Sitting Pain.

Ok I know what you’re going to say.

“sitting doesn’t cause pain!!”

I understand that some people sit all day without pain and that I’m most likely conditioned like one of Pavlov’s Puppies.

However.

How can it be said that sitting doesn’t cause pain when this morning I woke up on a “good day” (which is quite rare)

Then after sitting for a couple of hours at work my back is hurting again.

If sitting doesn’t cause pain, why does sitting cause my pain?

 

Bending over shouldn't cause pain either. It's not the ACT itself that induces the pain, it's the THOUGHTS that induce the pain. How are you sitting? Are you tense? Holding stress you don't even recognize you hold?
How do you TRULY feel about your job. Your inner most self thoughts about your job you probably feel you shouldn't voice to anyone.
How do you feel about yourself and your job? People you work with?
Is it your dream job or would you rather be doing something else or perhaps not working at all?
Are there other stressors in your life, or do you tend to generate internal stress with anxiety (which you may not notice you have?)

TMS is generally (at least to start off with) seen as chronic pain, pain that exists without dire illness or physical injury (like say, a broken leg) that lasts 3 months or more. Doesn't mean other symptoms or conditions or sensations are not TMS, it's just that's when it usually gets noticed as something that isn't going away with physical intervention. If you have other sorts of chronic physical symptoms (which you allude to with your comment "a good day") then your back pain and stiffness might simply be symptoms moving around or shifting - a common TMS trait.

Have you done any reading or exploring more about TMS?

 

It does cause pain. Try to get up every 15 min all the time, at home, at work etc. Sit for 15 min and then get up and move a little, go to the bathroom, go get a coffee from the kitchen, move around a little, stretch a little, go speak to a coworker etc. Do not sit for hours and hours without moving. Sitting does cause pain.

You should also exercise to keep your muscles mass. In time/years it goes away. Exercise is great for bone density, anti - depression, joint health etc. In our time, especially in developed countries, people are too sedentary.

 

The short answer is what you said: Pavlovian conditioning. Sarno is famous for emphasizing the role of repressed emotions, especially repressed anger, as the cause of TMS pain. But he was hardly unaware of the role of Pavlovian conditioning. He talked about that in his last three books. Here is how he put it in The Divided Mind:

“One of the prime characteristics of TMS is that the pattern of symptoms will develop as a result of Pavlovian conditioning. People will experience the kind of symptoms they have learned to expect to experience, just as Pavlov’s dogs learned to associate the presentation of food with the ringing of a bell. Elizabeth von R had pain associated with standing and walking, though there was nothing neurologically wrong with her. Another patient with similar pain will say that it is sitting that brings on the pain, while walking relieves it. Experience with large numbers of patients in our clinic makes it clear that these are programmed responses having no relationship to anything beyond what the patient is conditioned to expect. That is why most common psychosomatic disorders are invariably the ones currently in vogue.” (The italicization is Sarno’s; the underlining is mine.)
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As far as I am aware, Sarno never offered any particular way to stop pain due to Pavlovian conditioning. My guess is he thought that if a person understands and accepts that the pain is due merely to Pavlovian conditioning rather than anything physically wrong, then his or her brain will stop creating the pain. At any rate, that approach is what has worked for me. Furthermore, that fits superbly with the twelfth of Sarno’s 12 Daily Reminders, namely, “I must think psychological at all times, not physical.” Sarno viewed thinking psychologically more broadly than a focus on one’s emotions. After discussing Pavlovian conditioning in Healing Back Pain, he wrote: “The specific posture or activity that brings on the pain is not important per se. What is essential is to know that it has been programmed in as part of the TMS and is, therefore, of psychological rather than physical significance.” (Underlining by me.)

A neuroscience-oriented version of Pavlovian conditioning called predictive processing (or predictive coding) is the new, new thing in both brain science and pain science. Dr.Howard Schubiner has gotten into predictive processing in a big way in recent years, which is what stimulated my interest in it. Prominent pain neuroscientist Katja Weich has nicely condensed predictive processing into seven words: “What you get is what you expect” because that is just the way the very complex central nervous system works. (I think predictive processing theory explains TMS pain due to repressed anger better than Sarno’s distraction theory does, and so does Schubiner, but that is a topic for another day.)

I think the big question for you, shadowson, is have you become conditioned to expect that after sitting, you will have back pain? If so, that is what you will get until you stop expecting that. Don’t answer my question in the negative just because you do not necessarily remember a time when you consciously and cognitively deduced that after you sit, you will have back pain. Pavlovian conditioning often occurs unconsciously, so you are unaware of having created a causal expectation with no basis in physical reality that is stored in the unconscious part of your brain .

 

Conditioning ALSO works in your favor too you know.

my absolute last TMS symptom to leave from my recovery was ; On my drive home from work at 6pm after working hard, pain free, at Manual labor for 12 hours I would get sciatica/butt spasms about 5 minutes into my drive home. I absolutely knew it was TMS and conditioning , but I was so mentally shot from my day I just didn't have the time or energy to 'Sarno-ize' it out.

Then one day I had had enough . I literally talked to it the whole drive home... I raged out loud, and screamed and talked to my head and burnt it out....I finally beat it.

First I told it how ridiculous it was since it NEVER happened on my drive TOO work. It never happened on drives at work...I would drive a Gator 4x4 around the job site w/o a problem. I sat for hours playing guitar on the weekend..no problem. Only the drive home.

So... I ranted about how much I hated Los Angeles,the traffic, the people who had come and flooded and ruined my childhood paradise. I ranted about the fact that I worked my ass off and couldn't afford to own a home or rent one. I ranted about the anxiety I had being too far (in my opinion) from my home in case of an emergency (anxiety)

I also told it that it officially had my attention and I would now pound a bunch of coffee every night right before the drive and make sure I had enough energy to do this EVERY night and would continue to do so until IT left (the TMS)

This was before speaker cell phones so I am certain anybody watching me thought I was quite mad, but I didn't care..it was stupid. I actually still use this strategy for the occasional TMS intrusion, though now I get less weird looks as half the world is on a phone and the other half is ranting Crazies... but the important thing is, conditioning works in 'reverse'..and just as fast as in 'forward'

I only recall doing it a few times and only that intense the first time.. I literally shocked my system into compliance. I had been pain free for a few months at that point and it was now annoying.

Try to 'scratch the record'...TMS and other OCD type of syndromes are skipping records that keep playing over and over...grab that thing and drag a sixteen penny nail across it and scratch the hell out of it...it won't be able to play anymore...guaranteed!

 

Here is an excellent thread about sitting and how @Ellen overcame this symptom:https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/the-chair.12519/ (THE CHAIR!!!!)

Dr. Sarno himself said sitting does not cause pain. I think he is filmed saying this in a movie.