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Interesting hearing about the booster groups.

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Originally posted by guej

Jules, to your point about recovered people coming back to the forum...you'll notice I haven't posted my success story yet. I think, as you mentioned with your quick recovery, it's part uneasiness that by doing so we're somehow going to jinx ourselves. I'm not sure I think of myself as "cured" because I still have all the awful, anxiety-producing habits that got me into this pain mess in the first place, even though I'm not in pain anymore.

Which brings me to Ace1's question. Ironically, I changed the most while in the midst of pain. I finally let myself off the hook from being the perfect employee/perfect mother/perfect house etc. because I physically couldn't do it with all the pain. It was the first time in my life I took care of my own needs first. In that regard, I have to agree with Dr. Sarno that perhaps the distraction of pain takes us away from all the other worries in our life. Unfortunately, now that the pain is gone, I'm back to my usual high-strung, worrywart self. It's actually quite disappointing because I really didn't learn my lesson.

Actually, I do think I'm much better off than before because I'm 100% aware of my negative thinking patterns. Going the TMS route has certainly given me a lot of perspective on my personality. Let's just say I'm a work in progress. The really good news, though, is that I now make the connection between tightness in my neck or throbbing at an old pain sight, with the fact that I'm usually aggravated about something and not expressing it outwardly. I have also mastered (for the most part), the art of not getting worked up over some minor pangs of pain here and there. I just assume they will go away, and they do. In the past, I would have run to physical therapy for anything lasting more than a week. I'm now much more of a believer of "the body heals itself" if our worrying and obsessive minds don't get in the way.

As for pushing through the pain...that was a mixed bag. At first, I followed the Fred Amir approach in Rapid Recovery from Back and Neck pain. I gradually increased my activity and tracked it closely. Like I said, I had about a 50% improvement and I was thrilled beyond belief. Then it tapered off, I had a setback and it became a source of frustration. Again, only with the benefit of hindsight can I now say that it was re-interpretation of the pain that helped me. So in other words, when I had pain while running or standing for too long, I made peace with it. Before, I would get worked up, aggravated, etc. When you're in the middle of pain, it's hard to think rationally. I also stopped tracking what I did or trying to prove something to myself. I let myself off the hook if I couldn't do what I set out to do and stopped making recovery such a project. It's very hard to force "letting go". I knew it was what I had to do, but I couldn't make myself do it. I can't put my finger on when it clicked. It just sort of unwound itself when I stopped trying to hard.

As for "recovery", I considered myself recovered in that I no longer have non-stop pain in the same places every day. Those nerve pathways have quieted down. I still get foot pain or achilles pain every now and then when I run (from old "injuries", I'm told). I no longer believe injuries from years ago still act up. I think what happens is that we have nerve memories just like we have muscle memory. Certain actions or emotions flare those up, but if you don't pay them much attention, they fade and don't take hold. I do have chronic insomnia. It's a bad habit that my body developed when I couldn't sleep due to pain. Even with the pain gone, the insomnia persists. However, I think a lot of it has to do with my highly anxious personality, and when I finally learn to deal with that, something tells me the insomnia will resolve itself...I'm not going to worry too much about it or I'll have replaced pain obsession with insomnia obession.

Hope this helps. Most importantly, just maintain hope you can get better. It's interesting, but we shouldn't monitor everyone else so closely in order to get better. We should just believe it's possible, right? But in reality, we all want some kind of verification that someone as bad off as us was able to get better so therefore, we can better too. I followed "Skizzik"s posts on this forum for about a year. He had a very simliar experience to what I was going through....trying so hard, following the program to a tee, asking lots of questions, reaching out for help, etc, and finally, sounding resigned to his situation. However, little by little, you can then see the letting go in his posts. I remember thinking to myself, I'm just like him. If he ever gets better, after all this time, then I'll know it's possible. Low and behold, months later he posts he's finally on his way, and then you can see in later posts the slow progression to his recovery. When I read that, something lifted in my heart and I had hope again and I knew it was possible for me. Call it a placebo. Who cares! That was a turning point for me, and I think it was at that point that I "let go" and just trusted that things would improve.

Sorry for the long post, but slow recoveries are something near and dear to my heart and it's so important to believe they are possible.

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