Chicken before the Egg (Stopping Medication/PT)?

I am continuing to re-listen to the book "Healing back pain" by Dr. John Sarno. Towards the end he mentions that it is important to stop doing things like physical therapy and to re engage in the physical activities that you are afraid of. On the flipside he mentions you actually should not do this until you have confidence in the program. Isn't this a catch 22?

-Andrew

 

Andrew, this is where it gets tricky, as there is a wide variety of opinions out there, each one may be legitimate in its context. I can give you my, very humble opinion, based on what has helped me to improve so far, although I am still not free of symptoms.

Without challenging your pain, you will never get better - that is a given and uncontested across the board.

I am not sure what kind of physical therapy did Dr. Sarno mean, I know that my PT encouraged me to challenge my pain and other symptoms (very intense muscle spasms), although she was too conservative and did not encourage me strongly enough. The set of exercises she gave me was doing exactly what Sarno prescribed: challenging my pain. I am still not sure I can reconcile his advice to stop my PT with the rest of his recommendations. On the other hand, what was clearly absent in the PT I was receiving, is the emotional component, which is another key to solving the problem. My PT told me that I in fact had some structural problems and that I should stop talking about repressed emotions otherwise people would think I am nuts. This is how they are trained - no surprise here. Maybe this is what Sarno had in mind when telling us to stop PT.

The next question is to when start engaging physical activities. My answer is: try and see whether it works. If it does not - give yourself a break and then try again. That was a way for me to understand when I had enough confidence. I tried at least dozen times in the past six months and most of the times I had to readjust my expectations to the less ambitious ones. But I was still trying. Some people succeed by going cold turkey. Some like me - in baby steps. Give it a try many times until it works for you.

Good luck!

 

One of the things that freaks me out about cutting out things like medication is when I am coming up on obligations that "can't" be avoided.

This could be work related. For example, I DJ on Saturdays and essentially since there is 1 person doing this job, I can't really "call in sick" so to speak. This makes me more uneasy as I get closer to the weekend to do more physical activities or lower medication as if I mess up and can't DJ, especially multiple times, then I will lose the job. Even worse if you are contracted for something, you can't back out.

Additionally, I hired a "roadie" since it's a mobile gig and there are lots of heavy speakers to carry. Would this mean I would not be able to use the roadie anymore because of fear of hurting myself? (Honestly I think this one is generally valid as with weak legs and anterior pelvic tilt I am more likely to injury myself picking up heavy subwoofer from ground)

My only thought is to just quit the job so I can be less worried about the consequences of something going wrong. I wonder how others have dealt with this?

Thoughts?