Day 1 Start ofSt start of my journey

hi all,

I've been suffering from lower back pain and repetitive stress injury for the past four years. It got so bad I had to quit my job as a financial analyst. I've tried so many things, acupuncture, chiropractor, physical therapist, ayurveda, physiatry, neurologist, I really hope I have TMS.

I've spent so much time and money, and dealt with so much pain, it is hard to believe that something so simple could alleviate the pain.

When reading Sarnos book, the mind-body prescription, I saw myself in a lot of the pages. Especially the description of the afflicted personality type.

I am a perfectionist, I want people to like me, I'm a goodist, i've had so much guilt in the past because of my religious upbringing and addiction, and and have always set extreme lofty goals for myself. my mind is always racing, always looking for another thing to do-now it's focused on my pain. How do I get better. Have my mind is always racing, always looking for another thing to do-now it's focused on my pain. How do I get better. I been doing enough of the exercises., etc

I'm going to take a break from the other conventional methods and try this for three or four weeks and see what happens.

Regards,
Doug

 

Mindbody Prescription book made a believer out of me as I also felt Sarno was talking directly to me. You sound like a TMSer for sure. I tried everything like you and also had 3 surgeries that never "cured" me. Pain always came back. Give the SEP program your full effort, its definitely worth it. Good luck to you ... Brant

 

Thanks Brant

 

for day 1, one of the exercises is to imagine your life without TMS. its weird though, I dont know what i would do. Sarno talks about having the "secondary gain" from the illness - my secondary gain is that i dont have to face all of the pressures i and my family have put on myself to be successful in a career.

ive been able to hide from all of that pressure for the past couple years bc of the crippling pain. but what do i do once the pain is gone? i have to perform again and i am afraid of this. im afraid of all of the hard work. i kind of like having reasons to be "lazy" and get away from my endless to do lists and my manic brain always going over all the things i need or should do.

when i was younger, i was programmed to believe that success in life comes from $$$. when i was in college, i learned about working at hedge funds and the rediculous amount of money that hedge fund managers made and so my first job out of school i worked for an investment bank as a financial analyst. the environment at bank was very toxic and i hated my job. i was continually yelled at and belittled. i worked 80+ hour weeks for the first three years and thats when i started developing back pain and rsi. i hated it, but i kept doing it because of the $$$ and because i felt it would set me up for the future. i worked so hard. sometimes i worked all night and into the next day. it was so stressful.

i can really see my inner child raging at my parent - "WTF why are you working so hard? whats the point?"

if my back and hands were healed, i question if i would go back and work more. my pschye would be in the cross hairs again to be "successful". i have so much fear of the future. i love being able to blame by back or my hand / wrist rsi for underperformance. maybe i just need to take it easier...

just some random thoughts.

 

Hi, Doug. Your perfectionist and goodist personality are very likely the causes of your pain. And you hold inner rage against your parent about hard work. I would try to put myself in their shoes about that. They probably wanted to work for money and security, for you as well as themself. If you try to figure out your parents, you may realize they had their own TMS and they may have taken theirs out on you.

As for help with sleep, there are some very good free videos on Youtube about relaxing before bedtime. There also are videos there about how to calm an over-active mind. Most of us have that, and it is often caused by thinking or worrying about things currently in our lives. The videos help to relax us.

 

Thanks Walt, I'll do some YouTube searches for sleep / relaxation videos.

Your make a salient point regarding my parents - and I think my mom has tms (plantar fasciitis symptoms)