RECENTLY I WAS LOOKING through photos from the last six years, since graduating college. It looks like it’s been such an epic time. Because it has been.

Just looking at the photos, you would never know that I’ve been dealing with chronic back pain this entire time. On the surface I’m smiling, but underneath, not a day has gone by where I’ve not been consumed by the pain.

Chronic pain has been both the greatest challenge and the greatest teacher of my life. But I’m done with it. The universe is demanding that I make a change.

About two months ago, I moved from Osaka to Tokyo. Combined, the weeks leading up to that move and the first few weeks in Tokyo were very difficult on my body. I had three major flare-ups in my back, each one sidelining me for about a week, one after the other.

The best way I could describe a flare up is like there’s a dam in my low back that is just holding in water. That water is pain.

And I would do something — whether exercising or brushing my teeth — and the dam would break. The pain would spread and envelop my back and affect different parts of my body.

Each flare up over the years, while incredibly frustrating on the surface, made me slow down. They made me appreciate the simple things in life, and they helped me find gratitude for all that I do have. They’d usually occur every few months or so.

But after it happened three times in one month (plus a fourth one that wasn’t as bad), I hit rock bottom.

It was the universe telling me, you cannot deal with this anymore in the way that you’ve been dealing with it. Something in your life has to change, not just a little, but drastically.

Rock bottom is an initiation

Sometimes life presents us with very difficult circumstances, and we don’t know why. We ask, why did this happen to me? I’ve been doing my best. I’m a good person. Why me?

Why.

Because, for a reason that is seldom clear in the moment, we need that setback to grow.

What seems like a setback, if we see it as such, is really a setup to get to where we’re ultimately meant to go in life. The adversity is an initiation.

Without hitting rock bottom, many of us remain comfortable where we are.

Maybe you have a job that pays the bills. You can get through the week. You enjoy certain aspects of it, and it’s not very challenging. You’re excited to get to the weekend. Monday comes around. You have anxiety. You question if there’s more out there — more in you.

Yet, the circumstances are just good enough that you don’t make a change.

Maybe your relationship is good enough. You have somebody to hold. You like each other and you laugh, but you clearly you don’t see eye to eye on some important things; but breaking up sounds like a hassle. You don’t want to be alone, so you stick around.

Sometimes, it would be better for something disastrous to happen; rock bottom may serve as the impetus to change everything.

It was it for me.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears

For the last six years I’ve been living in this state of pain that fluctuates between a two and a nine on any day of the week, where a at a ten, I’m bedridden with a flare up.

That’s chronic pain, what so many people deal with throughout their lives.

We accept that we must live in this state that is clearly terrible, because what can we do?

Take painkillers? Just rest? These are not viable solutions.

There are hardly any answers regarding the treatment of chronic pain. If you’re like me, you tried what seems like everything: physical therapy, chiropractors, acupuncture, blood tests and Rolfing and orthopedics and other esoteric modalities — the list goes on.

But these are all physical solutions to what is often, I’m coming to understand, an emotional problem. When I hit rock bottom, in a state of tears, anger, sadness and frustration, I reached out to my back ability group and asked for help. A sign. Anything.

By some divine miracle, fate led me to a woman who was in my same position a few months prior, feeling utterly broken.

In a truly wild story, fate also helped her realize that the pain was emotional, not physical, and that she’d have to do some deep inner work to heal her body.

After going on a spiritual odyssey of her own, she’s now one-hundred percent healed and living a new life she could have never dreamed of. Her pain was an initiation to go deeper, and she courageously answered the call.

That’s the thing: hitting rock bottom doesn’t magically save us.

We must use it to transform, surrender everything we thought we knew before, and step through the threshold into a brighter future. This takes conscious action, dedication, sacrifice, and faith.

This woman has become my guiding light and supernatural aid, as I’ve embarked on a spiritual odyssey of my own.

