Lateral shift

hello,

My story in a nutshell, 5 years ago I fell playing basketball and hurt my back...I went into lateral shift, X-ray and mri revealed mild issues at l4/l5 and l5/s1.

Lateral shift corrected itself in a few days and then I developed pain in my legs thought to be from nerve root compression. The idea of lateral shift is you injure a disk and you body shifts to compensate and protect it.

I have had pain of some sort from the last five years and I have read a number of Sarno books, but have never been fully convinced. I had back pain all last week, and I have been studying the Sarno concepts and making an evidence list. I woke up randomly on Saturday which a huge lateral shift and extreme pain. Trying to tell myself this tms and it’s just fighting me hard.

I saw a tms physician about 1 year ago and she confirmed the diagnosis. I have all the common Sarno traits goodist, perfectionist, etc.

This lateral acute shift has me worried as I’ve not read too many experiences with it.

Can anyone offer some advice?

Mike

 

Hi Mike,

My story was very similar to yours- I had issues at the same levels (herniated discs on MRI with a "nerve compression") and also experienced a lateral shift, and many episodes of low back pain and spasm as well as sciatica. It was all 100% TMS- lateral shift is just a protective muscle spasm, nothing fancier than that- and TMS frequently manifests as a spasm. Hope that helps with your evidence!

 

Ty for the response; a friend who has known me from childhood called to help me with this problem and helped me create a list of all the treatment modalities and obsessive behaviors I engage in involving back pain. The list was longer than I realized

Eating an anti inflammatory diet
Always maintaining proper back posture
Monitoring my weight obsessively even though I’m not overweight
Doing the McGill big 3 exercises 6 days a week
Researching lateral shift
Researching Tiger Woods history of back surgery
Monitoring my symptoms every time I get out of a chair or wake up.

Looking at the list feels embarrassing, because it is indicative of obsession that is distracting me from life in general.

I tried telling myself yesterday that this shift and pain were TMS and tried fighting through the pain yesterday by cutting the grass and I woke up today worse than ever; this makes it hard to believe. I feel like Scully in X-files, “I want to believe”

 

Hey! You say your story was the same… are you better?

My story is similar: I’ve had back pain since 17 but it was only till 27 that it started to affect me. I went skate boarding and did a simple Ollie, landed but felt like my lower back gave out, then just dealt with awful lateral shift for weeks, needed a cane to walk it was wild! My back has given out 2 more times playing sports and right now in at a point where I’m just scared to do any sports. I have a mild constant lateral shift. I have a bulged disc l5 l4 which I got checked on an mri this year.

the thing that scares me and worries me that it’s not tms is that some days the main pain is like at the very center of my lower spine, shifting my weight certain ways will give me these very quick and intense spasms that feel like the actual disc or something cause it’s dead center, like my spine can handle my own weight, and usually that is the main pain that had started it all.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about?

 

Telling yourself it's TMS isn't enough to make it go away. You have to take the next step of finding and releasing the emotions.
Remember, the pain is being created by your brain to protect you from the emotions. It will keep on protecting you until you find them.

 

How do you find them? The right emotions?

 

Writing. Piece of paper and a pen. Or digital notebook and a pen.
Sarno said that anger is the biggest hidden emotion that causes symptomatic pain.
Who in your past might have made you angry or hurt you? Let your past self spill its pain or anger onto the paper.
No censor. write whatever. It'll come out.