WHILE HITTING my first workout back in Tokyo, my back flared up doing squats. FUCK — was my brain’s initial reaction.

In the past my mind would spiral in fear, perpetuating the pain with thoughts like, Go home. What’s wrong with you? Guess I’m out for a week. Why? WHY?

Instead, I took a deep breath. I took a stroll to the bathroom and threw on the daily audio message from my mindbody coach, Jim Prussack, The Pain PT. I continued. The flare up doesn’t mean I’ve taken a step back in my healing; how I handled it is a sign I’ve taken a step forward.

“Seeing a challenge as an opportunity is the beginning of wisdom,” says psychologist Jordan Peterson on the Lex Fridman Podcast.

I continued my workout (sweating through the discomfort with my soul on fire) and wrote in my notes: This is where change takes place. No more reinforcing the negative pattern by buying into the belief that there’s something wrong. This is not a setback. It’s a SETUP. USE IT.

For six years, I thought my body was broken. After hitting a new low this past May, my life and healing took a critical turn. With the guidance of several individuals who have been miracles in my life, I began to realize that what I’m dealing with is called TMS (the mindbody syndrome), a concept developed by the pioneer of mindbody healing, Dr. John Sarno.

In his books (you can listen to his main one, Healing Back Pain, for free on YouTube) Dr. Sarno explains how the brain creates real pain in the body to distract us from repressed emotions.

I’m not healing my body, but rather, a panicked nervous system deriving from childhood adversity, people-pleasing personality traits, and everyday stress.

Pain is emotion, and all emotions are okay

I’m back in Japan, embarking on a new chapter in my life. It’s a lot, both consciously and unconsciously. To heal TMS, we must look at pain psychologically, not physically.

I need to teach my brain there’s no real danger, only a perceived threat caused by stress and emotions. There’s nothing wrong with my body or the emotions I’m feeling. Pain is emotion, and all emotions are okay. Until my brain learns this, it’ll keep sending false alarms as physical pain.

While they are a critical part of the journey, flare-ups still righteously suck. I’m writing this from the floor, as right now I can hardly sit in a chair without pain. Seriously, sometimes we gotta laugh at the absurdity of life.

I often discuss deep topics such as pain, meaning and love, as writing is how I process what I’m experiencing. But don’t get me wrong, I’m laughing the entire way through.

Each good cry culminates in laughter; it’s all a release, and it’s all healing. I listen to funny podcasts (Theo Von and Bad Friends) and talk to my friends as often as I can. Laughter and tears are my medicine. They’ve kept me sane as I’ve battled this shit.

The art of living: make use of suffering

My twenties have been beyond my wildest dreams. I’m seriously astounded by this life I’m leading, and I wouldn’t change a goddam thing. Still, while the experiences have given me so much joy and ample creative material, it’s this battle with chronic pain that has defined my life thus far.

“When most people think about the future, they dream up ways that they might live happier lives,” says Dr. James Davies, psychotherapist and author of books including The Importance of Suffering.

“But notice this phenomenon: when people remember the crucial events that formed them, they don’t usually talk about happiness. Most people shoot for happiness, but feel formed through suffering.”

Not a day has gone by in six years where I haven’t felt pain to some degree, but it’s never beaten me. This challenge has made me who I am. Why? Because suffering is (usually) involuntary.

It afflicts every human being in some capacity, whether or not we ask for it. So if we don’t ask for suffering, we may only respond to it. It’s how we respond to what we can’t control in life that defines our time on planet Earth.

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend?” said Henri Frédéric Amiel, the 19th-century Swiss philosopher and poet.

There is profound meaning in what we endure

There is light buried deep in each of us — potential — struggling to shine. But if not forced to dig deep, would we willingly take the plunge within?

How do we know the depth of our potential until we’re urged to descend below the surface of our inner well, drawing from its waters whatever strength, whatever light we can find to withstand the darkness?

I would love to be pain-free right now. Then, I’d likely be writing travel stories rather than one on the meaning of suffering. But maybe you’re in some sort of pain, too, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Perhaps, then, this story is for you, and not writing it would rob us both something of value.

We won’t all stand atop the highest mountain. But as human beings, we all spend time in the shadowed valley. This is where we all relate, no matter who we are or where we’re from. And if we can suffer the same, we can heal the same; that is why I write these words.

I’m telling the world that it’s my brain creating these sensations while I’m in debilitating pain. I’m still going to the gym (I’m in less pain working out than I am sitting in a chair — thanks endorphins!), lifting and running. Does it seem like I’m in denial? That my body is broken and I’m just breaking it further?

