My Story: Today marks 6 months since my back “injury”, or at least what I thought was the start of my story. Really this all began 16 months ago. In late February/early March of last year, I got an offer at the job I dreamed of, one I gave up a lot to pursue, and after a long year of trying and failing, I finally got it. I think Sarno would define this as a “positive stressor”. I could go into detail about reason’s why I think the job, particularly in the first year, causes an immense amount of stress and a need to repress emotions, but I’ll leave that for another time; long story short the last year of work has been insanely stressful. A few weeks after I received the good news, I began developing pain in the site of my inguinal hernia surgery from about 18 months prior. I never had any complications from the surgery til this point, even the hernia itself was completely painless, I just got it fixed so it wouldn’t get worse. Well now I had pain. I couldn’t wear tight waist bands, I couldn’t wear my belts, and I was so focused on the pain, to the point where it impacted me in my shiny new position. That lasted for 3 months and subsided, and then BAM! my left inguinal area started hurting after I grabbed a bucket filled with kitty litter. I was convinced I gave myself another hernia. I was devastated. Just like the previous pain, all I could think about, at work, at home, when I was doing fun things, was my pain. That lasted for around 5+ months, til around December. Then on February 1st of this year, I was leaning over trying to pull a stuck boot off my foot and felt I pulled my left lower back bad. No pop, no odd sensations, just like I pulled a muscle bad. This happened mere hours after my last shift with a boss who hated me and made my life misery for the last 6 months. Well time went on and it never got better. I was stiff, sore, and in constant pain. I was so close to finishing my first year at work, meaning in two months I’d receive union protections, so I just pushed through the pain every day, all the time. At the two month mark of pain I started physical therapy. My PT never really told me what he thought was wrong, I never had any scans, MRI, etc. but he threw me right into heavy duty exercises. First day I was doing Jefferson curls, so I doubt he was worried about discs. I woke up the next day with my back pain gone, but now with odd nerve sensations in my toes on the left side. I was TERRIFIED. I nearly had a panic attack at work because I was sure it had to be a disc issue, that I had a severely messed up back, that I needed surgery, etc. When I say I obsessed over it I really mean it. I obsessed over it so much I developed nerve sensations, like minor tingling, cold feeling, hypersensitivity, etc., on my right side, which had zero previous issues, as well as the same symptoms bilaterally in my arms! The nerve symptoms went away, but the back pain came back. This went back and forth until eventually, what I thought was through diligent PT exercises, my back pain was gone. Surprise, hip pain! Like clockwork, one symptom leaves, another replaces it. Literally every single time I had a problem resolve, a new one surfaced to take its place. I talked to my PT, we adjusted exercises. Again I dove into all the worst case scenarios for hip impingement. Arthritis! Surgery! Hip replacement! Eventually though, the hip pain went away. So no back pain, no hip pain, but now I had heart palpitations, which for a young guy in a physically demanding job, that’s so wonderfully terrifying. The heart palpitations came with a random “pulled muscle” in my left pec. Don’t know how I did it, but the constant mind game of “did I pull a muscle or am I having a heart attack” is a tough mental battle, particularly when you are having real fluttering in your chest. I dealt with the fear, even competed in a race and didn’t drop dead, and I was able to see a doctor after about a month of palpitations. I received a lot of reassurance, my EKG looked normal, blood work was great, and they had no concerns. I was reassured and happy, I wasn’t in pain or otherwise worried about my health. THE VERY NEXT DAY my back pain came back, and has been plaguing me once again ever since for around a month. I’ve had good days and bad days with it, I’m doing everything without physical restriction, it’s just I’m in pain most of the time, or I’m thinking about when I’ll be in pain again and if I’m really screwed up. I’ve also been dealing with increased allergies (I have a pollen allergy that doesn’t ever bother me this far into the summer), as well as a near constant itchy throat that I can’t figure out. From learning about TMS I figure these are also part of the syndrome.