Vinny, you’re twenty-eight, says the universe. You’ve not dealt with the pain from your childhood. It seems like you could continue on like this and you probably could. But you will never get to the next level without making peace with your past. You must do the work and do it now.

As the Taoist saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Well, I’m finally ready to do the real work.

Most chronic pain is emotional

If you’re suffering from chronic pain, it isn’t all in your head, and anyone who suggests it is is quite ignorant.

The pain is real, and it is in the body, but the body isn’t broken. In fact, there is often nothing wrong with the body.

In what professor and physiatrist Dr. John Sarno called TMS (tension myositis syndrome), and in what is also referred to as the mindbody syndrome, the brain uses a physical injury to make us think our pain is physical.

In Dr. Sarno’s books on TMS, he describes how the brain does this to distract us from the emotional pain that lives in our unconscious mind. The brain believes that if that emotional pain were to rise into the conscious mind, it would be too painful. It reasons that physical pain is actually easier to handle.

If you don’t have an acute injury that’s identifiable, there may very well be TMS at work. It took me getting to my absolute lowest to finally surrender to the idea that my physical pain has emotional roots.

For the last six years, I’ve been living life as if my body is broken, creating a reservoir of fear, doubt, and anxiety that only makes the pain worse.

But the first thing we must understand when dealing with TMS is that there is nothing wrong with our body.

It isn’t broken. We are safe. To heal, we must rewire our brain to unlearn the conditioning that’s been at work for however long we’ve been in pain.

That’s a difficult concept to grasp when your body is in pain, and yet that’s also what makes chronic pain so perplexing. There’s rarely a clearly identifiable structural abnormality causing the pain.

The body isn’t broken

If you have chronic back pain, you’ve likely had an MRI, and the pain is probably attributed to a herniated or a bulging disc. I’ve had several MRIs over the years, my most recent one in 2022, and it shows that I have a bulging disc in my L5-S1.

So that must be the cause of the pain, right? No, not really.

Howard Schubiner, an author and specialist in mindbody medicine, writes in his book, Unlearn Your Pain:

“Doesn’t back pain mean that there is a problem in the back? Can’t we see the abnormalities of the back on X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs? Actually, no, and yes. As we shall see most people with chronic back pain do not have a clearly identifiable structural abnormality to explain it. But yes, almost all people will have some sort of abnormality seen on X-rays, CT or MRI scans. To understand this, we need to look deeper at the meaning and importance of these ‘abnormalities.’”

He continues:

“In three separate studies by M.C. Jensen, D.G. Borenstein, and N. Boos, there was very little correlation between back pain and MRI results (Jensen, et. al., 1994; Borenstein, et. al., 2001; Boos, et. al., 2000). When you take middle-aged people without any back pain and give them MRIs, 60–90 percent of them have bulging discs, degenerative discs, arthritic changes, spinal stenosis, and other common changes. These findings are best interpreted as being due to normal aging, not to a disease process. If you took 100 people with back pain and 100 people without back pain and do MRIs on all of them, doctors could not look at the MRIs and predict which patients had pain and which did not. A study of healthy 21 year olds in Finland found that half of them had signs of degenerative discs and a quarter had bulging discs; all in people with no pain (Takatalo, et. al., 2009). When you take a large number of people who have no back pain at all, you find the following on MRIs: 50% of healthy 30-year-olds have degenerative disc disease and 40% have bulging discs; 80% of healthy 50-year-olds have degenerative disc disease and 60% have bulging discs; and the numbers go up from there (Brinjikji, 2015).”

50% of healthy 30-year-olds have degenerative disc disease and 40% have bulging discs — and these people don’t have back pain.

That is why surgery is hardly a solution to chronic back pain.

