Alan G. Old Pain in a New Place

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Question

I am a former patient of Dr. Sarno. At the time I attended his lectures in the late 1990's, he suggested as one part of my recovery that I read certain pages of "Healing Back Pain" for 30 days. I had been experiencing debilitating back spasms and after doing as he suggested, in these years that have followed, I no longer have these symptoms. But, I now am having pain in my hips and legs especially when I go to bed at night. I can find no comfortable position and keep moving my legs and body trying to find a comfortable position. I know this is TMS and have done the self talk and have also gotten out the book "The Mindbody Prescription" by Dr. Sarno but have no idea what pages I should be reading from this book. Since Dr. Sarno has retired and I cannot call him, I wonder if you can tell me the page numbers of this book that I should be reading?

 

Answer

Interesting. There was nothing magical about the specific pages you read, essentially those pages served as a constant reinforce/reminder that there was nothing wrong with your back. You read the pages over and over and continually reinforced to yourself that you were fine, that you were healthy, that these symptoms were caused by your mind. You believed it, eventually you neutralized the fear, and the pain lost its power over you.

Assuming you've been cleared by a physician regarding these new symptoms and they've been deemed TMS, there is nothing special or unique about your leg or hip pain. It's just a different manifestation of your back pain. That's it. You can read the same pages you read during your previous bout of back pain, and just replace "back" with "hip and leg," or you can just repeat to yourself throughout the day that there's nothing wrong with you. Once you're able to minimize your preoccupation with and fear of the symptoms, you rob them of their power and their days are numbered.

Alan

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