I am generally recovered through the wonderful Stanford/Wise-Anderson Protocol, but occasionally I get flare-ups of mild symptoms.
This past February, I got a severe flare up with bad bladder pain and urinary symptoms. This was odd and frightening because I had not had bladder symptoms in two years. This February, my bladder would spasm, I was urinating at least 12 times a day, and after I finished going more urine would drip out for the next minute or two. At night the pain would be particular bad with spasms and pain on the entire left side of my penis. In the morning, I would wake up feeling great. But the first pangs would start within 15 minutes of waking up.
This is what I have discovered over the past few weeks:
- My pain is greatly exacerbated by stressful situations, even those situations to which I am looking forward.
- I have many repressed emotions with which I am not in touch unless I avoid the distraction of pain and search for them.
- When I acknowledge the stress and emotions, I still have pain.
- When I find a way to release them, my pain disappears.
Today, I have no symptoms at all. I'm sitting up as I write this. Well, ok, my tailbone is a little sore.
How did I discover this? Well, I agreed to read Dr Sarno's book "The Mindbody Prescription" at the invitation of another poster, and see if that could help me. I didn't jump into this blindly. Anyone who has been around these forums before is aware that I report significant changes to my pain levels when I am on vacation or after in-laws leave my house, etc.
So I thought I would try reading the book and see how I did.
My impressions of the book are as follows:
- Dr. Sarno is correct about repressed feelings in the subconscious
- Dr. Sarno makes bold and egotistical claims about every disorder under the sun. He is probably wrong about many. But he is probably right about more than traditional medicine will admit.
- Dr. Sarno's belief that the pain is the child-like subconscious's attempt to distract us from scary feelings is intriguing, but not necessarily perfect.
- Dr Sarno thinks telling the subconscious to cut it out is usually good enough, but I disagree.
- Directly accessing and releasing repressed feelings is the primary key to recovery.
- Doing stretching from the Stanford/Wise-Anderson Protocol, while a form of PT, should be continued as a relaxation mechanism, despite Sarno's belief that it should be discontinued.
- The idea that Western society is plagued by emotional repression induced pain disorders is fascinating, to say the least
I believe that my pain is largely a result of my mind somehow "pushing" repressed emotions into the body. Almost as if there were a "Law of Conservation of Emotional Energy", similar to a "Law of Conservation of Energy". If the mind can't contain anxiety, fear, and anger, it pushes them into physical manifestations that are far more severe than butterflies in the stomach or dilated pupils.
Based on this theory, vacations work because the repressed feelings are temporarily resolved. In our daily lives, they do not go away. We have to discover them and release them. We have trained ourselves to not do so.
And this is where I feel Dr. Sarno's contribution is strongest. I think that many of us are trained to repress feelings we perceive to be 'not good' at the level of our social responsibilities. As a result, these feelings get largely encapsulated and buried to the extent that they are left for the subconscious to find a way to deal with them. As we age, we get so good at this encapsulation and repression that we completely loose touch with those feelings.
When they build up significantly in the subconscious, they end up being expressed in the body through physiological processes such as muscle and nerve ischemia. This lack of blood flow ends up causing muscle problems and increasing pain.
The result is a chronicly unhealthy biophysiology. In my case, this is clearest in the pelvis.
In my opinion, if you have symptoms that include:
- Feel good when you wake up
- Pain appears every day after you wake up
- Obsessive/Compulsive Tendencies
- A history of depression or anxiety