“Back surgery may be necessary for some people with clear evidence of nerve damage. But without that evidence, surgery is no better than nonoperative methods for people with sciatic-type and so-called degenerative back pain, according to recent studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association and in the New England Journal of Medicine (Weinstein, et. al., 2006; Weinstein, et. al., 2007). A recent review of back pain treatment found that neither surgery, injections, or narcotic pain medications have been shown to be more effective than placebo treatments or conservative treatments (Deyo, et. al., 2009, Deyo, 2015). In particular, injections for back and neck pain are being used more often and recent studies have not found them to be more effective than placebo injections in most instances (Friedly, et. al., 2014; Staal, et. al., 2009; Chou, et. al., 2009). Even more alarming is the finding that back pain outcomes were actually worse in communities with higher rates of surgery (Keller, et. al.,1999).”

TMS is the actual reason for most chronic pain and many modern, perplexing ailments. But the medical industry doesn’t, or won’t, realize, this.

It’s easier to tell a patient you have a herniated disc, and that is the problem, than there is a reservoir of rage inside of you deriving from your childhood, and the brain is distracting you from it by creating pain in your body.

Most people won’t accept that, because maybe they don’t feel that rage. Or sadness. Or shame, guilt, grief, or sorrow.

“We repress emotions without knowing we are repressing them,” writes Dr. Sarno in The Divided Mind, one of his three books written on the topic of TMS.

“This is a simple and important statement, but one that many people either do not comprehend or do not believe. Repression does not involve making a conscious effort to put aside emotional pain. We simply don’t feel the pain, essentially a gift from our unconscious defenses that keep it from our awareness. This is very different from the conscious defense of diverting our attention away from emotions we know are distressing us, for example, by keeping busy.”

We don’t know this reservoir lives inside of us because the brain hides it, believing if these negative emotions were to rise to the surface, they would destroy our lives. But the traumas of childhood and the pains of life don’t go anywhere unless we consciously face them.

Facing our ocean of repressed emotions

There are three major rivers which feed into the ocean of repressed emotions: childhood traumas, everyday stressors, and internal conflict that results from our personality traits.

The people who tend to get chronic pain tend to share many of the same traits, qualities which look great on the surface, but create a lot of tension in the unconscious.

“Deeply repressed feelings of inadequacy foster the development of personality traits that are almost universal in people with TMS,” writes Dr. Sarno in The Mindbody Prescription.

“They tend to be perfectionistic, compulsive, highly conscientious and ambitious; they are driven, self-critical and generally successful. Parallel with these traits, and sometimes more prominent, is the compulsion to please, to be a good person, to be helpful and nonconfrontational. In short, people with TMS have a strong need to seek approval, whether it is love, admiration or respect. What’s wrong with being perfect and good? Nothing at all from the standpoint of society and career, but the negative unconscious consequences can be extremely important.”

Like I said, on the surface, these are good qualities that lead to a productive life. But underneath the surface in the unconscious, these qualities create conflict and rage as the conscious ego and the unconscious child within us hash it out.

Realizing that our physical pain has emotional roots can be hard to accept. I couldn’t do it for the last six years, yet I don’t know if I was supposed to.

Perhaps I wasn’t ready. I’m ready now, as hitting rock bottom was a sign that the universe won’t let me go on like this anymore.

Still, the choice is mine to change, to do the work and dive deep. I’ve started therapy, and I’m getting rid of other distractions, as I’m off of social media and alcohol indefinitely, treating my healing like a full-time job.

This is the most important work I’ll ever do, and that work starts with education.

My path to healing

We won’t heal from a pill, or another visit to the chiropractor, or surgery. The combination of education, inner work, and retaking control of our brain is the cure. This has been my path to healing so far, and it’s working better than anything has before.

Books

I suggest starting with Dr. Sarno’s book, Healing Back Pain, which can actually be listened to for free on YouTube. To go deeper, I then suggest his books, The Divided Mind, and The Mindbody Prescription. Also The Great Pain Deception, by Steven Ray Ozanich. These books outline precisely what to do to heal.

To learn about reprogramming your brain and creating a new reality, I’ve been reading and implementing the work of neuroscientist Dr. Joe Dispenza. His book You Are the Placebo has been transformative, and I’m now doing the meditation outlined in the book as a daily practice.

