John E. Sarno on Physical Activity

Shane,
Well, in a way, you DO want to "trick the mind." Your brain right now is telling you there's something wrong when there isn't. You have to "trick" it out of sending you this message (via pain). I agree with other posters that the best way to do this is through acceptance. It may sound counter-intuitive, and it may take months, but what you really need to do is get back into your life and just accept the pain and shrug your shoulders at it. Is the pain really that important, or is doing things you love important? It was only once I did these things that my pain began to subside. I still have pain, but now when I notice it I ask myself, so what? I am doing what I want to do (after months of not being able to) and that's what is important. No one ever guaranteed me a pain-free life.

The books that helped me most were Hope and Help For Your Nerves by Claire Weekes, and The Hidden Psychology of Pain by James Alexander.

I wish you good healing.
Gail

 

I feel that I need to follow-up that statement with a question. I suffer mainly from RSI and foot pain and I have, during this summer, gone through Schubiners programme "unlearn your pain". I'm at the last week and the healing is basically status quo. Slight improvements, maybe 20-30 %. I'm using a computer again and tried to push through pain with movement, which works partly. But still, my gigantic roadblock is the fear of movement. So reading this makes my heart sinks. How is it possible to believe that relapses (like my two new symptoms that I've developed during the summer trying to increase my activity, hamstring/buttock "injury" when doing too much yoga (certifered ashtanga yoga teacher since 2 months back, and I havn't been able to do any yoga due to my buttock pain, which obviously suckss. I really wanna get back into it, but physiotherapist says its a "real" injury.) and heel pain running 15 min in a difficult terrain) is 100% due to TMS but not to actual injuries?

Reading the Great Pain Deception by SteveO (which greatly lifts my heart and gives me some sort of hope when I reread parts of it, thank you for writing this masterpiece) makes me wanna go out and run. again and again. I could do that if it was "guaranteed" that I would get better. However, I see the possibility that my heel pain, buttock pain and so forth just gets worse. The catch of my life.

Could TMS be a form of painphobia? Just as someone is afraid of spiders. Food for thought..

EDIT: I would like to add that I have all the personality traits that a TMS'er has, pain moving around in the body with a constant amount basically always there (with ups and downs ofc). Furthermore I had a troublesome period from the age of 13-16 when I got bullied and locked every single emotion inside to be "cool", the only logical way out of bullying at that period of time. At the moment I'm finishing my masters degree at uni and some selfinposed pressure is def. there.

 

Hi, Kshane, I agree with Ellen. I accepted about 90 percent of TMS causing my back pain, but didn't heal until I
convinced myself and my unconscious mind it was 100 percent. I kept believing it was from aging, but it was from
repressed emotions.

Keep working on that 5 percent of doubt. You're closer than I was!

 

More than 6 months later and I am still in bad shape. I still surf, workout, etc. and fight through the pain daily. I had about two weeks of reprieve a couple months ago when I hurt my shoulder and was forced to do a lot of icing and take a ton of ibuprofen. During the time of heavy ibu dosing, I had a lot less discomfort in my back. It was heaven. Since stopping that I am right back where I started. Years of pain. I sometimes wish I could get a visit with the good Dr. Sarno himself. Knowing that will never happen, I give up. I am resigning myself to living with lower back pain for the rest of my days. Wow, does that sound hopeless or what? LOL - inappropriate laughter, I know. ;-)

 

It is like your avatar great way to put it thanx forest