Knee Pain Resolved

I am a registered nurse, in my sixties, retired. I have practiced in various health care settings for 40 years. My professional experiences taught me a lot about health, illness, disease, birth, death. I thought that I understood at a basic level, pretty much what there was to know about stress, anxiety, wellness and the mind-body connection. Over the years I have become skeptical and cynical about the current state of our country’s “health care” system with its basis in the medical model of “disease care” and physician/provider/insurer dependence on over testing, over diagnosis, over treatment, big pharma and the medical device industry. I have been very healthy and physically active my whole life. Until I read The Mindbody Prescription” in July 2016, I had never heard of Dr. Sarno.

In June, suddenly and not associated with any injury, I began having very severe right knee pain. It was very frightening and I could barely walk unassisted for several days. Ice, NSAIDS, leg exercises and a knee brace helped a little bit but the pain would come and go many times a day in spasms that brought me much suffering and fear. I had just been through a highly stressful 6 months with family and job issues, although I did not make any association with my response to this stress and the pain. I was not inclined to seek medical attention because I knew that I had not injured myself and I was very confident that there was nothing wrong with me or my knee. I promised myself that I would see an ortho sometime in the distant future if my knee did not improve on its own. But I also knew that I needed to do something to address the pain because it was really grabbing all of my attention and I wasn’t able to take long walks with my husband which is a daily activity that we love. I went through some of my old reference books on mind body medicine and ran across Dr. Sarno’s name. I quickly obtained and read The Mindbody Prescription” and like many others who have posted here “I saw myself on every page”. I immediately understood that I have the TMS personality types of goodist and perfectionist and that my knee pain was a manifestation of TMS. I realized that my goodist personality was why I was drawn to study and practice nursing in the first place. This was a startling revelation to me and I began to experience less pain right away. I acted on Dr. Sarno’s instructions to think psychologically, talk to my brain, make a list of all of the pressures in my life, think about childhood memories, have a daily reflection period and resume full activity without fear. All of this lead to 80% improvement with my knee pain. I then read Steve Ozanich’s book The Great Pain Deception which was helpful to further clarify my understanding of TMS, most especially his list of TMS “equivalents” in Appendix A at the back of the book. I realized that I had, over the course of my life, since childhood, experienced 36 of the items on Steve’s list including self-limiting episodes of moderate or severe lower back, shoulder, neck, foot and hip pain. This totally blew my mind and confirmed for me without any shred of a doubt that I am a TMSer. Steve’s book also inspired me to stop taking my daily dose of NSAIDS for the knee pain which I had, up until then, been afraid to give up.

By the time that I found this web site in September I my knee pain was pretty much gone but I am very grateful for finding it and appreciative of the resources provided and the people who post here. Besides reading through the forums and being inspired by the success stories, the last thing that I did to complete my TMS education was to work my way through Alan Gordon’s excellent TMS Recovery Program. This really pulled it all together for me and gave me the resources that I needed to address past issues, as well as the ability to monitor my daily mental chatter and recognize my psychological state. Thank you to all of you who contribute and keep this site going from the bottom of my heart. You are doing the world a tremendous service by keeping Dr. Sarno’s work alive.

 

Thank you Jerseygirl for the wonderful report. I am happy for you, and I am happy the success story database just keeps growing!!!
Andy B