My Great Big Fat Pain in the Neck

Written and generously contributed by Jill Ebsworth

It was a beautiful day for a drive - I was on my way to Calgary, listening to a tape of Bernie Siegel talking about healing and humour. Little did I know how much I would need my sense of humour over the next couple of months!

I was full of expectation, and a bit of nervousness as well, for that weekend I was taking the Level 3 Healing Touch course. Was I prepared? Had I studied enough? Did I know the material and the techniques I needed?

My mother lives in Calgary, so I drove from Lethbridge a day early in order to have some time with her before class began on the Friday evening. My intention was good, but, as Robbie Burns said, "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay." Friday morning I woke up, rolled over, and was instantly in agony - pain arrowed through my neck, across my shoulder, and down my right arm to the fingertips, which went instantly numb. On a scale of 1-10, my pain was about a 75.

An emergency trip to a chiropractor did nothing, neither did any of the pain killers I could buy. I had to face my Level 3 class in great pain. However, my determination, the kindness and support of our wise and wonderful instructor, Brenda Anderson, and of my fellow class-mates who helped with a variety of healing techniques, plus the beneficence of the universe, got me through the course.

Hundreds of dollars later, after many doctor visits and prescriptions (including one that nearly pushed me into anaphylactic shock), chiropractic, acupuncture and massage sessions, I was almost completely pain-free. A hint of the path to relief came from my acupuncture therapist, a local doctor of Chinese Medicine who is very wise and perceptive. She got me to experience and to think about the emotional content of this crisis.

The key to my recovery however was reading two books by Dr. John Sarno, M.D., a pioneer in the treatment of conditions such as mine. These books are Mind Over Back Pain (1984), and Healing Back Pain - The Mind-Body Connection (1991).

Dr. Sarno's diagnosis of problems like mine, (and many other psychogenic ailments including migraines, ulcers, and even fibromyalgia), is TMS or Tension Myositis Syndrome. His thesis, supported by years of successful treatment of patients in severe pain, is that such conditions are not due to physical damage nor to conditions usually diagnosed as pinched nerve, bone spurs, spinal stenosis, herniated disc and so forth, but are muscular (hence myositis), and emotion laden. Some trigger, usually stress (even positive stress like a wedding - or starting a new level of HT!), can cause the postural muscles to constrict, causing ischemia (oxygen deprivation), which causes pain. This engenders fear, which makes the condition worse.

However, and this is profoundly important, just the knowledge that the condition is muscular can reduce the fear, which reduces the psychological and physiological tension, and thus the pain.

It works. I have learned to talk to my autonomic nervous system and ask it to tell the arterioles of the affected area to expand to my highest good, flooding the cells with rich oxygenated blood - the key is oxygen. I picture oxygen joyfully bubbling along in my blood stream, and I experience immediate physical relief.

Dr. Sarno gives a list of "Daily Reminders" that he suggests patients review at least once a day, in a fifteen minute time of reflection. Some examples of these reminders are, "The pain is due to TMS, not to a structural abnormality", "I will not be concerned or intimidated by the pain", and "I will shift my attention from the pain to emotional issues".

This latter affirmation is crucial since, according to Dr. Sarno the underlying cause of such conditions is emotional, usually anger - deeply repressed and unconscious in most cases. A patient must ask, "What is this all about?" Our language gives us a key’Äîwhen we say something or someone is "a pain in the neck", that means that something is bothering us, usually annoying or angering us.

I know how involved the emotions are, for when I find myself upset or worried, the pain returns (thank goodness in much milder form than with the original onset), and I can talk myself out of it. The real crunch came after weeks of being basically pain free, when I got my MRI results. In the face of terms such as "severe foraminal stenosis, disc compression, hypertrophic uncovertebral bony spurring", despite everything I had learned, fear took over again, especially at my doctor's desire to refer me to a surgeon!

So, it's back to the "daily reminders" and the work of communicating with my body. I know this works, but it will take time to get that knowledge firmly seeded in the DNA of my cells.

Of course, Dr. Sarno's books are never a substitute for proper medical care - it is most important to have the CT scan or MRI to rule out such things as tumours, fractures, disease, etc. However, if the diagnosis is something which Dr. Sarno's work covers, it is well worth giving his way a try.

The body-mind is a wondrous thing, and my road to recovery has been on physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. I have learned much more about healing, and about the body's capacity to self-heal - perhaps the timing of my initial attack, at the beginning of the paradigm-shifting Level 3 Healing Touch course, was not so strange after all.

Lethbridge, AB, Canada
March, 2004

Back to Library