Sciatica pain

A

Artmuzz

Well known member
I have had anxiety and depression for years and about 5 years ago after experiencing my first full blown panic attack, I suffered sciatica and it lasted for a few months. I visited a physiotherapist who gave me a couple of exercises to do and they helped a lot. The physiotherapist told me that with me being a keen walker it helped cure the sciatic pain.

Anyway, I have been suffering a lot of stress and anxiety for the past month and I have been feeling unwell for a few weeks. I have been feeling nauseous, sore neck, low pitched tinnitus, headaches, painful bowels and anal pain, chest pains and digestive problems and feeling very tired and run down for the past couple of weeks.

However, the other day I woke up feeling a lot better and feeling back to my normal self except I think I have sciatica again. There is pain in the right part of my lower back (or to be precise) the back of my right buttock/hip and there is also pain in the side of my right thigh and calve which is driving me crazy. I am wondering if the cause of this is due to TMS or the fact I’ve been feeling very tense.
 
Sciatica is one of the most common TMS complaints. I had it for a year and a half non-stop before I read Sarno. It went away in about a month... and actually , it started going away in days after I immersed myself in the text. I had it in both legs and the location moved throughout the day, mixed up with hip stiffness and back spasms

Have you read any of Sarno's Books?
 
Baseball65 said:
Sciatica is one of the most common TMS complaints. I had it for a year and a half non-stop before I read Sarno. It went away in about a month... and actually , it started going away in days after I immersed myself in the text. I had it in both legs and the location moved throughout the day, mixed up with hip stiffness and back spasms

Have you read any of Sarno's Books?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

I recently downloaded The Mindbody Prescription but I haven’t read it yet. I’ve been meaning to read it because I read on this forum that it’s a very good book and one of Sarno’s best.
 
“However, the other day I woke up feeling a lot better and feeling back to my normal self except I think I have sciatica again.”

As someone who had sciatica in both legs for many months and got rid of them in 24 hours, I can tell you that it is definitely TMS. In both cases I woke up to sciatica. In fact, I woke up to back pain, neck pain, and more. It really puzzled me and my doctors why I was fine before I went to sleep and woke up to such symptoms. Dr. Sarno answered it well.

Here is how it started:
"When I woke up on Friday morning my right leg was numb, with a great deal of tingling in my right foot. I was in a state of disbelief. I could not understand how this numbness could have come about. I called a friend of mine who had suffered from back and leg pain, and had recently had an operation for a herniated disc. He said that from the description of my symptoms he believed a herniated disc could be a possibility, and he advised me to see a neurosurgeon. I could not understand how I could have developed a herniated disc overnight. And if the press-ups I did were the cause, why it would take four days for the condition to develop? Could the press-ups in combination with climbing hills, jumping over the trenches, and commuting have damaged my spine? I consulted our family encyclopedia on health. It mentioned slipped disc as a cause of leg pain, and bed rest as one of the treatments for it. So, to be on the safe side, I decided to just rest and see whether the pain would improve.

After about three days of rest, my right leg improved, and I was able to walk with much less pain. I did try to see a specialist, but my health plan would not allow me to do so without first being seen by my primary care physician—the same doctor who had given me the exercises that I believed caused the leg pain. I hesitantly made an appointment with my doctor. The doctor did not think that I had a herniated disc, said a pinched nerve was probably causing the leg pain, and did not feel a need for me to see a specialist. When I asked the doctor about the press-ups, he said that I should not have done them. I wondered why he did not tell me that during my first visit.

The doctor ordered an X-ray of my lower back. Later I received a call from his office and was told that the X-ray showed disc degeneration at the L-5 and S-1 vertebrae, and that I had signs of osteoarthritis in my lower back. I had just turned thirty, and the idea that I had developed arthritis in my lower back made me uncomfortable. The word arthritis brought images of old age and disability to my mind. Could it be that all the driving had caused rapid aging in my back?

I took an extra day off and arranged to stay during the week with a friend who lived near my work, so I would not have to commute. The pain in my right leg made it very difficult to climb stairs or walk uphill. After climbing four or five steps, I had to rest a few minutes while the pain subsided, and then climb a few more steps. Also, depending on how severe the stress on my back and legs was, from time to time my left leg also experienced symptoms of pain and tingling. But usually my right leg had the severest symptoms. The leg pain was not only more limiting than an episode of back pain, but also took much longer to improve."
 
I had debilitating sciatica and back pain for many years. When I discovered Dr. Sarno in the early 2000s, it took 4 - 5 months for it to go away. Other than the occasional tingling, it hasn't been back.

