This is my personal story and I am sharing it for one simple reason- I hope it can help another human heal their chronic pain. I am not sharing because I think mine is a unique story. Quite the contrary. From years of study and reading, I know it is not.
Truth is, each of us have complex lives, with complex people and complex issues and many of us suffer with chronic pain because our nervous systems are in a constant state of activation and we can't quite get them calmed down because there is always an upset around the bend. This is C-PTSD, btw. My life complexities came to a head in March of 2020 as we all faced a global pandemic.
Just a few months prior, I had my first knee replacement. I was recovering at my mom's house and was considering not going back to my long term parter's home that I had moved in with a year earlier. The relationship was not fulfilling and I was stuck. My symptoms grew and I wasn't healing as quickly as I should have after surgery. I was at my heaviest weight ever and my entire body was inflamed; everything hurt and felt sick. My skin was breaking out in strange rashes and my bladder suddenly ceased to work. I would get up nine to ten times and night to pee and would oftentimes not make it. I was depressed and anxious. I was taking baths so hot I thought I'd melt. Over the year, I saw every kind of doctor I could and got ZERO answers. Everything came back normal. Meanwhile, I was at a point that I knew I'd be in a wheelchair if the pain didn't stop. I just couldn't take much more. I was taking gobs of ibuprofen and two benadryl a night to sleep. I felt like I was dying.
Then, one day, I remembered a book I had read a few years earlier written by Dr. John Sarno called Healing Back Pain. I had read it and healed my low back pain and I immediately wondered if the symptoms I was currently having could be happening for the same reason I had back pain- repressed emotion and trauma. I started to do some digging and quickly realized that was exactly what was happening. My nervous system was in a heightened state around the clock and could get no rest, as all it sensed was fear. Fear is what drives nervous system activation. Fear and worry, both consciously and subconsciously felt.
Somewhere along the way, I was referred to a neurosurgeon who had left his practice and was working with patients like me to help heal their chronic pain and other symptoms. He had come to believe after years in the western medical system that surgery and pain pills weren't working. People were still in pain because thier injuries were emotional, not physical. He offered his help online and on a sliding pay scale and after the first session, my symptoms reduced by 50%. After the second call, all my symptoms were nearly gone.
During the first call, he simply listened to me. I shared some of my childhood and past and then shared about all the pain I was in. At the end of the call he gave me homework. I was to write down every single strange symptom or pain I had all through life and then recall events and circumstances of that time. As I made the list, it quickly became evident that every symptom marked a deep hurt or emotional wound that I had never fully felt or healed.
This is neuroplastic pain and it is every bit as real as pain created by physical injury.
Today, I am pain free even though my body is still sensitive to the pressures of life. I keep up with all the practices that help me to be embodied instead of scared. Like many people who experience this healing, I want to share it with as many humans as I can. I've watched so many die and suffer in their pain.
Remembering we are made for the Garden is such a wonderful mindset to embrace on this healing journey because it's true. When we slow down, get grass under our feet and turn our gaze to the Sun to FEEL it all and weep or scream with delight, WE HEAL these wounds and the chronic pain attached to it.
I'd love to be a help to you.