Additional books that have helped me heal, but that are just a couple of my favorite books on what it means to be alive, are The School of Life, by Alain de Botton, and Under Saturn’s Shadow, by James Hollis.

Education

I’m using the app Curable as a daily guide.

In it, you’ll find daily lessons to learn about the mindbody syndrome (TMS) as well as brain retraining exercises to stop pain in its tracks, decrease anxiety, and increase calmness, even amongst flare-ups of pain.

There are also guided meditations and journaling practices to follow.

Another means of education has come from Jim Prussack, The Pain PT on YouTube. His videos make me feel much calmer, safer, and more relaxed, and help me understand that there is nothing wrong with my body, and that I must fight back and retrain the brain when it tries to play its old tricks.

If you look up TMS or mindbody syndrome success stories on YouTube, you’ll see thousands of people have been healed of chronic pain just from reading books on the mindbody syndrome.

So each day, I wake up and meditate, journal, listen to a lesson, and learn a brain training exercise. For the rest of the day, I’m reprogramming my thinking.

Meditation

I’m now doing the Dr. Dispenza meditation. It’s an incredibly powerful meditation to transform your life. But you can start with the meditations from the Curable app, and implement the Dr. Dispenza one once you get to it in his book if interested.

This meditation on YouTube is also great to heal TMS. I sometimes listen to it at the gym or before bed.

Journaling

Journaling is incredibly important in this process. You can do the journaling practices in the Curable app, or use this method by Dr. Sarno, which he outlines in The Divided Mind. This is what I’m doing, setting a twenty-minute timer each morning to journal.

“Set a time every day to review the material I am about to suggest. Unconscious painful and threatening feelings are what necessitates the pain. They are inside you; you don’t feel them. Make a list of all the things that may be contributing to those feelings. Write an essay, the longer the better, about each item on your list. This will force you to focus in depth on the emotional things of importance in your life.”

“There are a number of possible sources of those feelings: Anger, hurt, emotional pain, and sadness generated in childhood will stay with you all your life because there is no such thing as time in the unconscious. Feelings experienced in the unconscious at any time in a person’s life, including childhood, are permanent.”

“Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse will leave large amounts of pain and sadness. But not receiving adequate emotional support, enough warmth and love will also result in anger, sorrow, and pain, maybe never felt as a child, but always there in the unconscious. Such things as excessive discipline or unreasonable expectations will also leave emotional marks. Anything that prevents a child from being a child falls into this category and should be put on your list. In most people with TMS, certain personality traits make the greater contribution to the internal emotional pain and anger. Put these at the head of your list.”

These are the traits which I mentioned earlier (perfectionist, conscientious, ambitious, goodist, etcetera). I have many of them, and if you’re in pain, you probably do too.

Each day as I go down my list, I write about what that trait means to me, what the opposite of it might mean to me, and where the trait may derive from. About halfway through writing, I usually have an aha! moment, and go down a different path. The trait is the door to learning something deeper.

Dr. Sarno continues:

“Just as the inner mind reacts against being perfect or good, it also resents any kind of life pressure. So you should put on your list anything in your life that represents pressure or responsibility, like your job; your spouse, if you are married; your children, if you are a parent; your parents, if they are living; and of course any big problems that are going on in your life.”

“A subtle but important source of inner anger in some people is the fact that they are getting old and also that they are mortal. This is more common than you would think. Consciously, we rationalize; unconsciously, we are enraged. Close personal relationships, no matter how good they are, are often the source of unconscious anger, because its very hard to be a consciously angry at a parent, a spouse or a child.”

“Add to your list those situations in which you become consciously angry or annoyed but cannot express it, whatever the reason may be. That suppressed anger is internalized and becomes part of the reservoir of rage that brings on TMS. The angers w talked about above are repressed — you don’t feel them, you don’t know they are there.”