I find looking back at my story particularly intriguing because I have rarely, if ever, been consciously aware that I’m not in pain over these 16 months. I was actually pain free for nearly all of January when I look back, but I didn’t realize it because of how accustomed to the pain my mind had gotten. I believe that my unconscious realized each time that soon the pain would become ineffective at “distracting” my conscious mind, so it created a new symptom to distract, each one increasing in either severity of pain or psychological impact. After listening to Sarno’s recommendation to stop PT, I did and haven’t been back in a few weeks nor have I done any of the exercises, and I definitely haven’t gotten worse. I primarily have pain in my right lower back, which strangely is the side opposite of the injury, though sometimes it migrates from one side to another. I can bike to my hearts content, we’re talking 3 hour rides with no issue, but a minute sitting in a car makes me ache. This is obviously a very illogical pattern for symptom-aggravation.
I’m a very rational, calculated person and have a great interest in the hard science of the human body, so accepting this diagnosis is hard. I’m trying to hold on to the fact that TMS seems to be the most logical thing that could be wrong with me. Having so many different sources of chronic pain over the past year and change can’t be explained away by mainstream medicine. Particularly because each closely overlaps to a degree that I can’t reasonably call it coincidence or bad luck. I believe my biggest hurdle is going to be the process of experiencing emotions, both current rage and past that I’ve bottled up. I find the idea of bottled up rage very compelling for my story, as I have done that intentionally throughout my entire life, thinking it was a good thing! I was raised in a family where we didn’t let anyone see our emotions, functioned a lot off of understood unwritten rules of behavior, and rarely let anyone actually know how we felt. Not feeling anything allowed me to function no matter what and I thought that was a strength up until this point. For example my dad died when I was in high school and I flat out never dealt with the grief, anger, anything, I just bottled it up and said I’m not touching those feelings because I didn’t want them to get in the way of my goals in life. Now that I’m journaling and trying to experience my emotions, I feel like a kid who never learned how to swim being thrown into the middle of the ocean, frantically trying to stay afloat. I know a huge part of this process is giving yourself grace, being patient, not getting angry at yourself (as that just reinforces the pain), but I know I’ve got a ways to go mentally. Every day is a battle with the unconscious, and I’m determined to live my life as I please regardless of pain.
I find looking back at my story particularly intriguing because I have rarely, if ever, been consciously aware that I’m not in pain over these 16 months. I was actually pain free for nearly all of January when I look back, but I didn’t realize it because of how accustomed to the pain my mind had gotten. I believe that my unconscious realized each time that soon the pain would become ineffective at “distracting” my conscious mind, so it created a new symptom to distract, each one increasing in either severity of pain or psychological impact. After listening to Sarno’s recommendation to stop PT, I did and haven’t been back in a few weeks nor have I done any of the exercises, and I definitely haven’t gotten worse. I primarily have pain in my right lower back, which strangely is the side opposite of the injury, though sometimes it migrates from one side to another. I can bike to my hearts content, we’re talking 3 hour rides with no issue, but a minute sitting in a car makes me ache. This is obviously a very illogical pattern for symptom-aggravation.
I’m a very rational, calculated person and have a great interest in the hard science of the human body, so accepting this diagnosis is hard. I’m trying to hold on to the fact that TMS seems to be the most logical thing that could be wrong with me. Having so many different sources of chronic pain over the past year and change can’t be explained away by mainstream medicine. Particularly because each closely overlaps to a degree that I can’t reasonably call it coincidence or bad luck. I believe my biggest hurdle is going to be the process of experiencing emotions, both current rage and past that I’ve bottled up. I find the idea of bottled up rage very compelling for my story, as I have done that intentionally throughout my entire life, thinking it was a good thing! I was raised in a family where we didn’t let anyone see our emotions, functioned a lot off of understood unwritten rules of behavior, and rarely let anyone actually know how we felt. Not feeling anything allowed me to function no matter what and I thought that was a strength up until this point. For example my dad died when I was in high school and I flat out never dealt with the grief, anger, anything, I just bottled it up and said I’m not touching those feelings because I didn’t want them to get in the way of my goals in life. Now that I’m journaling and trying to experience my emotions, I feel like a kid who never learned how to swim being thrown into the middle of the ocean, frantically trying to stay afloat. I know a huge part of this process is giving yourself grace, being patient, not getting angry at yourself (as that just reinforces the pain), but I know I’ve got a ways to go mentally. Every day is a battle with the unconscious, and I’m determined to live my life as I please regardless of pain.
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