The back pain I endured for three decades seemed to be a natural result of my profession as a geologist working summers in the most remote and rugged parts of the Arctic wilderness. Carrying 100-pound-plus backpacks of rocks up and down steep, unstable talus slopes, in freezing rain, with high winds batting me around, or bent over for hours extracting fossil specimens from solid rock with a sledge hammer and chisels in freezing weather, or helping load a 400-pound fuel drum into a small bush plane, seemed like a guaranteed way to wreck my back. Turns out it wasn't.
However, once I read Healing Back Pain and thought about my situation, I realized that my back never hurt in the Arctic when I was using it to the maximum. My back "went out" when I was back home doing ordinary things that did not approach in intensity the way I used my back in the Far North. Sarno's ideas about childhood rage struck a chord with me. Up to then I had mentally put my mother on a pedestal. However, after reading and rereading Sarno's book, I took my mother off of the pedestal; then I took the pedestal and mentally beat the hell out of dear old mom (and dad too). They were then long-deceased, so no parents were harmed in healing myself of childhood trauma and bidding goodbye to back pain.
I have read many TMS Success Stories, and none employed the physicality that I did, but it worked like a charm to heal me. When I got tired of pounding mom into mush with the pedestal, I imagined my parents' heads as speed bags/punching bags at the gym and gleefully punched them to simthereens, usually together. You can think of all kinds of creative ways to deal with parent-inflicted trauma once you get going. Example: I imagined myself piloting a P-51 Mustang fighter and strafing my childhood home, with them in it, with .50-caliber bullets and rockets until it was a smoking pile of ruins. Knives and baseball bats also made for colorful parental thrashings.
I dedicated myself to this necessary task of daily venting anger that my inner self had accumulated since boyhood. As time went on, my lower back pain faded away, followed by that ice pick-like stabbing pain beside my shoulder blades, then other misc. aches and pains. The whole process of shedding TMS pain took 2-3 months, which included daily mental savaging of my parents, and reading and underlining and rereading Sarno's book and frequently looking at his DVD showing him lecturing. The whole while I kept firmly in mind that my current bodily pain derived from my raging inner child producing it as a distraction, so that I would focus on the pain and ignore its childhood source. Not a trick I fall for anymore.
I came to realize that several episodes of BS medical crisis in my life, including a lucrative (for the predatory MDs) abdominal operation and long, painful hospital stay for "irritable bowel syndrome") were TMS reactions to stressful events in my life. Sarno got me to stop enriching chiropractors and masseurs. If ever a bodily pain begins to form these days, I instantly make fun of it, including roundly cursing it, and sometimes punching out my parents. At the gym, if my right knee starts being painful I say, "Nice try, stupid, but last time you made my left knee hurt. Can't you even remember which knee you want to hurt?" The pain then vanishes that instant or a few minutes later.
I began my career with an institution I loved, but around twenty years on it changed management and became an unpleasant, stressful place to work. I was forever having gut problems during those later years. Since I was knowledgeable about TMS at this stage of my life, I moved to another institution, where the stress was less, and the gut problems went away; a good tradeoff.
Fighting (literally!) against TMS pain was central to defeating it, for me. I'm very sensitive to what stress does to my body these days, and always watchful of what my inner child is upset about. The events I describe here happened a few years ago and back pain has not reappeared. I haven't read about anyone else resolving back pain with mock violence, but it worked like a charm for me and I'm writing about it because it may be a useful tool for others.
However, once I read Healing Back Pain and thought about my situation, I realized that my back never hurt in the Arctic when I was using it to the maximum. My back "went out" when I was back home doing ordinary things that did not approach in intensity the way I used my back in the Far North. Sarno's ideas about childhood rage struck a chord with me. Up to then I had mentally put my mother on a pedestal. However, after reading and rereading Sarno's book, I took my mother off of the pedestal; then I took the pedestal and mentally beat the hell out of dear old mom (and dad too). They were then long-deceased, so no parents were harmed in healing myself of childhood trauma and bidding goodbye to back pain.
I have read many TMS Success Stories, and none employed the physicality that I did, but it worked like a charm to heal me. When I got tired of pounding mom into mush with the pedestal, I imagined my parents' heads as speed bags/punching bags at the gym and gleefully punched them to simthereens, usually together. You can think of all kinds of creative ways to deal with parent-inflicted trauma once you get going. Example: I imagined myself piloting a P-51 Mustang fighter and strafing my childhood home, with them in it, with .50-caliber bullets and rockets until it was a smoking pile of ruins. Knives and baseball bats also made for colorful parental thrashings.
I dedicated myself to this necessary task of daily venting anger that my inner self had accumulated since boyhood. As time went on, my lower back pain faded away, followed by that ice pick-like stabbing pain beside my shoulder blades, then other misc. aches and pains. The whole process of shedding TMS pain took 2-3 months, which included daily mental savaging of my parents, and reading and underlining and rereading Sarno's book and frequently looking at his DVD showing him lecturing. The whole while I kept firmly in mind that my current bodily pain derived from my raging inner child producing it as a distraction, so that I would focus on the pain and ignore its childhood source. Not a trick I fall for anymore.
I came to realize that several episodes of BS medical crisis in my life, including a lucrative (for the predatory MDs) abdominal operation and long, painful hospital stay for "irritable bowel syndrome") were TMS reactions to stressful events in my life. Sarno got me to stop enriching chiropractors and masseurs. If ever a bodily pain begins to form these days, I instantly make fun of it, including roundly cursing it, and sometimes punching out my parents. At the gym, if my right knee starts being painful I say, "Nice try, stupid, but last time you made my left knee hurt. Can't you even remember which knee you want to hurt?" The pain then vanishes that instant or a few minutes later.
I began my career with an institution I loved, but around twenty years on it changed management and became an unpleasant, stressful place to work. I was forever having gut problems during those later years. Since I was knowledgeable about TMS at this stage of my life, I moved to another institution, where the stress was less, and the gut problems went away; a good tradeoff.
Fighting (literally!) against TMS pain was central to defeating it, for me. I'm very sensitive to what stress does to my body these days, and always watchful of what my inner child is upset about. The events I describe here happened a few years ago and back pain has not reappeared. I haven't read about anyone else resolving back pain with mock violence, but it worked like a charm for me and I'm writing about it because it may be a useful tool for others.