Overcoming fear

If you’ve lived with chronic pain for a month, a year, or a decade, fear is a big part of your life. Make a list of the things you fear because of your pain, and start overcoming them. Bending over at the sink. Doing dishes. Picking things off the floor. Getting back to your old workouts. Playing sports again. Any and all of it must be done slowly but surely.

There will be discomfort, so take it slow. Dr. Sarno writes in The Mindbody Prescription:

“Fear is another important equivalent of pain that may be more effective than the pain itself to achieve the mind’s goal of distorting attention from repressed rage. The fear of pain, physical activity, injury or spinal abnormality is enough to perpetuate TMS, even in the absence of pain. The mind is interested only in keeping our attention on the body; the fear of any of these phenomena will accomplish that as well as the reality of pain itself. This is why our therapeutic program requires not only the cessation of pain but the elimination of fear.”

We must lose the identity of the person with chronic pain. We have to remove everything from our lives that suggests we are living in pain, or that our bodies are broken.

If you truly want to heal and you believe you fit the criteria of someone with TMS, get rid of the lumbar supports, the additional pillows, the back braces, any of it.

Trust me, I’m scared too. But I’m facing my fears, I’m getting back to my old life in a vastly upgraded way, and I already feel better than I have in months.

Gratitude is all that remains

If you are ready to embark on this journey, realize that it won’t be easy. Nothing worth going for in life is. I’ve cried almost every day, whether journaling, or meditating, or in therapy, thinking deeply about this stuff.

But I’m changing. I’m finally crossing the threshold into the unknown world of my inner depths, which presents a new set of challenges.

But I can face them. I have to face them.

Every time the pain arises, I must take control.

I tell my brain, I will not take it anymore. I know you’re trying to protect me, but I’m safe. I don’t need the protection. I need to feel the emotions, because I am strong enough to handle them.

It’s time to enjoy life again.

And that’s a big part of this process. It won’t be linear; there will be flare-ups, and there will still be pain. But now I know what it means. And every day, I’m just fucking grateful. I can’t believe — nor can I understand — the profundity of this journey that I’m on.

But I’ve been given this challenge for a reason; overcoming chronic pain will forever weave through the tapestry of my being.

I’m somebody who dealt with this, and I kept my faith, and I got through it. And at the end, after I tried what seemed like everything, the pain caused me to drop my guard and start traveling within.

Rock bottom was the necessary wound I needed

If it were not for those three flare-ups a couple of months ago, I would not be at my rock bottom. Rock bottom was the necessary wound I needed to step into my new life. James Hollis in Under Saturn’s Shadow:

“There are wounds that crush the soul. Wounds that distort and misdirect the energy of life, and those that prompt us to grow up. There are necessary wounds, those that quicken consciousness, obliging us to move out of the old dispensation into new life, catalysts to the next stage of growth. As Jung noted, behind one’s wound there often lies a person’s genius. The ambivalent nature of wounding obliges us, then, to differentiate between those that crush and those that enliven.”

If I wasn’t at my rock bottom, I wouldn’t have asked the universe for a sign, some encouragement, anything to help me understand.

And it gave me a gift, a spiritual guide. But it was up to me to walk through the door, to accept that I have to change, and to begin the work.

Now that I know the pain is TMS, I can’t unsee it. There’s a lot from my childhood that I have not worked through, and now it’s all becoming clear.

This could take months to get out of pain. It could take a long time of constant diligence and persistence, full acceptance and embrace. But the stars are aligning in unfathomable ways.

In the future, I will be one-hundred percent healed. I will be whole, with my dreams having came true and new ones on the horizon. The pain will be a memory, and I’ll be proud of who I’ve become.

Yet I’ll look back at my twenties, at the years of uncertainty and endless pain, the years of fear and doubt. And I will smile with a heart full of gratitude. I’ll never be more proud as I am of that man — the man that I am now — who, at rock bottom, never gave in. He kept the faith. He kept smiling. And eventually, everything changed for good.