Bed pain

I may have asked this before

My back pain is triggered in bed. If I stay in it for longer than 6/7 hours then I pay the price.

I’ve spent the last 20 hours in bed with a stomach bug.

the sickness bug is bad enough but I’d argue the back pain from being in bed is worse. Honestly my back pain is the worst it’s ever been today.

How on Earth am I to believe that bed doesn’t cause pain when bed so clearly causes pain.

Also, wouldn’t the stomach bug be enough to distract me from negative emotions?

 

When I was in my mid-teens, I started having terrible stomach pain attacks that sent me to the emergency room every time, and every time after hours of tests and no pain meds forthcoming, staff would throw up their hands and, having found no discernible cause, relent and give me Vicodin. At some point, I realized that every time I had one of those attacks, I had been drinking Coke some time before it began. So I tested it out - drank a Coke and sure enough, an attack set in (I felt safe enough to do this because I had discovered at some point that drinking beer could stop the pain). I avoided Coke like death for years afterwards. Then I had a couple of episodes that didn't involve Coke, and I started to wonder if I had pinned the tail on the wrong donkey. So I tested again, and the pain never came - probably because I didn't expect it to. I don't drink Coke these days because it's basically sugar in a can, but I don't worry or expect pain if I drink it.

I think it's possible you also have the wrong donkey. How does that sit with you?

 

Conditioning. Plain and simple. It is explained in great detail in Sarno's Books

 

Thanks, I hear what you’re saying. It’s more than likely conditioning.

How to break the conditioning pattern?

 

Conditioning is an unconscious, learned phenomenon that you can "unlearn" by overriding it with your rational, logical conscious mind. Say to yourself (out loud is best) when you go to bed something to the effect of "There is no logical, rational reason for laying in bed to cause pain. So stop creating it, brain! Just knock it off! I don't need this."

Find the words that work best for you. But phrase it like you are talking to an annoying and misbehaving child, because that is what the unconscious brain is.

It sounds kind of silly but it worked well for me when I was addressing the conditioning that was associated with my migraines.

 

Ok thanks Ellen… appreciate the help

 

Is there any more advice for breaking the conditioned response of waking up in pain everyday and feeling completely exhausted when I wake up?

bed and sleep triggers my pain.

I’ve tried talking to my brain and it’s not made an ounce of difference

 

I’m a try to explain this. I’m not typing. I’m talking into a phone.

So.. I’m not having much pain at all during the day, maybe just a little tense. One of my favorite things to do is lay in bed and read. On my stomach exactly the way they tell you not to in the pain industry.
All of a sudden, my low back, left butt cheek, thigh, mid back begin to spasm. Sarno mentioned this and healing back pain… The woman who didn’t have pain all day long until she sat down to have a cocktail.
I have been aware of certain things in my life, my crazy ex-girlfriend, the shitty job. I’m currently on, the rate I’m getting paid per hour that isn’t enough to pay my bills? Instead of reading a novel, or the Bible or Harry Potter, I pull out, the Sarno book and read it.
Then, in pain, without moving and trying to get comfortable, I go inside myself and very intensely focus on how very pissed off I am about these things. It’s like a demonic meditation, the exact opposite of what the warm fuzzy world would tell us to do.
All I’m doing here is Saros’s principal of “turning my mind to a recurrent source of irritation”

This has broken that pain conditioning so many times I can’t count. It pisses me off because it takes time, and I wish I didn’t need to know how to do this, but it does work.

When things have gotten like this, I also make sure when I wake up first thing to also read the book, and make my lists of things that are upsetting me and try to guess what else might be going on in my unconscious that I am not aware of… And I am in pain when I lay down again? Same thing, demonic meditation, focusing intensely on things that piss me off.

According to Sarno, the reason this works is that it reconditions the brain by telling it we know what it’s doing. I’ll take his word for it since it has worked for a long time.

 

Thanks for this detailed explanation! Sometimes I can do this while journaling. But I have to keep digging. Because the first round in a topic doesn’t even draw up emotions. It takes a good 30 minutes for me to feel my anger about anything. When I try this, like you said, just lying on a bed, all it does is make my symptoms worse. What am I doing wrong? Any advice?

