I left Dr. Sarno’s lectures with a lot to think about.
The most important thing for me was that he was 100% confident that there was nothing wrong with my back despite the herniated disks, arthritis, bone spurs, scoliosis and spinal stenosis and the excruciating amount of pain I was in.
I don’t remember the train ride home, but I do remember waking up the next day and my back pain was GONE!
I could bend over and pick something up without any pain!
Also, my foot drop was gone! (Foot drop is the term given to a nerve condition that does not allow you to walk on your heels. If you try to stand on your heel with the ball of your foot lifted off of the floor, you can’t. Your forefoot will just drop to the floor.) It was unbelievable! I was cured!!!
I wish it was the end of the story, however, I have had back pain at other times in my life. But I have learned that back pain is my emotional barometer. My therapist also thought that my first “cure” with Dr. Sarno was because I believed in the doctor as an authority figure. She felt that my back pain came back because I never got to the root of the problem which was unresolved issues with my mother. (Just as an aside, one of my mother’s biggest fears was that I would grow up and then sit on a psychologist’s couch and talk about how my mother messed up my life.)
The other times that I have had back pain have corresponded to major life events: One was a business that failed. My husband had opened a restaurant with a partner and the partnership fell apart and we had to come to terms with cutting our losses and closing the restaurant.
I had another episode of back pain when my father was diagnosed with and later passed away from lung cancer. The most recent time was when my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers and I was the primary caregiver.
When my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and my back pain flared up, Dr. Sarno was still practicing and I went back to see him. He would run these group therapy sessions for people who were not getting better or who had relapses as I did. That helped. But, when my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer, he had already retired. That was when I went looking for other resources and I found Dr. Gwozdz in Somerset, NJ.
This last bout with back pain lasted longer. My pain was much more excruciating. Dr. Gwozdz asked that I get new MRIs taken to rule out any disease pathology like cancer.
My orthopedic surgeon looked at the MRIs of my spine and told me that he couldn’t believe that I could walk. (Just like Dr. Sarno’s comments that cured me, a negative comment from a doctor can have negative effects, too.) But I wasn’t going to buy it. I knew that even though I had findings on those MRIs, they were just incidental. They were not the cause of the pain. The orthopedic surgeon recommended steroid injections, but felt that they might not relieve the pain and he recommended surgery. He said that I could put it off, but surgery was inevitable. I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears, close my eyes and say “Nah, Nah, Nah , Nah” in order to block him out. I did not want to be cursed with the prognosis that I could probably lose my ability to walk.
My husband, however (who is not a believer in Dr. Sarno) thought I should at least try the steroid injections. I did, and they did nothing.
So, I went to Dr. Gwozdz to be reassured that I still had TMS and that my spine was fine and that I couldn’t hurt myself by doing yoga, riding my bike and doing other things that I wanted to do.
But, because this was a pattern that had been going on for a while, Dr. Gwozdz recommended that I work with a psychiatrist, which I did. It was very helpful.
We all go through life with trauma. Some traumas are big like the events I described above. But some events are small and may have happened when we were children and couldn’t process them properly. We then develop ways of coping. It might be easier to cope with pain than it is to deal with frightening or unwanted emotions. I know I would rather deal with the emotions rather than have pain, but there must be some psychological reason that the brain thinks the emotions are unsafe.
There is a lot more to DR. Sarno’s theory than I can recount here. If you are interested, I recommend that you read nay of his books that I have listed on the resource page. I have also listed Dr. Gwozdz’s information as well.
I recommend you watch the 20/20 segment by John Stossel. He was a back pain sufferer who was also cured by Dr. Sarno. John’s brother is a Harvard medical professor who also suffers with back pain but he cannot accept Dr. Sarno’s theory even though his own brother was cured. The story also covers a woman named Jeannette Barber, a writer for the Rosie O’Donnell show, who had back pain that later went to her ankles. Ms. Barber could not walk and had to use a scooter. She never thought that she would ever walk again. Rosie asked her audience if anyone knew of someone who could help her. The show received hundreds of letters recommending Dr. Sarno. This was a last resort for MS. Barber who was willing to try anything. Within a week, she was out of her scooter and three weeks later she was able to start running.
There are many people who have cured themselves simply by reading his books. And one of Dr. Sarno’s readers shared the method he used to cure himself. Next week I will share this therapeutic therapeutic program with you.