Bookmark

Hello everyone,
I suffered from chronic pelvic pain since 2002. I fell on a wet marble floor and had pain since.

Following is a short summary of my journey:

-Wise-Anderson protocol
-100 sessions of pelvic floor physical therapy, Botox injections, 6 nerve blocks
-MRN Neurography "confirming" PNE (Pudendal Nerve Entrapment)
-Received a PNE diagnosis by 5 different physicians
-2 PNE decompression surgeries
-I had to quit work

I suffered for 11 years and hit rock bottom after my 2 consecutive pudendal nerve decompression surgeries, being practically bed ridden for several months. Why did I have PNE surgery? I had been completely unsuccessful with the Sarno method. I saw Dr. Schechter and I had many sessions with Don Dubin. I was simply grasping at straws at that point. I was resigned to muddling through life managing my days around pain and surgery was my last chance I thought.

I was also a moderator on pudendalhope, a forum dedicated to pudendal pain but with a somehow strong surgery slant. Needless to say, I am not a moderator on that board anymore.

My recovery started with an odd incident. In 2012, I met some old friends that I had not seen for 30 years. It was incredibly emotional and I had the surprise of experiencing my pelvic pain simply vanish for a couple of hours after years of continuous pain.

Why would emotions make the pain go away?

I got the key from Monte Hueftle.
http://www.runningpain.com/important_tms_updates

Everything I needed was on that page.

My methodology is a bit different from Monte's but below is the only thing I did to get better. I never met Monte and I did it all by myself.
You truly need to do the work consistently and not wait for somebody to heal you. You also need to stop looking outside yourself for answers. I think it is key:

1a. I kept asking all day long what emotion I was feeling.
1b. In addition, I set aside a few minutes a day to go over old trauma/emotions.

2. Once I noticed an emotion (old or new), I asked myself what negative emotion I was feeling: ex. disrespected, ignored, lonely, depressed, frustrated, anxious, fidgety, powerless etc.

3. I felt the emotion. I DID NOT THINK ABOUT IT. I simply felt it. I was feeling the negative emotion and how it was affecting me. I always experienced a strong body reaction. A shiver, a cold sensation etc.

4. I resisted the urge to avoid the feeling. Your brain will do its best to make that experience stop. It is not a comfortable experience.

5. Done. Go back to 1.

That is all I did to get better. I did not read and re-read Sarno or watch videos.

I noticed that people are confusing the thoughts around an emotion and the emotion itself. An emotion has a strong physical component.

So let me just list a few quotes that also helped me in my journey:

Mindbody syndromes are caused by repressed emotions.
Dr. John Sarno (healing back pain)

Learning how to process emotions (past and present) in a healthy way is the crux of effective Mind Body Healing.
Things like yoga, relaxation, and meditation can help, but they will usually not be effective long term on their own – unless they are combined with skills that help you to feel and process your emotions.
Lorraine Faenhdrich, pelvic pain - mind-body coach

EMOTION: THE BODY'S REACTION TO YOUR MIND
Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind — or you might say a reflection of your mind in the body.
The more you are identified with your thinking, your likes and dislikes, judgments and interpretations, which is to say the less present you are as the watching consciousness, the stronger the emotional energy charge will be, whether you are aware of it or not. If you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom.
IF YOU HAVE DIFFICULTY FEELING YOUR EMOTIONS, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. This will also put you in touch with your emotions. If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth. Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at that time.
You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware.
To watch an emotion in this way is basically the same as listening to or watching a thought,
which I described earlier. The only difference is that, while a thought is in your head, an emotion has a strong physical component and so is primarily felt in the body. You can then allow the emotion to be there without being controlled by
it. You no longer are the emotion; you are the watcher, the observing presence.
If you practice this, all that is unconscious in you will be brought into the light of consciousness.
MAKE IT A HABIT TO ASK YOURSELF: What's going on inside me at this moment? That question will point you in the right direction. But don't analyze, just watch. Focus your attention within. Feel the energy of the emotion. If there is no emotion present, take your attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway into Being.
September, 2001 Eckhart Tolle (Practicing the Power of Now)

Remember that our thought and behavior patterns are doing two things. 1. Generating inner tension and 2. Repressing or helping us deny/avoid our emotions. Sometimes we simply need to change or redirect out of our tension generating patterns/repressing activity via the practice of Think Clean and sometimes we need to experience or be with our feelings with no thinking involved first and then redirect into the present moment or into more open, flexible or balanced patterns.
Monte Hueftle