Self Manipulation & the Pain Cycle

I'm about 3 weeks into the program and feel I'm heading in the right direction. It is apparent to me that I spend a lot of time thinking about my back pain. I am often preoccupied with it. It's hard not to be when it hurts, which most of the time. I realize this feeds the pain cycle.

My question is that for as long as I can remember, I have dealt with feeling tension/pain in my back by twisting my torso to get that little crack which often seems to relieve the tension. Am I simply feeding the pain cycle by doing this? Do I have to resist the temptation to stretch/twist my back?

 

I would say that stretching your back to relieve pain is less of an issue than thinking about it all the time.

What strategies are you using to move your mind away from the pain? That seems to be the most important thing of all.

 

I might not be the best one to answer this for you Tom, as I do the same. Last year at this time people close to me thought I had a neurological disorder that caused head twitching simply because I would twitch my head constantly to crack my neck. As I did the SEP and started to pay attention to the emotions that accompany the physiological (and generate the urge to "crack" something) I connected the urge to "crack" something to tension/stress increase. The better I get at listening to my body and learning to be self-compassionate, the less I find myself cracking my neck. Ultimately it's a method for releasing tension in your body. If there's tension in your body, there's a reason for it. If you uncover the reason, the tension won't be in your body and you won't feel the urge to crack anything. I personally don't think you're impeding your own progress by twisting to get that crack. As long as you realize that what you are doing is relieving tension, and not performing any sort of physical "adjustment" to your structure. It's the tension release that causes you to feel better, not an "adjustment".