Help , back pain returned .

Hi all. I had to come back here after years of just feeling great and living my best life. I still am but my back pain has returned the last week.
The difference though when I used to have this I would feel doomed but now I know it will go away, but I’m very impatient .

I tweaked my back at the gym causing some low back pain now. I understand that this is a muscle spasm that it just needs to heal. That being said I’m pissed I can’t go to gym right now. I’m walking around neighborhood and still doing elliptical at home but feeling unstable lifting things, I’m stretching like crazy and trying to relieve this spasm.

I guess my question is with the stretching I’m doing at home am I just making things worse when it comes to TMS ? . Am I reinforcing this pain that I believe came from a gym injury that’s not really causing the pain if that makes sense?

should I stop stretching all together for this reason? I’m pissed I’ve been an animal in the gym since my last bought years ago, just looking for some new advice. People on here seem to give great advice, thanks in advance.

 

Let your back rest and heal. Being active means you’ll sometimes strain or pull a muscle. It’s a normal part of being active. Don’t obsess.

 

Ok , but when you say rest what do you mean exactly? I’m not gonna lay in bed all day but I’m also trying to do as much as I can until my body just tells me to stop.

Should I not try and stretch the spasm out?

 

Why are you so angry about not being able to go to the gym?
What is going on in your life that has created stress or tension?
When we know we have TMS, we avoid focusing, obsessing and worrying when some symptoms come up. Instead we turn to the psychological -the emotions, the stress and the thought cycles and habits we fall into that might contribute to symptoms eg. being hard on ourselves, perfectionism, holding ourselves to standards without being able to give ourselves a break and some compassion when we don't feel on top.
May I as what "stretching the spasm out" is actually going to do when TMS symptoms are caused by psychological factors?

 

Jan! This is a terrific explanation and so well written!! Thank you for reminding me that our primitive brains can be quite creative!!

 

What a great illustrative example!

I once had a huge back spasm when I lifted and moved a medium-sized completely empty cardboard box from area of a dining room table to another position on the same table, which only entailed leaning forward a fraction as I did so. It was what I was thinking about at the time and not the action of moving the box that triggered my brain to cause the extremely painful spasm.

 

I guess im annoyed because I’ve been killing it in the gym since I had unnecessary back surgery about 3 years ago. After i found Dr Sarno/TMS I haven’t even thought about my back and even laugh at myself for having surgery in the first place.
Now three years after the surgery , while doing a routine movement in the gym my back basically gives out and I barely made it back to my car. Why now? I’ve been hard on myself all those three years, why didn’t this happen in year one or year two?

I think the stretching makes me feel like I’m relieving some of the tension in the muscles back there.

 

Ahhh...a kindred spirit.
I love talking to myself in other people so I can see what an impatient person I am. It doesn't make me any better, but at least I know I am not alone.
Your back doesn't 'give out'. Period. There is no such thing. If it could , Sarno would be wrong ....but he's not.
Your back is just the current place that can get your attention the most... Even Sarno didn't know why the body chooses certain places at certain times. But us people who have made it our business to learn more have noticed it always goes after the thing that will get your attention the MOST, because it is designed to protect you....from unconscious feelings that it fears may become conscious.

I was curious so I perused your post History...I don't know if YOU know this, but virtually all of your posts have been in DECEMBER and a couple in January and November.
Now...go back with a piece of paper and a pen and figure out what happened around x-mas time that is/was traumatic that you aren't connecting.

Family, Partner, Close friend. Sarno says when it comes from 'Nowhere' to look really close. AND/OR we are all condition-able and you might be Pavlov's Dog. Or a Skinner Box Rat. Or both . Our human ego doesn't like it, but its true. And simply knowing about it doesn't make it go away...remember Sarno "Each patient...... is an excursion into their LIFE"...so this is all about You and what's going on in you. And recognizing conditioning and UNdoing it....How? By becoming aware of it and challenging it to a fight...it will always run away.

You can do whatever you want...but if it is getting obsessional and making you focus on it than cool it for a minute and go and re-read Sarno and do not expect to be out very long. Writing is the quickest way to recover...writing about the rage makers in your life....not 'how my day went'....unless you have a crazy GF, Overbearing Mom, Issue with a dick Father...THOSE are TMS makers but you cannot "Tweak your back". in fact, if you weren't at the Gym, it would have happened anyways.

A Lot of people, (me included) had very fast recoveries the first time we read Sarno. I have seen people get better in a weekend after years of F-ing with their back. This happens to virtually every one. I thought I would ride off into the sunset without a care in the world...and I have effectively...... but once or twice a year, usually when I have forgotten all about TMS, it comes and 'reminds me who I am'

and then I get out a piece of paper and begin writing and writing and reflecting and recalling and doing some math about my life, I figure "Oh...THAT's why". And then it goes away.

 

Here’s the thing, it’s not thinking about your back.
It’s about how you perceive yourself and the emotions you carry.
“I’ve been hard on myself..” how? Mentally? This pressure, the internal stress is probably the #1 TMS including factor. This is exactly why the internal work Sarno calls for is important. To really see how our personality traits effect our psyche, how our thought patterns of self may be damaging and how all these factors distract us from our emotional lives.
The work is to discover/understand who we really are eg you are not “killing it at the gym” - you are dedicated and focused, and very successful at your physical goals.. and where else are you these things in your life? (Rhetorical question). Where do you see yourself lacking and can you accept your imperfections and not distract yourself from them by using your gym successes as a distraction to the hard feelings in other areas of your life (if you do..). Do you compare yourself to others?
Can you recognize other areas in your life that create stress that you they not to think about?
Your situation isn’t uncommon for an athlete. My TMS coach is an athlete and her occasional symptoms usually show up around her sport simply because it gets her attention. When it does, she immediately turns to the psychological and her hyper competitive brain. It’s not about competition with others but the high and exacting standard of self vs the internal fear/emotion of possible failure to be able to meet those standards (mixed with daily life stressors) that she finds herself caught up in.
Someone once explained the stress bucket theory to me.
Your mind is like a bucket, and we constantly have stressful thoughts we generate internally, and toss them in the bucket. We have external stressors too but they become internalized because of our mental reactions to them.. family, money, job.. in the bucket they go. Over time the bucket fills and is so heavy, it can’t take any more pressure so it lets us know we need to take stock and find a way to empty it.. by looking at our stressors and dealing with them instead of chucking them mindlessly into the bucket.
So we do the internal TMS work to deal with them. The goal is that we learn this work and immediately it in our being - it becomes so much a part of us that we create a little hole in the bottom of the bucket in which the stressors that do sneak by us unattended can slowly leak out, never having to overflow. But much less ever gets chucked into the bucket because we learn to deal with the anxiety the stress creates or learn to stop generating as much internal stress and have no reason to create the anxiety.
Our subconscious minds don’t like drill sergeants. They keep us on our toes, but at the cost of much internal stress which puts our nervous system in high gear and creates anxiety. The brain was created to swing between states of rest digest and heightened alert (stress) not be stuck in one place. The internal work helps us learn to reset this inner pendulum of the mind/nervous system (mind body connection) and slowing down, being more mindful, finding joy, just being and not constantly doing allows us time to integrate the work into our daily life.