Pain recovery story - 14 years of low back and neck pain

Hello,
Adding to the repository of inspirational stories and my lessons learnt in the past few years.

I suffered from a dull low back pain starting 2010 which time and again flared up. Sometimes it would be an acute pain on either side of the low back, at times making it difficult to move.
I remember going to a doctor at that time who asked me to rest and take pain killers and muscle relaxer. There was nothing I did to injure myself except...A few weeks before the pain started, my team mate commented on my poor sitting posture (I am software developer and mostly sitting all day).
So it was natural for me to attribute the pain to this long standing notion of folks with sitting jobs getting back pain.

In hindsight, I had lost my father a year before the pain started. I got married in 2011. I moved to a different country to study further a year later. My first year in the USA was very difficult and I believe now that I was clinically depressed.
I was 25 when all this started and in retrospect, ill equipped to deal with the situation. Primarily because my expectation of the future was very different.

I was always a very ambitious person who was fed stories of folks who had 'succeeded' early in their career and I truly believed I will do big things at a very young age. I made some naive pivots in my career and found myself in a job that was not a natural fit for me. I struggled years in this job with a bad boss. Fortunately I had an incredible life partner who supported me through every bad episode of pain. Those years were spent in frequent episodes of pain, coping up and trying to feel adequate for my wife who was an incredibly hard worker. While she was helpful and supported me, she could not understand the vicious cycle of pain that affected mental health and vice versa.

I just had no self confidence and was embracing the reality that I was not going to be a star achiever.
I had moments of acceptance of this reality which was actually liberating. I quit my job and went on to do something I was naturally skilled at and the process of self discovery started albeit very slowly. A few years later, tragedy struck and we lost our first child but then went on to parent two beautiful children.

Parenthood changed me in a way that was hard to believe. It was noticeable. I was full of energy and my wife could see it. This feeling like most parents, I cannot really describe well.

Let me talk about my pain, now that I set the backdrop in which it occurred. About 14 years with pain had passed. When the pain came it was severe with many days of pain killers, barely able to walk. Sometimes I would hear a crack noise in my neck and it resulted in a incredible neck pain that last sometimes a couple of weeks. I remember telling myself one night at 2am when I was trying to get down from the bed: "hopefull neck stays ok" and right then I heard a snap and I was like "my mind just found an excuse to punish me"... Something on those lines. After all I had developed an intimate relationship with my pain and maybe develop an intuition of the process.

By this time, I had accepted that I will always live with this and no physiotherapist or chiropractor or masseuse will provide a permanent solution to this. Although deep down inside, I had hope that my exercises would strengthen my back.
In December of 2023, I was doom scrolling X and found a thread on back pain. One obscure comment said "Read Healing back pain...". I presumed it will be a bunch of exercises and I had sometime since it was holidays and we were mostly home. I had a several aha moments packed into those 4 hours of listening to the audio book that I listened to over a course of 3 days. I felt Dr. Sarno knew me and was talking about me. I went for a long walk during that week and felt no pain which was unusual. (I usually got a dull back pain after 15mins walk). I knew right then...This was it. The understanding of the process went so deep into my consciousness that I do not have a way to describe it. I later told one of my good friends that this book helped me feel the texture of knowledge and how knowledge affects biology. It was personal and profound for me.
I can write a lot about the past two years in terms of the books I read later, podcasts etc. but that is all well documented in this forum. I want to spend a few paragraphs on lessons learnt.

Today, I am 100% free of pain. I run around like a child (with my children) and never been more curious, energetic and grateful in my life.

1. Non-linearity of Life
14 years of pain. 4 hours of audiobook. Life transformed. While life might suck for a long time, it takes a really small amount of time for it dramatically change for the good. The vice versa is true as well. And being aware and accepting this deeply and that this is feature of life and not a bug is liberating.
(www.)youtube.com/watch?v=sWd6fNVZ20o - Alan watts video.
(Love Alan watts).
If you are bluey fan: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qXgOc-rZp28

2. Wu-wei / Nishkam Karma
Often translated to "do nothing". I like the translation: "Effortless doing" or "Action without desire or fear of outcome" or "Be like water". When work feels like play, it is enjoyable and causes no stress. There is a lot of online content on this so wont go deep here.

3. Being Selfish to be Selfless
Put your mask on first before helping others put on their masks. Enough said.

4. You have your own timeline
Everyone is on a different and a personal path in their life's journey. As we noted earlier, Life is inherently non-linear, so your life is not better or worse than others. Compare your growth with yourself and not anyone else. There is reason this is one of the most quoted cliches.

5. Be present
The Present moment is all you have. The past is a memory and the future is an illusion. Plan all your want, being present and accepting things as they are the pre-requisites to happiness. Happiness is a pre-requisite to any long lasting great work and not the other way round.

6. You are (not) ready
I was talking to a friend and went over my experience and said: "I really wish I read that book and went through this experience a lot earlier. My life would have been amazing". He said: "You dont know that. Maybe you weren't ready then." He was absolutely right! If I had this same experience 10 years ago, it would have been counter-productive. I would not have a believed in it and it would have taken me a lot longer once I started resisting.

I must say, I do not practice all these lessons 100% of the time. Pressuring myself to do so will fly in the face of all the learnings But I try my best.

I might continue to edit this thread and write more. But for now, this is my story.

 

Thanks for this great story! It really inspired me!

 

Echoing Diana. This is an inspiring story. Happy for you. I’m sure there would’ve been several times where it would’ve been easy to give up, but you persisted. I hope to join you one day

 

Luckily I had one relapse or as Alan Gordon calls it "Extinction Burst" which was an incredible few weeks. While I knew the reasons for the pain as in things that caused me to anxious, I had to take the help of pain killer. But with a combination of belief, Alan's excellent write up on Extinction burst and Nicole sachs idea of "Staying with the pain" added to my learning and strengthen my belief in this diagnosis and helped me overcome the little blip. I had one relapse in the last two years but it just made me stronger mentally.

 

That’s amazing, @yeswecan! You navigated all of this and the extinction bursts. I really love the advice you included. I’m going to keep your list handy. I especially like the quotes above. Thanks again!