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Tunza
New Zealand
198 Posts |
 Posted - 11/22/2004 : 13:42:45
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Recently I had an episode of back pain that started off with a couple of weeks of stiffness and pain. After a couple of weeks I got annoyed with it not easing off so I did a session of lots of stretching and pushing my fingers into the rock-hard spasming muscles. When I did this the stiffness eased but was replaced with a feeling of instability and far worse pain (paying so much attention to the back was the problem I think).
I was reduced to lying on the floor for a couple of days. I ended up at the dr for some painkillers and he wanted to get an x-ray in case I had spondylolisthesis which is where a vertebra moves out of alignment with rest of spine. I refused the x-ray knowing that would just feed the TMS gremlin if they detected even the mildest "abnormality". The painkillers didn't actually do much for the pain except give me a slight feeling of detachment (they are an addictve kind of drug so I didn't take many of them). But I decided to get on my pc read info re TMS and back pain to reassure myself. I came across an article called "Save Yourself from Low Back Muscle Pain" by Paul Ingraham. The author is a Canadian massage therapist who quotes Sarno among others. His writing style somehow just resonated with me and when he said things like:
"The truth is that your back is not fragile — it is a strong, adaptable structure....study after study has shown that people also can have significant degeneration, deformities, and injuries without any pain. There is even reason to believe that spondylolisthesis and stenosis, two structural deformities considered to be unambiguously painful, may not actually be the primary cause of pain in many cases."
it really got into my head and I suddenly felt less concerned about my back. As you all know it's hard to not worry when you have intense pain. Anyway after reading the whole article I said to my boyfriend that I wanted to go to the supermarket. We went there and as I went to get out of the car (this had been a very painful process for last few days) I repeated phrases from the article like "my back is strong" and trusted that nothing bad was going to happen and that pain didn't mean damage. And it really helped! I got out of the car with less pain and fear. And as we walked through supermarket I felt a weird sensation down my back and legs. It was like a warm breath going into the area in my back that was in spasm. After that it just kept feeling better every day. It was like letting go of the fear made my body let go of the pain.
I feel a lot better about my back now. I don't feel as fragile as I did in the past. I've also realised that I walk around feeling fragile in general. this is understandable for someone who has had chronic pain for a long time but it also perpetuating the pain in that as long as I believe I am fragile, I'll always be thinking that any pain in my body is a signal that I'm falling apart (slight exaggeration but you get the picture). So from now on I'm going to focus on the fact that I am strong, not fragile.
Kat |
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My back success