 

I almost always have the topic READY before the butt spasm,etc....I have it ready from my previous rants on paper. It is like keeping a loaded gun....If you wait until you're nervous and panicky, your mind goes everywhichway but since this usually happens in a graphable curve, I am prepared.

It usually goes like this :

(awareness) omg...leave me the Fuck alone! NO...Not now, I want to finish this book, leave me alone!

oh...OK. You want my attention?

"Wow...I am really 100% alone. That BITCH (exgf) bailed on me after I fed her and clothed and housed her..I just need someone to watch my dog. Now I can't go to my baseball games becuase no one will watch Sophie..I can't leave her alone....well I could, but then I am a dick...wow, I am such a codependent pussy.
I am totally alone. I have no one to back me up. I have been abandoned.
I guess this goes all the way back to my Mom watching me od and tell my sister 'let him die...he doesn't get it'
wow...I am really alone and scared. WTF will happen to me if I stop fighting the gravity...I might end up homeless again???
Who will take care of Sophie? I f'd up and couldn't take care of my other dog and am so ashamed of having to leave her with other people
I am such a selfish, loser pOS....I can't take care of my own self and am useless...."

etc, ad infinitum. Nothing with a negative connotation is out of bounds....as dark as I can get and as cynical. This is an act of creativity.

If I notice the pain, I will also usually notice i have stopped 'trying to think of anger inducers'...and many times, by the time I think about pain again , it is GONE

I never track time, but when I have resorted to this and just telling it to go away doesn't work, it has never stuck around longer than a few days...BUT, it is amazing how many days I will let it bug me before I do this.

we really do have an aversion to negativity, so it takes a concerted effort.

I make sure and have one lead off topic , usually abandonment or feelings of aloneness to launch the perusal...unless there is a new 'incident'..say something at work, or a new relationship fiasco.

mercifully, I have developed an aversion to romantic relationships, so the last two, though a few years old have sufficed...and we all have them. If we think we don't, THAT IS WHY we have TMS!!!

 

Baseball,
Thanks for this!!! Great explanation!

EXCELLENT idea!!! I’m going to get that loaded up immediately.

Some of your rant is actually being mean to yourself. I usually don’t do that. But I’ll go ahead and let it rip. Yes: creatively.

This is my biggest problem when journaling. I always feel so guilty when I get down and dirty, but I need to do that to get the level of anger where it needs to be. Something interesting here: the first time I ever got my symptoms to dramatically subside on the spot was when I got as ugly as possible journalspeaking (Nichole Sachs). It has been hard to recreate since.

haha!!! So very true!
Thanks again!

 

I have no labels. It's just thoughts. Thoughts can't hurt you, but the modern positive thinking movement has inadvertently caused more than a bit of TMS I imagine.
We are so western with 'good' and 'bad'...there is just truth and lies and I would be lying if I didn't admit I have ambivalent feelings about situations..lots of situations. I want work, right? But I want free time to enjoy as compensation. I want relationships, but I don't want to feel tied down.... Its the one way 'Oh, it's just peachy keen!' that causes TMS. Every new TMS guy I talk to has a wonderful wife and kids... (lol)and a great job and coaches sports and his ONLY problem is pain (LOL)

Calling it 'mean' is the problem. That is the mechanism by which we don't 'go there' and that is what keeps us from recovering

I am , as you know, really crazy about my dog...but sometimes i have to Make myself angry about the energy it takes to be a good owner. Having these thoughts doesn't make me beat her or harm her in anyway, but if I am not honest to my innermost self about them, they Could keep me from being able to provide by shutting down the whole factory

 

I’m get what you’re saying. It’s about honesty and authenticity. Admitting what you really feel and owning it. Even about yourself. It is true how people all come onto the forum and have “great” lives and “happy” childhoods. But pain is coming for “no apparent reason.” The body will speak the ugly truth, even if you won’t.

 

I agree that it is essential to be brutally honest when journaling. But as we go about our lives after completing our daily journaling exercise, if we have a running internal dialogue that is constantly self-critical, then that can be a problem. It wears on our spirit.

 

I sound like a TMS new guy…

 

Thanks for the helpful contributions to this thread
That last line is a banger

 

Thanks for this question. I also have bed conditioning. I climb in and away it goes. Also, all during the night are my worst symptoms. I think it’s because I’m onto it during the daytime. Glad to see you back and still fighting.