Day 4 Took me many days to answer this prompt

The change in my pain level from before to after I started the SEP is nothing short of miraculous. During this same time (about 4 weeks) I did my due diligence of going to doctors to make sure i didn’t have a physical or structural cause for my paralyzing pain. Before i got the results back from the multiple MRIs and XRs, my pain was on some days non-existent. But then, I started to get the imaging results back that showed areas of moderate to severe degeneration (especially in labrum, L5-S1 disc, etc) and spondylosis. These were quite obviously (to my doctors and my physical therapists) the cause of my pain. They told me not to “poke the bear” which meant don’t do any movements that exacerbate the pain, stop bicycling (because that would exacerbate the inflammation response everytime I bent forward). The most disheartening and scary part is that the degeneration is NON-REVERSIBLE. It’s because I am getting older! It’s because I’ve used my body (oh my gosh, how I’ve used my body- i tingle with awe and pleasure at the memories of my body at play) and there is nothing to be done about the wear and tear, the degeneration that presumably will only get worse.
Is my TMS, at its core, a result of of my fear of aging and death? Did watching my father at 96, his gradual descent into a crooked old man, contribute to the paralyzing pain that had me bed-bound for a week? Can i ever loose this preoccupation with the pain of aging? Moving on from Day 4 has been hard and has taken me almost a week, but thanks to this forum and the encouragment to write it out, to take the space to share myself, to let others know what I am thinking, i think i can. It’s hard because part of being afraid of aging/dying (even if i have the feeling that it is still 20 years away) is the thought/consideration of whether i matter. Is my pain from repressed emotions or is it the existential fear of whether i am/have been enough? OK, i think i’m ready to hit the arrow for Day 5.