For over a decade of my life I, like countless others, suffered from debilitating chronic back pain. It took over my life. I couldn’t sit through a day of work without being in excruciating pain. I weighed every movie, every concert, every night out with friends against the inevitable pain I would be in afterwards, and whether it would be worth it. I looked at photos of restaurants in advance to see if their chairs were comfortable. And in that whole time nothing any doctor or physiatrist or PT or acupuncturist offered me made any long-term difference. I was sent to surgeons and prescribed things I can’t even believe. It wasn’t until I was pointed in the direction of the work of Dr. John Sarno that anything made a difference. In fact, it was reading his book, Healing Back Pain, that actually put my pain in the past tense.
The entire premise of Dr. Sarno’s work is based on the simple idea that the mind and body are inextricably linked and deeply influence one another. That what we experience as physical pain can be intimately linked to psychological pain, and therefore the treatment must be integrated as well. For the entirety of Dr. Sarno’s career, practicing at the New York University Medical Center, his work was marginalized and ridiculed. And yet all he did was cure people. I am among them.
Yet nevertheless our “standard of care” for chronic back pain still continues to treat the body as a purely mechanical machine that can be fixed like a car at best, and must be made to comply through chemical and biomedical intervention at worst. This is why this new research into psychological treatment for chronic back pain is so unbelievably exciting to me, and I believe can mean the end of needless suffering for so many.
In a randomized clinical trial, 66% of participants randomized to 4 weeks of pain reprocessing therapy were pain-free or nearly pain-free at post-treatment, compared with 20% randomized to open placebo and 10% randomized to *usual standard of care.* These gains were largely maintained through 1-year follow-up. These findings support that psychological treatment focused on changing beliefs about the causes and threat value of primary chronic back pain may provide substantial and durable pain relief.
It’s finally clinical evidence that supports what I myself have personally experienced, and what has allowed me to say “I used to have” chronic back pain.
I share this research in the hopes that it may help others as well. And if you are as excited by it as I am I’d love to connect!
