aggiepsych
Newcomer
Hey y’all,
I am new to posting but not new to these wonderful principles for moving through chronic physical symptoms. I am a psychologist and have studied mechanisms of change for overcoming various mental health struggles and chronic pain. Sarno, this website, and the back pain books were my original way through my own struggles with fatigue and other somatic symptoms. I have a lot of gratitude for this community and for the work of the folks behind it, so since I am currently dealing with some pain of my own, I thought I’d get in the mix for the first time and be brave.
Using these approaches, which are quite similar to mechanisms in psychotherapy focused on graded exposure, emotional processing, and cognitive restructuring, has been tremendously helpful for me. Now I am turning towards the community for some ideas/brainstorming for nagging athletic ailments. I love to play basketball, sprint, and train for athleticism (mostly sprinting faster and jumping higher). Thus far, I have progressed with those things with very little pain, even nearing 40 years of age. Recently, I have started sprinting more and lifting heavy for explosiveness, and I am starting to revisit an old, unwanted amigo that was held at bay for many years: SI joint pain, mild sciatic symptoms.
When I was 20 years old, I “hurt my back” playing hoops. Hunched over for days, couldn’t touch my toes for weeks, tight, in pain. I just lived with it and continued playing basketball in mild to moderate pain for a couple years. Sometimes I wouldn’t notice it or think about it, almost like it was gone for months, then it would flare up during emotionally stressful times. Eventually, I started doing some strengthening and stretching, and it eased up, except for when I would try to high-bar back squat, and boom, I’d be hunched over for days again. I could get completely out of it quickly, though. Even though I was very out of touch with my emotions, I had some nice physical remedies (mostly PT stuff) that’d “reset it.” Onward I’d go.
Fast forward several years: I’m in grad school getting my PhD in psychology. I was drawn to this work because of my struggle with “chronic” fatigue. My dad was sick with early-onset dementia, I was his caregiver, and I just couldn’t handle it, so my brain distracted me with preoccupations around my physical symptoms. Yup yup—I wanted a way out of this funk and thought I had a knack for connecting with people, so this move towards grad school and clinical psych made sense. Over that time, using these mind-body approaches, eventually no more fatigue, back to athletics and living a better life. Processed the grief of my father—old, abstract trauma—you know, the usual thing around here.
From there, several years of progressing back into athletic training and trying to practice what I preached with my own clients in terms of emotional openness and intentional awareness and processing, and now we are at a place of no back issues to speak of. SI twinges here and there, but gone in days. Even doing back squats (lighter weight), focusing on mobility amidst some intense stuff when running and playing basketball.
Up to current times, I have now been sprinting in track meets (100m and 200m), training for speed with lifting to supplement that. Over the last year, the SI stuff is back. It’s different now because my body is different, but I have “thrown my back out” a couple times this year and am walking around with SI joint pain intermittently, especially after intense sprinting, even more so after back squats.
Anyways, I am moving through it. It doesn’t pin me down anymore, but it’s still hanging around more than I’d like. My question today is how we use these approaches to help athletes who are pushing their bodies in intense ways and will inevitably experience pain or overuse of certain tissues. I am interested for myself and for others, as I would like to do clinical work with athletes dealing with chronic pain. Today, it’s all about me though, so how much of my SI pain is physical and how much is mental?
Tough question to answer, right? Here’s the rub: This pain cropped up during a tricky emotional time. My wife of 11 years has metastatic cancer. She’s battled it for almost 5 years. Currently, she’s on an antibody drug conjugate (targeted chemo), and it’s working okay. When the back pain first came back in a real way over a year ago, things were looking bleak. They’ve slowly improved over the last year, but her treatment is not a cure by any means. It tends to work well for a while and then wane. She also carries the physical impacts of her treatment much more on the surface than ever before (hair loss, etc.). It’s much harder to deny that she is very much sick.
So again, all athletes go through physical funks, especially when they start demanding more from their bodies, AND the emotional stuff is also quite present for me currently. How do we acknowledge the physical component of pain (my uptick in pain occurred simultaneously with a tough year for cancer and a more intense year of physical training—I mean, what else am I going to do with all my angst and lack of control) AND not get sucked into less helpful ways of thinking about it/approaching it?
