Question about blood vessels constricting

I just experienced a flare up of pain in my back, this is only the second time in my life I’ve experienced pain in my back. I’ve experienced other TMS equivalents like wrist, shoulder, or neck pain and was able to work through those by reading the divided mind, think away your pain, the TMS wiki, journaling and meeting with a psychologist.

I’m hoping this flare up is temporary and I’m using it as a reminder to get back in touch with my emotions through journaling in the evenings before bed. I also checked out healing back pain from the library and am reading it now.

On page 5 Sarno says: “There is a temporary constriction of blood vessels, bringing on the symptoms, and then all returns to normal.”

Does anyone know of a medical journal article or experiment where this blood vessel constriction was observed?

 

Hi @mbigras, and welcome to the forum as a contributor! It sounds like you're doing good work

As for your question - I don't think there is any such documentation specifically related to this theory - although it's known that stress can cause blood vessels to constrict... but I have never really thought it was that simple. Quite honestly, I have always kind of thought that this theory is a good way for beginners to start visualizing and accepting the negative effects of stress and clenching and not breathing - but in general terms, rather than getting bogged down in physiological details. Don't forget - getting bogged down in details is a sign of a perfectionist personality - which is what got us here in the first place, right?

At some point, we just have to accept the fact that every single physical sensation we experience is a product of our brains. Pain is not generated at the site of pain. If there is damage or disease somewhere in the body, the fact of the damage or disease must be messaged to the brain, which prepares and returns a signal to create pain or some other discomfort. Which means that the brain is perfectly capable of doing this even when there is no need for the pain. Phantom limb pain is proof of this mechanism.

But I still like the oxygen deprivation theory for visualization purposes. Try visualizing the place where your back hurts, breathe into it, and imagine the muscles and tendons and discs, or whatever, receiving healing oxygen and relaxing the surrounding tissues. At the same time, talk to your brain, and tell it that this pain is not necessary, that you're going to look at your emotions and at whatever might be bothering you (which can be the stupidest littlest thing to your rational brain - but our primitive brains are not rational) and that you can survive the experience of looking at your emotions without being eaten by a sabre-tooth tiger. That's all your poor primitive brain needs to know!

 

>At the same time, talk to your brain, and tell it that this pain is not necessary, that you're going to look at your emotions and at whatever might be bothering you (which can be the stupidest littlest thing to your rational brain - but our primitive brains are not rational) and that you can survive the experience of looking at your emotions without being eaten by a sabre-tooth tiger. That's all your poor primitive brain needs to know!

Thank you for this suggestion! I've heard of the technique of talking to one's brain before but your reminder helped me.

Reading healing back pain earlier today I also came across a part on page 17 describing an acute attack:

"Not uncommonly, the trunk is distorted by one of these attacks. It may be bent forward or to the side...Naturally, it's very disturbing but it has no special significance."

Reading that part helped me calm down because that's what happened to me, the last couple of days my trunk had been bent forward feeling pain straightening. My acute attack happened right after lifting weights. I've been lifting weights for years with no pain so I know I'm using safe technique and I was having a flare up, but I have never had my trunk tilted forward before. After I read you post I did a few movements where I stood up straight twisted this way and that and told myself "I'm having a flareup that's painful but harmless, I'm going to think about my life pressures instead, work, family, relationships, I'm going to think about my life pressures which is totally safe also, I'm going to think about my emotions without being eaten by a tiger, it's all good." Then the pain in my back started feeling better and in about an hour I felt pain in my neck, then I knew! This is shifting symptoms!

>Don't forget - getting bogged down in details is a sign of a perfectionist personality - which is what got us here in the first place, right?

I definitely agree, and it's something I struggle with regularly with TMS, I start to feel overwhelmed doing all the research to trying to get everything dialed in and write everything down and understand how everything works, then I realize I'm doing my perfectionist thing to study TMS which is distracting me from how afraid I am that I won't get better, or that I won't do my taxes right or some other thing. But besides that it's so disappointing that mainstream medicine is taking so long to publish research on the TMS insights, it's seriously a multi-billion dollar industry in money saved. Imagine just Repetitive Strain Injury RSI alone, if people at Google or Facebook or Twitter would fund TMS research they could probably save millions of dollars in healthcare costs and hours lost. I just found out about the new PainBrain documentary and donated: https://painbrain.myportfolio.com/ (Pain Brain). Hopefully mainstream medicine will wake up and start doing actual studies. I know it's a perfectionist tendency to focus on the details but it would be nice if medical researchers did the research for us. But there I go putting the responsibility for my emotions in the hands of others instead of doing my own thing!

Anyways, thanks for your message and I'm going to use this flareup as a spark to keep journaling in the evenings and to get more in touch with my emotions.

 

What a great response, @mbigras! You're doing what it takes! And I particularly like this, it's a brilliant thought:

 

Raynaud's is a perfect example of an observed mind-body/TMS symptom caused by blood vessels temporarily constricting (for the record, I have dysautonomia from Ehlers-Danlos, and my Raynaud's doesn't respond to cold nearly as much when I'm not dealing with intense emotions!): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1549944/ (Role of cold and emotional stress in Raynaud's disease and scleroderma.)

There are other studies targeting individual symptoms and conditions outside of Raynaud's, which I think is your best bet when looking for this type of information (as opposed to published studies targeting TMS in general).