For more than forty years, I have studied psychology, trying to better understand the human condition — what makes us unhappy, discontented, angry, excited, and so on. The deeper I have explored how the mind is related to emotions, the body, the brain, and thoughts, the more I’ve come to understand it as the source of most psychological and physical ailments, as well as chronic pain and suffering. Over the generations this hasn’t changed a bit, and yet we as a species continue to ignore what’s right in front of us and what to do about it.
There is a rather predictable pattern that repeats itself when the mind is not at ease — and this takes its toll on the body in myriad ways. My goal is to help clients change this pattern of thinking and ensuing bodily reaction. Then we can move past the pain and regain the joy in life. This approach worked for me, and it can work for you as well. It’s not a quick fix, but it’s a permanent one.
My own story of back and headache pain
One sunny day in 1987 my wife took our three-year-old son to the store and I stayed home to watch our one-year-old daughter. The baby and I were in the kitchen and then she began to crawl out into the living room and I followed. Tired of chasing her, I bent down to pick her up, and that’s when I had such a bad spasm in my lower back that I fell to the ground. It was as if an invisible, tightly wound cable snapped in my back and ended my ability to stand upright. My daughter thought it was a lot of fun to have Daddy on the floor beside her, but Daddy just couldn’t get up. It was all I could do to turn over and get to all fours. Over the next hour my back relaxed just enough for me to stand and get around, but this was the beginning of what is so commonly called “a bad back.”
I chalked up my chronic back pain to being a weightlifter since the age of 14. I reasoned that I was anything but cautious when it came to loading up the barbell with heavy weights every time I went to the gym. I figured that I must have damaged my lower back muscles to the point of being irreparable. So I suffered from the pain. I never went to the doctor for it, because I was afraid of what they might recommend in the way of drugs and surgery. I figured the back pain was a better choice than the possibility of a medical error that could leave me permanently incapacitated, or worse.
The strange thing is that the pain didn’t stay; it came and went, periodically flaring up. I would be pain-free for weeks or months and then suddenly I could hardly get out of bed in the morning or lift my brief case on my way to work.
Beside the chronic back pain, I had suffered from headaches since age 12. I attributed these to the climate in Miami where I grew up. When I was in my late thirties I had a close friend named Gil who was a chiropractor with a lot of knowledge about nutrition. I asked him why I got such a bad headache every time the weather became very humid, especially when it was just about to rain. Gil told me that the weather had nothing to do with my pain and I should try cutting certain foods out of my diet, especially dairy, peanut butter, and fried foods. I did as the doctor ordered and noticed a fantastic change for the better. My sinuses were clearer and I stopped financially supporting the Kleenex company. But I still continued to suffer from terrific headaches from time to time.
A treatment from the Civil War
Having minored in History in college, I was particularly interested in the American Civil War period; and a few days before Gil and his wife came to visit us I came across an interesting letter that a young soldier wrote home while he was sitting around a campfire with his comrades. The infantryman wrote that he suffered from horrible headaches, but found that a couple of strong cups of coffee would make them disappear like magic.
When we all went out for dinner — Gil and his wife Betty and Janice and I — I happened to have a headache so bad that I could barely think or see straight. I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but when we sat down at the restaurant I immediately ordered a cup and drank it down as soon as it had cooled to a tolerable temperature. And then I called over the waiter and asked for a refill, and I drank that cup as fast as I could. Like magic, my headache completely disappeared. I was beyond amazed and thought that I could have been using this coffee cure instead of suffering for the past twenty some-odd years! I felt like Benjamin Franklin the moment he discovered electricity. Or something like that.
Although the coffee cure worked each and every time I had a headache, no matter what the weather was like or what I had eaten, I was nevertheless bothered by the idea that this really wasn’t a cure; it was a pharmacological treatment. The coffee was acting as a drug, albeit not a very harmful one, although it did seem to make me feel like passing out if I happened to get up too fast after drinking a cup or two. I needed a real cure with no side effects.
Fast forward to my cure
Another couple of decades went by before I would discover a cure that I at first refused to believe was real. At the time I was working out with my jiu jitsu instructor and told him that I had to go easy that day because my bad back was flaring up. He told me that he used to have the same problem but read a book about how back pain can be cured just by thinking in a certain way about it. I did what most people are apt to do — I politely smiled and told my teacher that this was interesting, but inside I thought it was crazy. So my pain continued.
Another couple of years went by and I was interviewing a World War II fighter pilot for a book I was writing about his life. I was sitting on his sofa in his living room and I grimaced because my back was really hurting bad. The man asked me what was wrong and I told him that I had chronic back issues. He then told me that his son had the same problem until he read a book by John Sarno, MD, a New York University physician specializing in psychosomatic pain. The title of the book was Healing Back Pain. Within minutes after reading the book the son’s problem was cured. Again, this sounded nuts, but at this point I was willing to try anything, so after we finished our writing session I gingerly walked to my car and drove to the closest book store, let out a loud moan as I stepped out of my car, and made my way to the shelves. I read the book that night, and two days later my chronic back pain came to a complete stop and never came back.
Here’s the solution
Oddly, many times when a client learns how physical pain is caused by their subconscious emotions, brains, and body, their pain goes away within a day or two. But in most cases I have found it takes several sessions. This is because we have all been psychologically conditioned to think a certain way about the mind, body, and pain — and it isn’t always easy to reverse this lifetime of conditioning overnight.
My experience and research have shown that pain is not only caused by the way our minds have been conditioned to think about life, but even the sense of self — the person we take yourself to be — is created by all sorts of ideas and experiences. This leads to a lot of issues over the course of our lives, and it is helpful to understand this process of how secondhand information, culture, beliefs, and memories shape our self-image, as well as the image we have of others and the world around us. I would go so far as to say that this sense of self is the cause of almost all suffering that we human beings experience in our lives. But it’s good to know that there is something that can be done to make your life much better, happier, and fulfilling!
And now I can help you with your pain and suffering!