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I have been on the forum for the longest time. I had CPPS for 17 years. This has made my life miserable to a point only some of you can relate to. You can search my story. The last 3 years have been extremely difficult, including the months leading up to my recovery. This recovery happened within 2 weeks, and lasted for 6 weeks. I explain below why I think it is a miraculous and full recovery, before you say 6 weeks is not long enough. It has brought me mixed feelings of happiness and a sense of confusion and loss. I am frustrated that I did not find out about Dr. Sarno until now. I missed the opportunity to have a pain free life. Despite the fact that there are some mention of him on the forum. When I told my psychiatrist about this recovery, he told me he knows about Sarno and he loves him. He was one of his inspiration. I wish he told me about him!
I think there is no need for me to give a full presentation of Dr. Sarno's approach. This post describes it thoroughly and I so wished I have seen it before:
viewtopic.php?t=3277
The extent of the recovery
Prior to embarking on Sarno's approach, I was living in daily pain. I sat on a heat-pad almost everyday. I tried to meditate, relax, massage. I have done years of PT. Quit, went back, then quit. Over the last 17 years I do not recall ever being able to release the sexual tension without paying a heavy price for this: weeks of pain. Exercise was not possible. I changed my life to minimize stress. Nevertheless, virtually every morning I wake up with pain.
Now I tried almost all of the triggers (Masturbation twice a day, sex, intense workout and lifting heavy weights, long uphill walks, I went through days of extreme stress due to break-up, I am looking for a job, and so on). Zero pain. I also stopped stretching, massaging, and even moment to moment relaxation, body scanning, and so on. I am thinking of trying Kegel exercises, the biggest trigger of all. But I am not in a rush.
How did I do it
- First, I suggest you watch the documentary about him called: All The Rage. You first need to fight the skepticism and this one, trust me, will help. Just watching Howard Stern, Larry David, a congressman, and other celebrities talking about he changed their lives, I think you will believe that there is something there. It made me almost tear up when a Senator interrupted the hearings about chronic pain to mention his Sarno's experience. Seeing Dr. Sarno, a modest honest man who fought an industry of orthopedic surgeons as an underdog. I fell in love with his personality, platonically.
- Get a copy of Dr. Sarno's book or listen to his audiobook. He has a couple of books. I listened to this one: The Mindbody prescription. Listen to it in its entirety. Listen to/read it with an open mind. I am a skeptical person. But I knew that if I was to succeed I needed to do that. I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt. The fact that I have seen what the documentary helped greatly in that regard. Several people mentioned the need to read his book more than once.
- I connected the dots. What he describes in personality traits is exactly what we have been talking about all along on this forum. You can see Webslave's posts about our fears and catastrophic thinking. Type A personalities. The posts indicating the weak or lack of evidence about structural abnormalities. I also remembered all the posts about people with strange experiences on how the pain went away on days of extreme stress. I remembered all the posts about people experiencing CPPS after an event that directed their attention and fear to the genital area. A sexual experience, a bacterial prostatitis, and so on. And my experience of this starting at a time when I had a lot of anger and fear. Sarno talks about anger, I think about it as both anger and fear. Not stress.
- This one was immensely helpful: Dr. Sarno has made a 10 minute meditation recording that I used every time I was in pain. But only when in pain. It is free. I found it online and downloaded it. By the way Dr. Sarno passed away but he has a huge following and has been a pioneer of mindbody healing. Every time I listened to it I felt better within the hour. Sometimes I would listen to it twice in a row. I no longer needed.
- This one too: When in pain I started shouting at myself (I hope the neighbors did not hear) I would talk to my unconscious brain. I would say stop it. I know you are trying to distract me from my anger and my fears. But I know what they are. And I would go on to list them. Because this is what Dr. Sarno's approach is all about: To understand that the brain is distracting us from our anger (and fears in my opinion) and we have to believe that and face these feelings.
It might sound too good to be true. Just think this: with so many people (including CPPS patients) healing thanks to his approach, wouldn't it be worth it to give it the best shot you can? Our beliefs are fluid. He is not asking you to believe that the moon is made of cheese. He is merely asking you to believe some of the things discussed here on the forum.
Finally Dr. Sarno's theory is NOT saying that we are imagining the pain. He says the pain is real. He thinks it is due to mild oxygen deprivation in the tissue, to which he cites studies. I really don't care about the pathway through which the brain is creating local tension and pain, all I needed to heal is to understand that the brain is powerful, and sometimes it works against us. Perhaps due to an evolutionary process where it eliminates danger posed by anger and fear, so it distracts us from them, so we don't end up hurting ourselves or others. But pay no attention to my theory.
Finally, if you think something abnormal showed up in your urine test, in your MRI, pelvic exam, sure, listen to the doctor. But be aware that THIS is the issue that stopped people healing from back pain (his main focus). A lot of these findings are common, and do not warrant such pain. But the medical community (particularly urologists) are often years behind.
I repeat: I am not discussing Dr. Sarno's approach in detail at all, I am just telling you what I did. This is why I posted the link that explains his approach. But frankly, if I were you, I would go straight to the source. His books.
I am not a doctor. And I am not telling you to stop therapy. I am just telling you how my recovery happened. Please give it a serious short or don't try at all. This one, you can't half ass it.
I would love to hear your stories.
). Fear, anger, and, I would add, anxiety and stress, can all lead to a dysfunctional pelvis. That's not a new realisation, but Sarno has perhaps the best way of getting the concept across.
