From crippling back pain to pain free triathlete — a recovery story.

Story Highlights

• I was diagnosed in my twenties with degenerative disc disease & sciatica
• In my late 30’s I finally found medical evidence linking stress and repressed emotions to physical pain.
• By following practical steps such as journaling to release repressed emotions and educating my self on the science and psychology of pain I became pain free.
• I went from being unable to run no more than two mins without a severe chronic pain “flare up” to completing an Ironman 70.3 distance triathlon pain free.

I can still remember sat with the spine surgeon, who held up my MRI image to the light and pointed out the blackened and herniated discs whilst telling me I had degenerative disc disease. He said that it wouldn’t get better and that I would have to learn to manage the pain or have surgery. I didn’t fancy having bits chopped out of my spine so off I went.

The immediate thought was firstly one of panic that I had a disease and the second was a deep fear that I would be in this pain forever. Sometimes I could barely walk for days due to the sciatic pain, and this would be with me for life? I was only in my early 20’s for goodness sake, this stuff happened to other people not me.

Unfortunately, this is a common story. We are told by an “expert” that we have a condition or an illness and completely adopt that as part of our identity. Our thoughts and beliefs are powerful and in fact I now know that our bodies constantly react to our thoughts and emotions. It’s obvious really, just look what happens when we think we have said something stupid. We feel embarrassed, our heart beats faster and our cheeks blush. Thoughts lead to emotions which lead to physical reactions. The belief that we are ill or physically damaged is extremely dangerous in itself.

I am here to say that it doesn’t always have to be this way. We have more power over our bodies than you might think and you can recover from chronic pain and illness. And I can say this because I have seen it happen in myself and countless others.

After that diagnosis I made the decision that I would find a way to beat this condition. The problem was I had accepted that I had degenerative disc disease and was fighting to beat the symptoms with positivity instead of dealing with the cause. As a result I had limited success.

Over the years I spent time with countless medical specialists who spotted weaknesses, had their own conflicting theories, cracked my back, hooked me up to machines, gave me shoe insoles and painkillers but found no-one who could stop the pain.

Over 15 years later I finally came across the work of Dr Sarno and a group of medical professionals that were further developing his work.

Dr Sarno stated that if he took MRI scans of random people the vast majority would actually show some sort of disc degeneration but would not be experiencing pain. He would call the results of my MRI scan “normal abnormalities”.

His theory was that chronic pain and illness was actually the result of repressed emotions and stress having a biological response in the body. That I was actually experiencing intense muscle spasms which were extremely painful but harmless. That there was nothing structurally wrong with me and that I could make a full recovery.

After initially understanding this conceptually I disregarded it as not being relevant to me. My pain was definitely structural! Or so I believed. However, the seed had been sown and over the next year or so I began to notice correlations between certain life situations, thought processes and back pain “flare ups”. This awareness of my thoughts and emotions and the link to pain continued to build and I began to take the theory seriously reading everything I could about the mind-body connection.

Through following the steps that I will outline below, by age 40 I had made an almost miraculous recovery and was almost entirely pain free. I finally cemented the belief that there was absolutely nothing structurally wrong with me when I progressed from not being able to run more than 2 mins without a severe back pain “flare up” to completing a pain free Ironman 70.3 triathlon (well other than the to be expected aching legs!)

If you are currently suffering with chronic pain and illness I want you to consider and be open minded to the concept that pain and illness is your bodies way of warning you that something needs to change. It could be your diet or your need to exercise but it could also be the need to release repressed emotions and to reduce stress! As soon as you feel fear, anxiousness or frustration a chemical reaction has happened and your body is beginning to react. Imagine the impact of being in those emotional states for decades. Your body is shouting LISTEN!

Change is never easy, and this approach is no different. It involves hard work and perhaps re-visiting some tough times and dark places but I can promise that it is worth the effort. Here are some of the helpful tools I employed along the way to get you started.

Read and understand…

The first stage of recovery is to read and understand the concept of the mind-body connection and how stress and emotions can result in chronic pain and illness. I can recommend the following…

Chronic Pain: Your Key to Recovery by Georgie Oldfield MCSP

The Mind Body Prescription: Healing the body, Healing the Pain by John E Sarno MD

Back in Control: A Surgeons Roadmap out of Chronic Pain by David Hanscom MD

Timeline…

Draw out a timeline from your birth to now and mark out any life changing, stressful or traumatic events. If you feel like you haven’t experienced anything traumatic ask yourself, would you be happy for your child to have the same experiences?

Journal…

The next step is to free write about those events and how you felt at the time. Write fast and free with no concerns for spelling and grammar. The idea is that you are allowing those repressed emotions such as anger, rage or sadness to spill out onto the paper. Through doing this work I learnt that I had repressed the grief from the violent death of a friend back when I was 16 years old. Destroy the paper and let go of the emotions.

Identify your beliefs about your pain…

The next journaling technique is to put onto paper the thoughts and beliefs you have created about the pain itself. For example, I can only run on grass or I will get pain, I can’t bend forwards or my discs will push out and pinch my nerve. Then rationalise those fears. How do you know they are true? Where did they come from? Have you any evidence that disagrees with those beliefs? For example that time you played football and didn’t get any pain… Often we create neural pathways that can trigger pain based on false beliefs.

Do all the other good stuff you know you should do but don’t…

Breathe, stretch, sleep, move, eat well.

Reintroduce the activities that you have avoided

The next step is to re-introduce the activities that you had avoided due to fear of pain. With the help of breathing techniques, visualisation and positive affirmations I had gradually increased my running from 2mins until I could complete a half marathon distance pain free. I went back to swimming and simple things like bending forwards without fear of damage. Creating an evidence diary of small successes helps overwrite the old fear based programming.

Set a goal to prove to yourself you are well.

The final stage for me was to set a goal so that I could prove to myself that there was nothing physically wrong with me. Remember this is for you and not other people. It can be as modest as walking a mile without pain. This is about building the belief that you are well and creating evidence for yourself to back up that belief.

So, if you having been living with chronic pain, illness or with unexplained persistent symptoms have faith that you can become well. Be open minded to the concept that stress & repressed emotions can reflect in pain and illness in the body and take these first steps to explore it.

Next time you get a headache or tension in your back just check in to see what is happening in your life. What stress are you under?

It is more than likely that this is simply your bodies way of telling you that there is something you are not dealing with and that you need to address it.

There are thousands of people that have recovered using these methods (google thank-you Dr Sarno) and many say that they are now thankful for their pain and illness as it has provided a portal to a world where they are much happier and in-tune with their thoughts, emotions and bodies.

Have faith that you can be well.

Thoughts = emotions = physical reactions

Disclaimer: Clearly I ain’t a Doctor, this is an account of my experience, you should always consult with a doctor before making any changes but please do point them at the books I mentioned!