I wonder if people think I’m crazy. Maybe I am. Who gives a fuck. I don’t talk about my pain to prove how tough I am, but to impart that there is profound meaning and potential in what we endure.

“TMS can be blessing,” writes Steven Ray Ozanich in The Great Pain Deception, “since it provides the catalyst for needed change. Suffering also uncovers the deep desire for spiritual balance because it unveils to the individual that he isn’t happy — not on his own path — out of balance. Worrying, trying too hard, and complaining, do not solve problems. Growth occurs not by solving problems, but by rising above them. Suffering is not the goal in life; it is an integral part of life that gives opportunity for creativity and growth as it insists upon needed change.”

By overcoming TMS, I’m learning to better handle stress, to allow all feelings in, to have self-compassion, and to believe in myself. This dream is bigger than me. This challenge is bigger than me. My mind is determined, no matter how it cracks. My spirit will not shatter no matter how broken my body can feel.

In our pain is our soul’s greatest treasure

What is the meaning of suffering? Six years of pain has provided a window into the depths of my soul, a test of my will, an arrow to my heart where blood spills out as words, tears, empathy, laughter, love.

When we honestly and fully delve within, we’re transforming in some fundamental way. If we’re lucky, that is what suffering inspires. The following passage comes from the podcast How Depression Facilitates Self-Transformation by the Academy of Ideas. The podcast discusses depression, but it could be any sort of suffering we humans endure.

“It takes great courage to value depression, to respect it,” says the legendary psychoanalyst James Hollis.

“Not to try to medicate it away or distract ourselves from its misery. Down there is potential meaning, split off from consciousness but alive, dynamic. Although depression robs conscious life of energy, that energy is not gone. It is in the underworld. And like Orpheus who goes down there to confront, perhaps to charm, the lower powers, so we too are obliged to go down into the depression and find our soul’s greatest treasure.”

Why do we suffer?

Because our challenges are nothing but opportunities to shine. Do I sound crazy being in pain while saying there’s nothing wrong with my body? Who cares? Overcoming pain is bringing something out of me I wouldn’t have before — a reason to write, a reason to fight for the life of my dreams, a reason to grasp my soul’s greatest treasure.

The pain is deeply ingrained in my nervous system. It’s going to take time to unlearn this. But I’m down there, and I’m facing it, and what I take away from the fight isn’t the blood and sweat of my demons to be worn on my sleeve, but an awakened perception of what it means to be alive.

Suffering has made me the warrior poet

Do I know what it means to suffer? Yes and no. Not like so many others do. But I’ve known pain, just as I’ve known the warmth of fallen tears and the solid floor that I can barely stand from.

Yet I do.

I stand, because this pain won’t defeat me. I sometimes feel insane trying to explain what I’m experiencing. So if I can’t explain it, and I’m the only one who feels it, then this battle is for nobody but me.

“Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven, has found the strength for it in his own hell,” said philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Why must we feel pain? To open our eyes to those who silently ache; to open our hearts to those who cry in solitude; to open our souls to the light, which needs darkness to shine.

I know what this is, the animal in me, the limbic brain trying to make me shy away from living. But I’m tired of this shit and I won’t back down. I suffer because how I respond makes me who I am, a warrior poet.

The greatest gift we may receive

Part of me wants so badly for this to be over — to triumph. I’ve tried everything physically to heal over the years. The final battle is within.

We’d kill to know the end result while on the journey, because then we know the journey was worth it. I was on the right path. I made the right call. But we don’t get the answer along the way, if we ever do at all.

That’s why we must keep the faith. Faith is not having the answer and persisting, anyway. It’s believing in ourselves and in our mission when we can’t know with certainty what is going on in this life and in this body and in this soul.

We create our reality with the choice we make: to believe we can overcome, or to let the darkness win. I’ve come this far. I’m going to continue following the stars that have guided me here. The path is difficult because the calling is higher.

That calling could be nothing more than fostering a deeper appreciation for the miracle of life itself, as suffering makes the mundane something to cherish. A day without pain is a blessing. Nothing can beat sitting on a bench with the sun on my skin, listening to the birds beside someone I love.

In this way, suffering is the greatest gift we may receive, as when it leaves, and it will, the simple act of being alive becomes so, so sweet. And if we could grasp the beauty of life while in the throes of suffering — well, then we’re really onto something.

*By the time you read this, I’m doing a lot better. We’re on our way out of pain, fam, and to a whole new life.*