Upper Back Pain ONLY in the Mor6

Hi everybody!

I overcame severe lower back pain using the TMS approach about 10 years ago. For the past two weeks I have been waking up with an extremely stiff upper back. This is different from the low back spasms that I had a decade ago.

The strange thing is that even though I have tried stretching before bed, it happens every day and last for one hour regardless of what bed I sleep in. Could this be tms? I ask because I don't understand why it would go away after just an hour if it is tms. I also don't know why I would be waking up with it.

Thank you!!

Jim

 

How awesome stiffness happens only for an hour and then disappears! Perhaps REALLY taking stock of your internal stressors, personality traits etc. and realizing that body stiffness is usually a sign of anxiety, and emotions not allowed to be felt.. and sometimes needing more movement, relaxation of mind and body will ease fear. Alan Gordon’s free program on this website is fairy fast and addresses all these aspects.

 

Thank you, Cactusflower. I agree that the fact that it goes away in 1 hour is a blessing. I actually do move a lot (I did a 5-mile walk yesterday). The problem is that I am not moving while sleeping, and everything gets stiff and sore in the upper back.

Good idea about Alan Gordon. I read his book and loved it. I will do his program again. He is awesome.

Merci beaucoup!

 

Internal stressors, personality traits, emotion not allowed to be felt--that, of course, is Sarno, and maybe that is what is going on with you, magicjim. But often overlooked is what Sarno said about Pavlovian conditioning in his last three books. Here is how he put it in The Divided Mind:

“One of the prime characteristics of TMS is that the pattern of symptoms will develop as a result of Pavlovian conditioning. People will experience the kind of symptoms they have learned to expect to experience, just as Pavlov’s dogs learned to associate the presentation of food with the ringing of a bell. Elizabeth von R had pain associated with standing and walking, though there was nothing neurologically wrong with her. Another patient with similar pain will say that it is sitting that brings on the pain, while walking relieves it. Experience with large numbers of patients in our clinic makes it clear that these are programmed responses having to relationship to anything beyond what the patient is conditioned to expect. That is why most common psychosomatic disorders are invariably the ones currently in vogue.” (The italicization is Sarno’s; the underlining is mine.)
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Maybe the underlined language is a bit ambiguous, but I think “having no relationship to anything beyond what the patient is conditioned to expect” includes no relationship to internal stressors, personality traits, or repressed emotions. The sole cause is that the patient expects that if he or she does X (and X can be walking, can be sitting, can be sleeping, or whatever), then he or she will have pain.

This interpretation of Sarno is based partly on my own experience with TMS. I overcame more than two decades of chronic low back pain by getting in touch when with when I was repressing anger and didn’t realize it, so I fully appreciate what Sarno said about internal stressors, perfectionism and goodism, and repressed emotions. But years after I ended my chronic low back pain, I got neck pain that became chronic. No amount of focusing on stressors in my life, my perfectionism, or trying to uncover emotion that I was repressing made any difference. It was only after I realized and accepted that my pain was Pavlovian conditioning having no relationship to anything else that I stopped the pain. Another example is chronic right knee pain that began after I tore my medical meniscus in 1991. Over the next ten years, I had three surgeries to stop the pain. The first and third cut away parts of the meniscus, reducing cushioning in the joint. The second one was a crazy procedure intended to fill in divots in the cartilage covering the end of my femur due to wear and tear associated with diminished meniscal cushioning, and the third one included that procedure as well as more resection of the meniscus. None of the surgeries helped one bit. Over the last five years, however, I have had no knee pain at all. Why? I realized and accepted that the pain was just Pavlovian conditioning. (The details of my realization involve learning about molecular biology that would take too long to explain and nobody would have the patience to read because of the off-putting terminology.)

My interpretation of what Sarno wrote about Pavlovian conditioning is not based solely on my experience with TMS. A neuroscience-oriented version of Pavlovian conditioning called predictive processing, or predictive coding, is the new big thing in both cognitive brain science and pain science. Dr. Howard Schubiner has gotten into that in recent years, which is what stimulated my interest in it. Prominent pain neuroscientist Katja Weich has nicely condensed predictive processing: “what you get is what you expect” because that is just the way the (very complex) central nervous system works. So my question to you, magicjim, is have you become conditioned to expect that after sleeping you will wake up with an extremely stiff and sore upper back and become conditioned to expect the pain to go away after being up for an hour? If so, that is what you will get until you stop expecting that. Finally, don’t answer my question in the negative just because you do not remember ever having consciously and cognitively deduced that after you sleep, you will wake up with an extremely stiff and sore upper back. Pavlovian conditioning can occur unconsciously, so you don’t realize you have created a causal expectation in the unconscious part of your brain that has no basis in physical reality.

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Duggit,

You are a godsend. Thank you so much for this detailed, thorough and helpful reply. The last paragraph was particularly helpful. I am familiar with Sarno's works because his books cured my BRUTAL lower back pain after everything else (short of trying surgery) failed. “What you get is what you expect” will be my message to myself moving forward.

When I posted my question, my main struggle was the I would go to bed feeling great, but wake up with pain and stiffness. I couldn't figure out why TMS would work that way, but it probably is a predictive processing issue. When it FIRST happened (2 weeks ago), I probably just slept in a weird position. I probably then went to bed worried the next night that it would happen again. I don't remember worrying about it, but it could have been unconscious.

This is precisely what I needed. I believe it will be my source to being pain-free.

You also might have just saved me $1800 on a new mattress!

Magical wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous new year to you and your loved ones!

MagicJim

 

PS - For those interested:

 

@Duggit
Right on!
This is absolutely part of what I consider an intersection of fear and personality. It is a key part of Alan Gordon’s pain reprocessing.

 

MagicJim, I think your are right about that. It was essentially the same with my neck pain. The morning it first started, I became aware of two things almost simultaneously as I was waking up: my neck hurt and I was lying on my right side. I did not consciously associate them, but on hindsight it is clear my brain unconsciously did. It took me a while--but not a long time--to break the association It was a matter of persistently reminding myself that the pain was just Pavlovian conditioning. I was unaware of Katja Weich’s catchy phrase back then, but that is what I would have used had I known about it.

Congratulations on saving $1800 on a mattress. If you want to learn more about predictive processing and pain (and reinforce in your mind that the back symptoms you get are what you expect), you can do so for a pittance compared to buying a new mattress. You could buy Harvie & Moseley, Pain and Perception for $54.95 at Amazon or for $40.90 from https://www.optp.com/Pain-and-Perception (Pain and Perception: A Closer Look at Why We Hurt | Education | OPTP). By the way, Moseley has collaborated with Weich on a fMRI imaging study of brain regions involved in anxiety and pain.

 

Much appreciated. I think I just decided how to spend my Amazon gift card....