inside, only to find out that when we allowed ourselves to get into our subconscious we had all kinds of rage and anger in there. I don't want to speak for others but for me it's a lot of childhood (childish) anger and I had a very nice childhood for the most part.
But picturing myself whacking my sister over the head with a bat (sorry, sister if you are reading this!) made my pains go away.

Anyway, food for thought......enjoy the journey!

 

We hear this all the time - and my experience was exactly like @Booble's. By being really honest during the writing exercises, and by forcing myself to list EVERYTHING that popped into my thoughts - even though I reeeeeally didn't want to - and then forcing myself to be sure to write about those things - I realized some very revealing things about my childhood that explained a lot. They weren't traumatic at all; at the worst, some were embarrassing or shameful or guilt-inducing. But they were all things that my childhood brain had repressed at the time, because the emotions didn't feel safe for whatever reason. Exploring the memories and the reasons why my brain repressed them was ultimately freeing.

 

I'll bet part of that is our parents not wanting us to have those emotions.
I don't know if you ever heard this at your house but I sure did. "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!"
I can remember wondering what she (mother) could have meant by that. I didn't understand! In my head, I wouldn't be crying if I didn't have a reason!!"
But parent's don't want us to cry or be angry etc.

 

Thanks for your answers. I actually do journaling. As suggested I have a list with experiences that caused me some intense emotions, a list with my personality attributes and a list of things that stress me right now. And I have already written about many of them. I have also written letters to myself and others. I am convinced it helps me a lot. I am still not completely convinced if it helps my pain. But I guess that time will show!

 

Those all sound great -- yet so....organized. Controlled.
When you write about those things, do you let yourself feel your anger about them? And put that anger down on the page?
You sound very structured in your process. I don't know about others but for me my writing is anything but structured. It's chaotic and messy and all coming from a part of me that's very different from my normal self.

It doesn't really sound like you are comfortable with my approach but I can tell you, it does make the pain dissolve if at any point you want to try it.
Doesn't cost a penny to grab paper and pen and get in the zone and write.