I’m here for all of it though, such as ideas about general athletic pain management, my emotional blind spots, pushing ourselves harder physically when life gets tough/uncontrollable emotionally
I am new to posting but not new to these wonderful principles for moving through chronic physical symptoms. I am a psychologist and have studied mechanisms of change for overcoming various mental health struggles and chronic pain. Sarno, this website, and the back pain books were my original way through my own struggles with fatigue and other somatic symptoms. I have a lot of gratitude for this community and for the work of the folks behind it, so since I am currently dealing with some pain of my own, I thought I’d get in the mix for the first time and be brave.
Using these approaches, which are quite similar to mechanisms in psychotherapy focused on graded exposure, emotional processing, and cognitive restructuring, has been tremendously helpful for me. Now I am turning towards the community for some ideas/brainstorming for nagging athletic ailments. I love to play basketball, sprint, and train for athleticism (mostly sprinting faster and jumping higher). Thus far, I have progressed with those things with very little pain, even nearing 40 years of age. Recently, I have started sprinting more and lifting heavy for explosiveness, and I am starting to revisit an old, unwanted amigo that was held at bay for many years: SI joint pain, mild sciatic symptoms.
When I was 20 years old, I “hurt my back” playing hoops. Hunched over for days, couldn’t touch my toes for weeks, tight, in pain. I just lived with it and continued playing basketball in mild to moderate pain for a couple years. Sometimes I wouldn’t notice it or think about it, almost like it was gone for months, then it would flare up during emotionally stressful times. Eventually, I started doing some strengthening and stretching, and it eased up, except for when I would try to high-bar back squat, and boom, I’d be hunched over for days again. I could get completely out of it quickly, though. Even though I was very out of touch with my emotions, I had some nice physical remedies (mostly PT stuff) that’d “reset it.” Onward I’d go.
Fast forward several years: I’m in grad school getting my PhD in psychology. I was drawn to this work because of my struggle with “chronic” fatigue. My dad was sick with early-onset dementia, I was his caregiver, and I just couldn’t handle it, so my brain distracted me with preoccupations around my physical symptoms. Yup yup—I wanted a way out of this funk and thought I had a knack for connecting with people, so this move towards grad school and clinical psych made sense. Over that time, using these mind-body approaches, eventually no more fatigue, back to athletics and living a better life. Processed the grief of my father—old, abstract trauma—you know, the usual thing around here.
From there, several years of progressing back into athletic training and trying to practice what I preached with my own clients in terms of emotional openness and intentional awareness and processing, and now we are at a place of no back issues to speak of. SI twinges here and there, but gone in days. Even doing back squats (lighter weight), focusing on mobility amidst some intense stuff when running and playing basketball.
Up to current times, I have now been sprinting in track meets (100m and 200m), training for speed with lifting to supplement that. Over the last year, the SI stuff is back. It’s different now because my body is different, but I have “thrown my back out” a couple times this year and am walking around with SI joint pain intermittently, especially after intense sprinting, even more so after back squats.
Anyways, I am moving through it. It doesn’t pin me down anymore, but it’s still hanging around more than I’d like. My question today is how we use these approaches to help athletes who are pushing their bodies in intense ways and will inevitably experience pain or overuse of certain tissues. I am interested for myself and for others, as I would like to do clinical work with athletes dealing with chronic pain. Today, it’s all about me though, so how much of my SI pain is physical and how much is mental?
Tough question to answer, right? Here’s the rub: This pain cropped up during a tricky emotional time. My wife of 11 years has metastatic cancer. She’s battled it for almost 5 years. Currently, she’s on an antibody drug conjugate (targeted chemo), and it’s working okay. When the back pain first came back in a real way over a year ago, things were looking bleak. They’ve slowly improved over the last year, but her treatment is not a cure by any means. It tends to work well for a while and then wane. She also carries the physical impacts of her treatment much more on the surface than ever before (hair loss, etc.). It’s much harder to deny that she is very much sick.
So again, all athletes go through physical funks, especially when they start demanding more from their bodies, AND the emotional stuff is also quite present for me currently. How do we acknowledge the physical component of pain (my uptick in pain occurred simultaneously with a tough year for cancer and a more intense year of physical training—I mean, what else am I going to do with all my angst and lack of control) AND not get sucked into less helpful ways of thinking about it/approaching it?
I’m here for all of it though, such as ideas about general athletic pain management, my emotional blind spots, pushing ourselves harder physically when life gets tough/uncontrollable emotionally
