Day 3 My intro and response for day 3

Hi all - quick intro before my response. My name is Adam from the UK and I have been suffering from lower back pain for seven years. Now in talks for fusion surgery on my L5-S1 disc, I am suspicious it could be TMS as recently I have developed pain in my shoulders, neck and arms; has my pain made a mistake and revealed its true nature? I am a father of a 15 month old boy and have a beautiful wife. I am also a secondary teacher.

I will try and reveal more about myself over time; suffice to say I have tried pretty much everything to cure my pain - is this my last chance?

Here is my response to the day 3 exercise question. Forgive the frantic nature of the comments, I am trying to free type as much as possible.

"The last time I exercised was on Sunday. It made me feel good to exercise as I love swimming now. I started swimming though because of my back and I now associate this with just trying to get my back better. I used to like doing things like playing football with my friends but don’t anyore. When swimming it makes me feel liberated in the pool, like I am a normal person again. I sometimes even forget about my pain while I am swimming, but it does often come back again either half way through or towards the end of the work out. I also would love to be able to work up to swimming a mile at a time, but have stopped trying for fear of by back hurting too much after. Also when I last swam it was very sad because I couldn’t do as mnuch as I wanted to due to the new pain in my shoulders and neck. It is very frustrating!!

Also, my response to day 1:

"A life without TMS would mean that I would be free to do what wanted to do. I would be free to go on holiday whtout worring about how my back will feel,whether I will be able to stand the journey on the plane, whether or not I would be able to go on to places away from the hotel or wherever we are staying. It would mean I can play with my little boy as much as I wanted without having to worry about my back hurting and that I would be able to be a better father to him. I would love to have no pain in my back or my shoulders or any where else because would make the decisions to do things without having to worry about the pain. All day I think about pain at the moment from when I wake up to when I go to sleep. I would love to be able to wake up in the morning and kiss my wife and when go and make breakfast and those be the only things I think about, not worry about sitting the correct way in bed and how I would be able to feed my little boy. Being without TMS would mean that I could think about the future with happiness instead of dreading what the years may bring and whether or not I will be ok. I would love to not have to worry about surgery and whether or not I will be ok from that and worry about the recovery. I am sacred of the surgery and sacred of everything to do with my back pain. I am scared of having a too much to think about all the time and I am scared about what might happen in the future if I don’t get better.

Thanks all....

Adam

 

TMS pain does have an unfortunate habit of jumping around from one location to another. The phenomenon is known as symptom substitution where you treat the pain in one area and it moves to another to keep you preoccupied. That is one of TMS's hallmark traits. That is, unless there some other underlying health condition. It does sound like the doctors have ruled that out in your case though.

I think Dr Sarno's advice that you should just exercise for good health rather than as a therapy for TMS is appropriate in your case, Adam. It would probably be better for your recovery if you played football with your friends. However, I realize at this stage, you might not have the confidence yet to do that. That should be your goal instead of swimming endlessly laps as a form of back therapy. Your first entry seems to indicate that you are already gaining that insight. In the meanwhile, I think it would be a good idea for you to learn to love swimming as an end in itself, rather than as a form of back therapy.

You might want to take into account too that everyone over the age of 20 has a degenerate L5-S1 disk. I think Steve Ozanich does ask a very pertinent question in his book, The Great Pain Deception (2011), about back operations: Do you know anyone who had lower lumbar surgery who actually benefited from it and came back to a full range of activities? Just something to keep in mind.

 

If you really want all of that it would be good to jump on the tms knowledge like you are doing now rather than a back surgery. I'm not telling you what to do but I do wonder if you think back surgery will do all of the above things that you want to accomplish.

I love that list, that list looks just like my list I started with.

Tms healing is about getting everything above to where you want it as its says then your back pain will go away. See we say let me heal and then ill have all of that but really we need aim for all of that and then we will heal.

Stay on your SEP journey. Stop even thinking its physical. I mean if its gray hairs of the spine then what are you looking for? ... pain in a muscle? Why wouldn't it be from not having the things you mentioned above. Clean thinking and happiness can go along way in your ability to heal. You have lost your relationships to nature and these goals. Get out your outcome planning paper and make plans to accomplish everything you said above. Do all of the soothing factors first like the happiness you can enjoy with your wife and children and lose the fear ok. The more you think oh this is going to just beat me down -- well the more you will be in pain. So when you stop fearing that alone is going to keep you safe and recovering.

We have a friend here named Balto and that's his main thing he did alone right there - was to not fear and dread and drudge at all. Then lose all the focus on your body and only think about your emotions and journal about them too. You have just begun -- give yourself time to re-condition ok

Thanks

 

Thanks so much for the replies - I feel like i don't know where I am going with this and have no idea if it will work or not. I am just hoping this is the solution - all the success stories are very inspiring! I will post my day 4 work now...

Cheers,

Adam