If it continues to give you problems, I'd recommend closely studying Dr. Sarno's book. Also, I'm a huge fan of Alan Gordon's free Pain Recovery Program (linked at the to of this page).
 
Thanks for all the replies.

The sciatica pain I’ve been experiencing has almost gone and lasted 48 hours. The strange thing is that it always seems to be my right leg and right side of my lower back/hip that gets affected. My body pains seems to appear in a constant loop for example one day I will feel pain in my neck then the other day that disappears and I get pain in my lower back and then that disappears and I then feel like I’ve got toothache then I get migraine headaches and so on.
 
So your subconscious is reducing blood to various parts of your body to keep you distracted from repressed anger and rage. Until the issues that cause or have caused your anger and rage are resolved, internally or externally, this musical chair will continue.
 
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Artmuzz said:
My body pains seems to appear in a constant loop
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That is conditioning. Sarno talks about 'patterns' and each one of us develops our own. If unaddressed, the pattern usually gets more elaborate....Longer duration, more complicated.

We are thinking beings who can solve a crossword puzzle, wire an outlet and understand complex concepts. Than we discover we are still subject to things that go on inside our brain and body without our permission. The Mind does NOT like this idea and will do everything it can to divert our attention ...even deplete a few percentage points of oxygen content away from a muscle or joint to create pain.

So the pain is there to distract us from the realm of emotion and the pattern is the result of conditioning. Even if your pain is currently abating, Sarno said the whole point of his program was to PREVENT pain. The More clearly we understand the pattern, the less likely it is to get our attention or be taken seriously, and the pain stops because it isn't 'working' anymore.
 
FredAmir said:
So your subconscious is reducing blood to various parts of your body to keep you distracted from repressed anger and rage. Until the issues that cause or have caused your anger and rage are resolved, internally or externally, this musical chair will continue.
Click to expand...

What if the issues that have caused my anger and rage cannot be resolved? Will I have to learn to accept and move on?
 
Artmuzz said:
What if the issues that have caused my anger and rage cannot be resolved? Will I have to learn to accept and move on?
Click to expand...

Good questions.

It depends on what it is? My TMS issue had to do with my marriage and parents as well as my nice guy, perfectionist tendencies.

I saw TMS as a great learning opportunity to transform myself.

It meant I needed to learn more effective ways to communicate with my wife, set boundaries with my parents, and how I viewed and dealt with problems that caused stress and tension.

I dedicated the last chapter of Rapid Recovery from Back and Neck Pain to effective communication and stress management and shared more of the strategies that have helped my clients and readers change negative mental and emotional habit, like worrying, negative thoughts, pessimism, and so on, in my new book Vanquish Stress.

Once I improved communication with my wife and my parents learned they can no longer expect me to do everything for them (they have three other sons) my tension level dropped significantly and it’s been good for more than 28 years.

As far as negative mental and emotional habits, take a look at this TMS questionnaire for a list of common negative patterns that can trigger TMS. Those traits that you rate high are the ones you want to focus on improving so that you can avoid tension from building up.

https://www.fredamir.com/questionnaire

Of course, there are situation, such as past trauma, that you are better off accepting and moving forward if you can. If not, there are many resources on line.
 
Artmuzz said:
What if the issues that have caused my anger and rage cannot be resolved? Will I have to learn to accept and move on?
Click to expand...
Resolved is a relative term. You're not going to eliminate your anger or rage... ever. But you can come to terms with them and process them in a healthier way. And most importantly, understand that they are important factors in the pain your experiencing.

If you read your Dr. Sarno book, it will explain this.
 
The sciatic pain is getting worse. I was suffering from a lot of stress yesterday and the day before and had bad acid reflux yesterday morning. It soon cleared but then by the late afternoon I started feeling pain in my leg and lower back just right above my right buttock again.

The pain got a little bit better by night but when I woke and and got up to go to the bathroom I am experiencing excruciating pain in my right buttock which is spreading down my leg. This pain is worse when I’m walking or standing but the pain eases a little when I’m lying down with a heated pad under my buttock. I don’t know if it would be an idea to rest it or put up with the severe pain and walk a lot.
 
TMS tends to do that.

If you have not already, watch my interview with Omar Pinto. He is the host of very popular Sharing Helps Addicts In Recovery (SHAIR) podcast. He invited me to offer a drug-free option for pain relief.

I give specific steps to eliminate sciatica.
 
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