Day 1 - Plafield

About 6+ months ago, what seemed to be out of the blue, I began to have localized pain in my tailbone (coccyx) when sitting. I sit for work and have had mostly manageable lower back pain for many years but this tailbone pain was new and very uncomfortable. Of course, I consulted Dr. Google and read that if the pain didn't go away with ibuprofen in 2-3 weeks I should see my doctor because while rare, it might be a cancerous tumor. The pain got worse and by the time I saw my doctor I was feeling a lot of fear about it. My PCP who is a DO sent me for an x-ray which came back negative for any structural issues and she ordered an MRI but my insurance denied it. I was diagnosed with coccydynia, which simply means pain in the coccyx.

I continued to read everything I could find about coccydynia and went down several rabbit holes, reading that if the pain lasts longer than 3 months it often means it will be chronic and there are many people who have suffered from tailbone pain for decades. I was icing, hot soaking, pumping ibuprofen, using a special seat cushion and constantly squirming in my seat trying to take the pressure off of my tailbone to relieve the pain. Sometimes it burned, sometimes it throbbed, sometimes it hurt only when I was sitting on it but sometimes it hurt lying down as well. It was (and still is) tender to the touch, sometimes worse than others.

I was about to travel 3 hours and spend over $1,000 to see the only tailbone specialist in the country to have special seated x-rays taken and an injection into my ganglion impar when I read an article in one of my professional periodicals on chronic pain by Dr. Howard Schubiner. He wrote about mind/body syndrome and how many chronic pain syndromes are rooted in unconscious emotions and he wrote about the work of John Sarno and TMS. A light bulb went off in my head and I suddenly realized that this could be my problem. I realized that the pain started right after my sister died from a cancerous brain tumor.

I immediately got Sarno's book The Mind Body Prescription and after reading it I had a 50% improvement in the pain. I felt sure that I had TMS and that I would improve. I started to work my through Schubiner's book "Unlearn Your Pain" doing the writing and meditations etc. But then the pain came roaring back and I was launched into another round of fear of "what if it's cancer?" etc and I had trouble really believing it's TMS. I'm a therapist and also someone who has had a lot of therapy and does deep emotional work as a regular part of my own life so I had trouble believing that I have so many repressed emotions that they needed to come out in my body this way.

But then, I had a big emotional release about a subject that I've explored many times before and later that day the pain was virtually gone. At that moment, although I suspected it would come back, I became 100% convinced it was TMS. And it has come back. But now, the simple fact that it does fluctuate so much just continues to confirm that there is no structural cause for this pain and that if I do everything suggested by the people who have studied this and folks who have healed themselves, I will be able to free myself of this pain. And the back pain as well! And so I'm now I'm on day 1 of this program. Not that I'm a perfectionist or have the need to do everything correctly immediately or anything!