Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)

(moderator edit: we lost our dear Walt in 2021. His obituary is here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/chicagotribune/name/walter-oleksy-obituary?id=4616539 (Walter G. Oleksy Obituary (2021) Chicago Tribune))

That's me with my darling Annie, a 70-pound lap dog.

I was 82 and never had any pain except a few toothaches when I was a teenager. I was never even sick, just had a couple of hernias from lifting my dog the wrong way. Then last fall I lifted a case of 36 cans of beer into a shopping cart at the supermarket and felt excruciating pain in my back. Somehow, I got home, but the pain stayed with me.

I try never to see a doctor and didn’t with the back ache, figuring he’d want to give me strong pain killers or have an operation. I toughed it out, then after about two weeks I emailed a friend who is a nurse in Hawaii. I asked her advice and she said I should read a book, Healing Back Pain, by Dr. John E. Sarno. She said it helped another friend, a psychiatrist, who had back pain, so I bought a copy and learned that Dr. Sarno says most if not all our back and other pain is not caused by lifting or any structural damage from aging, but from our repressed emotions.

I read the Sarno book and followed its 12 daily reminders that reinforce the knowledge that the pain is a disorder he calls Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS), a slight deprivation of oxygen to parts of the body that is caused by our repressed emotions. It suggested “journaling,” writing down what we can remember of our youth, since many of our pain problems began back when we were young, from family or other stresses. I certainly fit that description growing up during the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II.

I grew up with my parents never having much money and drinking too much. They divorced when I was about six years old, Mom remarried, a man who owned his own house, which gave my older brother and sister a roof over our heads. A year later Mom left him and went back to my birth father. Ten years later he died and she married his brother who was very jealous and also a heavy drinker. He made life miserable for my sister and me, but my brother had run away and joined the navy.

I went to college, then the army, and had no anxiety, but that returned when I became a newspaper reporter and then freelance writer, never having regular income. You want a stressful job, be a reporter on a Chicago newspaper and cover crime and violence. And being self-employed brings its own stresses, for me mostly financial uncertainties.

During my freelance years, I also tried caring for my mother but learned the hard way how difficult it is to be a caretaker. After two years I asked my brother to find another place for Mom to live, and that left me with a lot of guilt. I thought I had repressed it, but lifting that case of beer gave me back pain to tell me I hadn’t put that guilt to rest.

Sarno’s book helped me to get rid of about 95 percent of my back pain, but I still felt lower back pain. I refused to believe that 100 percent of my pain came from TMS repressed emotions. It took me more than six months before I decided Sarno was
100 percent right and the pain went away.

I attribute my pain relief mainly to Dr. Sarno and the web site www.TMSWiki.org. I found that many others became free of pain by following advice and posts on that web site and I highly recommend it to everyone, even if they are not in pain. It is an amazing treasure house of information and help on healing.

Along the way over the past year I’ve felt some pain relief from reading another Sarno book, The Mindbody Prescription, as well as The Great Pain Deception by Steven Ray Ozanich, Pain Free for Life by Dr. Scott Brady, MD, You Can Heal Yourself by Louise L. Hay, Hope and Help for Your Nerves by Claire Weekes, Loving What Is by Byron Katie, and Instant Self-Hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair. Most recently

I have found more great healing techniques by following the advice and writings of Dr. James Alexander, psychologist and author of The Hidden Psychology of Pain, and Dr. Alan Gordon, psychotherapist, following his Recovery Program free on www.TMSWiki.org.

I also believe I have been helped to be pain-free by daily playing a hypnosis DVD, “Stress Relief for Life,” by London psychotherapist and hypnotherapist Susan Hepburn.

Mainly, I believe I finally stopped feeling back pain because I convinced my subconscious mind that it was 100 percent from TMS repressed emotions. That, and deep breathing, relaxed me and enabled me to learn the pain was all in my head.

Also, last but probably not least, I added the spiritual element to my healing, which Dr. Brady suggests in his book. I began reading The Bible and began walking more closely with God, following His own advice: “Ask and you shall receive.” I asked to be pain-free and for release from guilt and anxiety and to achieve some steady income, and He answered my prayers.

One or more of the techniques suggested by Dr. Sarno and the others I have read could help you to overcome your pain, whatever it is. And ask whatever God you worship to help you and He will. “Believe and you shall receive.”