Second wk of SEP completed. Do I need to see a psychologist?

Hi guys,

I have just completed my second week of SEP and I'm not sure whether I need to see a psychologist. I have not been able to identify yet what is causing my sciatica. There has been some improvement since I have been doing the program. I have good days (with pain) and then nights where its been hard to sleep.

In general the days are usually better the the nights. The pain is worse when I'm lying down. I get shooting pain when I get out of bed in the morning and then it subsides after 5 mins. Not sure why this happens. Anyhow sleeping is a bit of a problem. I end up sleeping on my chest and the pain tends to wake me up.

I'm just not too sure if its too early still or should I go through the whole program first and then try a psychologist. Currently also reading Steve Ozanich's The Great Pain Deception. This guy has been through hell. I'm not sure how he made it out. Hats off to him....

I have started to engage in activities I was initially restricting myself to do. Such as doing certain exercises in the gym, sitting longer at work (I have a sit stand desk), picking heavy stuff etc. Basically trying to recondition my mind. I have this chronic pain for 3 yrs, so I guess it'll take sometime.

Anyways, like always your guidance will be much appreciated.

Cheers

 

Hi, I obviously don't know your full situation, but I discovered my troubles were far deeper than I ever knew, and had to go beyond just reading Sarno. I ruptured a disc in my neck in 2005 and had surgery and then developed myofascial pain syndrome (essentially TMS). After 9 months of terrible pain I read Sarno. (I don't think the SEP was available then, or I didn't know about it then.) But when I read Sarno, I only had a little temporary relief. So I sought out another mindbody approach (turns out I needed to go much deeper into my emotions). I went to get jfb-mfr (myofascial release) bodywork, which helped me uncover my hidden emotions.

I don't know if a TMS psychologist would have helped me get there as well, but I found bodywork tapped into my emotions much faster. I also later saw a non-TMS psychologist and it helped a little, too, but for me bodywork tapped into my past trauma and repressed memory much faster.

So I don't know if you need to see a psychologist or not, but sometimes some of us need other help to get to the deep stuff. I'd go with your gut.

Good luck!! (If you're interested in more details of my story, it's on my website: www.healingfromchronicpain.com)

 

Thanks healingfromchronicpain for your insight. I had not heard of Myfascial pain and just starting to read about it. I'm struggling to understand how does it tie into addressing emotions that are causing the pain?

This seems like a massage therapy to me...sorry pardon my ignorance.

 

No worries. It took me a long time to learn that our emotions can be held in our physical bodies. Believe it or not, the fascia surrounding our muscles literally store trauma and emotions. It wasn't until I was getting the myofascial release therapy and felt this first hand that I discovered this.

At first I, too, thought it was essentially massage therapy. But there are different types of myofascial release therapy. I initially went to a traditional physical therapist who did traditional myofascial release therapy. That didn't help me. It was essentially like a massage. But the John F. Barnes method is the one that takes a whole body approach and addresses emotions that are in your body (and mind--subconscious or otherwise)--if your mind is ready and willing to go there.

I started getting jfb-mfr treatment because I had been led to people and read about people who had their chronic pain go away after this treatment. I had no idea there was an emotional component at the time. That is, until one day when the therapist was working on me I started crying. It was strange, I had no idea why I was crying but it felt like something so deep was coming up. And it really is like your emotions are held in your body in different places. John Barnes explains it in his book Healing Ancient Wounds. Another good book is Peter Levine's Waking the Tiger.

I describe in more detail what I went through in my upcoming memoir, which gives more detail than my website, but for now, I explain it a little bit in my website under the myofascial release treatment tab (http://www.healingfromchronicpain.com/jfb-mfr-treatment.html (Healing from Chronic Pain--Support from a Patient's Perspective -- Treatment: Mind-body approaches: JFB-MFR treatment)).

I also list other resources (under the resources tab of my website: http://www.healingfromchronicpain.com/resources.html (Healing from Chronic Pain--Support from a Patient's Perspective -- Resources)) that helped me understand about the myofascia and the mindbody connection.

It essentially blew me away to learn how much I could dig into my emotions by simply having a therapist lightly press on different parts of my body to release the tightness in the muscles and fascia.

And even though Sarno says not to look at the physical aspect of it, I found this therapy to really get my emotions to the surface. Sometimes our bodies like to (need to?) go through the motions that it went through when it was traumatized to help release the tension we hold in those places.

Many people, like those on this forum, are able to release the emotions without any bodywork, but maybe because one of my traumas was so deeply repressed and stuck in my fascia, my body needed to release it this way. I don't see it as physical therapy, although at the beginning I did and maybe that's why it took me awhile for it to work. I had read Sarno before and believed at some level there was an emotional component, so maybe that way I (my body and mind) was able to finally go there with the bodywork.

Initially I went for jfb-mfr for four months with a local therapist going twice a week, and only once did I cry or feel any emotions. But then when I went for an intensive two weeks of the therapy, where I had three sessions every day for two weeks, that's when the floodgates opened and my pain finally came down significantly--and stayed down. (Until I was rear ended a year and a half later and in the beauty--lol--of TMS, a new pain pattern of my myofascial pain popped up.) I've improved since the car accident, but I'm still working on getting "closer to fine" in the words of the indigo girls

Maybe if I had more fully accepted TMS back when I first read Sarno, almost a year and a half before I found jfb-mfr, maybe I wouldn't have had to go down the mfr route, but I don't know. I do know that the 2-week intensive of jfb-mfr worked for me.

Again you just have to know whatever physical pain there is, it's because of the mind. But because the mind affects the physical body, mfr can help release the minds hold on the body. At least it did for me, and many others I know. Just my experience and my 2 cents.

Sorry if I'm babbling!