Ashley A

Well, about me before all the pain started, because I think it's important to note. I was a happy, upbeat person, in a very solid marriage to a wonderful man, with a career I loved, and surrounded by many great friends. I do however tend to stress a lot, overthink everything, and get easily overwhelmed, but all in all, life was really quite wonderful.

Although in 2014 all this changed when I found out my two brothers were addicted to heroin. My world came crashing down, as I had always been very close to my family and it depressed me deeply to hear this. It was shortly after this time that I experienced my first panic attack, which would continue over the next few years, and a general decrease in my mood, coupled with short bouts of deep depression (typically coinciding with my brother's relapsing after rehab).

In addition to the panic attacks I would have days with headaches and a lot of flared up trigger point pain/myofascial pain (both of which had also happened in times of stress even before finding out about my brother's addictions), but this would only ever last for a day at a time and was relieved by massage.

Then my brother died from an heroin overdose on September 30, 2017. I was devastated and went into a deep depression. While I never really experienced the myofascial pain and headaches during this time, I was barely functioning and not really taking care of myself. I felt like a zombie just going through the motions of life. I tried to address his death and not live in denial - which seemed easy at first (although I now realize I was numb in those first several months), it was the next few months when I came out of my haze that I could not deal with his loss. I no longer looked at his pictures, didn't want to talk about him, and cringed in pain anytime someone else brought him up. I also lived in constant fear, I was scared all the time, felt guilt over his death (wondering if I could have done more), felt I was doomed to live a bad life, that my good luck had run out, and had basically lost all trust in the world. Needless to say my anxiety was spinning out of control.

This all came to a head when we moved from into a new house (which I had wanted to move into really bad) and when I found out we got the place I immediately felt guilt and wondered why my life was so good. Not logical, but I had built up such a narrative in my head that I didn't deserve to be happy after my brother's death that it really weighed on me. So much that when we discovered some mold in the house and I got a sinus infection I built this narrative in my head that I was going to get extremely sick and began to have severe panic attacks about this. It was during this time that I got sudden neck/shoulder/upper back pain.

The pain in my shoulder was similar to the years past, but the neck pain was new to me and excruciating. My neck felt tight and hard to hold up my head, along with the constant nagging/burning pain along my shoulders and upper back. Also new to me was a general feeling of tightness/muscle spasm that would just take hold out of nowhere. I began to fear my pain which sent me into a viscous cycle. I became obsessed with getting better, figuring out my pain, all the while falling deeper into a depression when I realized I wasn't getting any better.

It wasn't until my MRI that I began to feel a glimmer of hope because I finally had a "diagnosis." Sort of - doctors weren't convinced my diagnosis was what was causing me the pain, but still suggested things like injections to rule it out. It was around this time that I came across Dr. John Sarno. After reading up on Mindbody Syndrome I really feel that I have it. I am at the very start of my journey, but feeling very hopeful for the first time in a while!