not giving up!

Hi,

My name is Mike. Like most folks here I've dealt with chronic pain for many years (10 years). I'm a very active person and most people would never know how much pain I'm in because I don't talk about it and I just keep plugging along day in and day out to function. I first learned about Dr. Sarno several years ago and found mindbody stuff to be fascinating. I read parts of his books and about a year ago I purchased Dr. Schubiner's book titled Unlearn Your Anxiety and Depression. It made so much sense to me. I started doing the exercises in the book and noticed feelings of anger start to 'bubble up to the surface' of my thoughts. I found the exercises in the book to be helpful. I was in between jobs and focused on the book and exercises daily. However, I reached a point where I felt exhausted from trying to get to the bottom/source of what is really going on within me. I have pain in various parts of my body (neck, shoulder right now) and I can tell that there is so much tension within my body that I have felt for so long... I took a break from the program about a year ago because it became mentally exhausting for me to continue to contemplate these feelings and now I recently started paging through the book again and it still makes sense to me and in my heart I feel like there are still unresolved emotions inside of me that are causing the tension. I'm going to go back to the exercises again and keep working on it and not give up.

One interesting part of my story is that I work with people with chronic pain everyday. I work as a physical therapist. I have fear and anxiety working with people who are really depressed and anxious and sometimes I feel like I'm carrying all of their burdens on me and I often leave my work exhausted and just not feeling well. I'm going to keep working on this and try to get over the fear that I know is causing these symptoms.

Mike

 

You can and will do it Mike. Stay with it and you're going to see clearings. I've been dealing with issues since 2010 myself, and have greatly improved my quality of life. Certainly not perfect and still have to work through periods of flare-ups. But life is good... and I'm learning more every day.

You'll have a lot of people here rooting for you. Don't put pressure on yourself, give yourself rest and space...but keep moving back towards normal living.
Best wishes.