Healing Back Pain
John E. Sarno
17 min
6 Key Points
4 RateWhat's inside?
Discover the link between your mind and body as you explore non-surgical, psychological ways to alleviate your back pain.
You'll learn
1. What makes your back hurt all the time?2. Spotting and dealing with hidden feelings that hurt3. Breaking free from the pain-stress loop4. Taking back control of your health5. The mind-body health link6. Tips for keeping pain at bay long-term.Key points
01Back pain isn't always about physical issues like spine or muscle problems. It could be due to stress or tension
In "Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection," John E. Sarno offers a fresh take on back pain. He suggests that the root of most back pain isn't physical, like a bad back or muscle strain, but rather a condition he calls Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS). Let's break this down. Usually, when we think about back pain, we think it's caused by physical things. Maybe you lifted something heavy, or you've got bad posture, or perhaps it's just age-related wear and tear. But Sarno says that's not the main issue. He believes that the pain is actually your body's way of showing you're stressed out, especially if you're bottling up your emotions. TMS can hit anyone, at any age. It can start as early as six years old, when it's often mistaken for just "growing pains." It can stick around throughout your life, even into your golden years. It's most common in folks between 30 and 60, which Sarno calls the "responsibility years." This suggests that the stress of juggling work and life during these years can set off TMS. So, where does TMS show up in the body? Usually, it's in the muscles that help you maintain your posture, like your back, neck, and buttock muscles. The buttock muscles are the most common spot. TMS can also affect the nerves near these muscles, causing a sharp, shock-like pain because the muscles and nerves aren't getting enough oxygen. It can even affect your tendons and ligaments, causing conditions like tendonalgia, which is just a fancy word for tendon pain. Common spots for this are the elbow, knee, ankle, and shoulder. What sets off TMS? Bottled up negative emotions. These can cause sudden symptoms, but TMS can also creep up slowly or show up unexpectedly, even when you're supposed to be relaxing, like on vacation or during the holidays. TMS can also be a learned response. This means if you've had back pain after doing something specific in the past, your brain might link that activity with pain. So, you might feel pain even when there's no physical reason for it. In a nutshell, Sarno's take on back pain is that it's more about what's going on in your head than what's happening in your body. The pain is real, but it's your body's way of showing you're emotionally stressed. Understanding this could change how we think about and treat back pain.
02TMS is a physical condition caused by mental factors. Understanding this is key to getting the full picture
Tension Myositis Syndrome, or TMS for short, is a condition that's deeply connected to our mental state. To really get a handle on TMS, we need to dive into the psychological side of things. One of the main feelings that can kickstart TMS is tension. Here, we're talking about bottled-up emotions that we don't feel comfortable expressing. These hidden feelings can play a big part in TMS coming about. Another key player in TMS is stress. Now, stress is a bit different from tension. It covers a whole range of things that put a lot of pressure on us. This could be anything from money worries to anything else that's causing us mental strain. Stress can come from outside or inside us. Outside stressors include things like work problems, sickness, family issues, responsibilities, bills, and so on. Inside stress is a bit more complicated and involves complex feelings like issues with self-esteem, trying to be perfect, putting things off, and more. A big part of getting to grips with the psychological side of TMS involves understanding the conscious mind. This is the part of our mind that we're fully aware of and can control. It includes our deliberate personality traits and behaviors that we knowingly show. For example, a person with TMS might be argumentative, making them prone to conflict. However, the real cause of these behaviors often lies in the unconscious or subconscious mind. The unconscious mind is where deep-rooted thoughts and feelings live that aren't readily accessible to the conscious mind. These hidden feelings and thoughts have a big influence on our personality traits and everyday behaviors. For a person with TMS, some of these traits might include feeling the need to make up for perceived shortcomings, low self-esteem, a strong drive for success coupled with a fear of failure, anger, severe anxiety, a self-centered outlook, and the need to hide feelings. It's worth noting that other illnesses can have symptoms that look a lot like TMS, such as pre-ulcer states, peptic ulcer, hiatus hernia, asthma, spastic colon, tension headache, dizziness, and more. However, these conditions don't come with the psychological symptoms that go hand in hand with TMS. The mind plays a big part in TMS coming about. Even though doctors often put the condition down to physical incidents, the pain is usually linked to a deep-seated fear of an unrelated event. As long as the mind links the physical pain with the event, the pain will keep happening. Therefore, it's important to think about the physical side of TMS. Physically, TMS starts in the brain, where the hidden emotions live. These emotions trigger a physical response via the autonomic nervous system, which is in charge of involuntary responses/actions like breathing rate, heart rate, and oxygen distribution. When a person feels TMS-related pain, it's the autonomic nervous system doing its thing. Given that TMS comes with physical symptoms, it makes sense to think that the autonomic nervous system plays a big part in the process. Its response to tension, stress, or hidden emotion is to cut down the flow of oxygen-rich blood, leading to pain in the muscle and nerve system, which is what happens with TMS. So, while TMS starts in the mind, specifically the unconscious mind, it shows up as very real physical pain, helped along by the autonomic nervous system.
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03Traditional ways of diagnosing and treating TMS often miss the mark. They focus too much on physical symptoms and not enough on the mental causes
04Since TMS is all in the mind, talking therapies can be really helpful in treating it
05To heal from TMS, you need to understand how your mind and body interact. It's not just about treating symptoms, but getting to the root of the problem
06Conclusion
About John E. Sarno
John E. Sarno was an American physician and professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University. He was known for his alternative approach to treating pain, particularly chronic back pain, emphasizing the role of the mind in physical ailments.
