Curing pain by ignoring it

My very woo-woo solution to chronic pain.

The short version of this story is that in 2016 I cured six horrible months of debilitating “repetitive stress” pain (tendonitis) in my hands and wrists by reading a book that instructed me to ignore the pain and go back to work.

Here’s the long version.

The pain started with too much phone scrolling and left-swiping (see previous post re: my bad social media habits). Then my hands and wrists started to hurt while typing. Eventually I was in pain while drawing.

Repetitive stress injury is how I self-diagnosed, and I paid a nice doctor my $40 copay to formerly diagnose me with tendonitis. An inflammation of the tendons due to repetitive stress, it affects lots of people, here’s a referral to a physical therapist is what I was told.

It never quite made sense to me. Why can most people type, draw, play piano or guitar or otherwise work with their hands all day and never get tendonitis? But I’m a natural rule follower and I figured the good doctor knows what he’s talking about so I dutifully went to (expensive!) physical therapy. They tried a lot of stuff on my poor wrists and hands. None of it helped, everything made it hurt worse.

Now I was starting to get worried. At the time, drawing was my only income source. I needed my hands to work. I tried the following with increasing amounts of desperation.

• Wrist guards while drawing. Helped not one iota and just created a lot of awkward questions to field while drawing. “Are you okay?” “Should you be drawing?” etc.

• A strict and regimented icing schedule. Places on the internet told me that LOTS OF ICE is the key to fixing inflammation. Didn’t work, wasted time (and ice) and just made my hands cold.

• Special ergonomic wrist straps that were supposed to “open up” and increase blood flow to the area. They kept falling off. I gave up after a few days.

After months of resting my hands whenever I could and trying all of the above, things were now getting desperate. It hurt to do literally everything. I typed as little as possible. I quit sculpting - my super super fun hobby that I was obsessed with at the time. I gave up texting and went all in on voice-to-text. I deleted every fun app off my phone because even holding my phone in my hand hurt like hell. It hurt to grip the steering wheel.

Live drawing was the worst. By now, both hands are in wrist braces, I’m using a tripod to keep my neck better aligned, I wrapped my stylus pen in a big piece of foam to make it easier to grip, but none of it is helping.

This pic was taken just about 5 years ago on April 20, 2016.

My lowest point was sneaking sips of vodka out of a water bottle during a gig because if I was inebriated, my hands hurt less. Not professional but I had to get through the gig without crying.

By this point, I’m having to give up gigs left and right. Income is on a worryingly downward trend. I’m crying my eyes out every day, thinking my career options have shrunk to…. I didn’t really know. Tricky to make a living when you can’t use you hands and OnlyFans didn’t exist back then so that wasn’t an option. Kidding, kidding.

So it’s June 2016 and I’m in Boston for a three-day gig, drawing seven hours per day. I had spent the prior week doing basically nothing but icing my hands 20 times a day to no avail. In fact, that familiar pain was now spreading to my elbows and I was properly freaked out. After the first day of drawing with wrist braces and a great deal of pain, I’m in my hotel room trying to determine exactly how I’m going to get though another 14 hours of this. Things are looking very grim indeed.

I tried one last late-night desperate google search. Now mind you, I had done eleventy-million google searches on the subject but this time, divine providence led me to this blog post where a very smart and perfectly reasonable gentlewoman calmly described a situation almost exactly like my own: onset of pain during regular activities (typing) that slowly got worse and finally debilitating.

She mentions a book by Dr. John Sarno that supposedly cured her. I’m desperate, so I find the book on Audible and fall asleep listening to it. The book is very clinical and repetitive - not at all charismatic or inspiring - but the general gist is; the pain is real but it’s caused by emotional pain. He gives the symptom a fancy name: Tension Myositis Syndrome or TMS. Ignore the physical pain (TMS) and get back to work with the knowledge that you’re not injuring yourself and the physical pain will subside.

Seemed kinda nuts. But on the other hand it kinda made sense to me. Why did I experience pain doing regular stuff that everyone else seems to manage pain-free? Having tried everything else I could think of, I gave it a shot.

The next day I removed both wrist braces and worked as if I had no pain. I can’t remember exactly when the pain subsided, but at the end of my seven-hour shift I wasn’t in pain at all anymore. Whaaaaaat? It was that easy? I could barely believe it.

The third day of my gig, same deal. No wrist braces, no coddling my hands, no pain.

Now here’s where things get tricky. Pain comes roaring back as soon as I fly home. Worse than before actually. But now I’ve gotten smart to the idea that it’s probably an emotional problem because why would an actual physical problem disappear and re-appear willy-nilly?

I scour the interwebs once again and find this guy named Ryan Walsh who runs a community called Mind Over Pain for people who had been cured by following The Mind Body Prescription and shot off this email:

June 24, 2016

Hey Ryan, 

Quick question: you seem like you're very connected to the community of people who have been helped by Dr. Sarno. I wondered if you've heard of anything like my experience happening. 

I've been officially diagnosed with wrist, hand, and thumb tendinitis for over six months. I've done all the usual stuff, braces, voice recognition software so I don't have to type, doctors, PTs, massage, icing etc. Last week the pain spread to my elbows for the first time so I got really fed up and found Dr Sarno's book. I read Mindbody Prescription and I decided I definitely have TMS. 

I was able to draw for 7 hours a day on Sunday with no pain (I'm a caricature artist), which is awesome. I figured I was an easy case. 

I figured I'd just act like I'm better and quit babying my hands. These past few days I've been working on a new website so I've been typing a lot. The pain is much, much worse (probably worse than it's ever been) and made worse when I try to type more -- like I'm doing right now :)

In your experience, what do I do? Keep going? Keep typing? I don't believe that I'm injuring myself but the pain is making it hard to concentrate and its pretty discouraging to find that my pain is worse than ever, which is bringing my mood down, which is probably feeding the vicious cycle of stress and more pain. What do you suggest?

Thanks for any feedback you might have. I tried going on the TMS wiki but reading about people who aren't improving just increases my stress.

Julia

Ryan is a good guy. He writes me back almost immediately.

Hi Julia,

The temporary increase in pain you're experiencing is called "the symptom imperative" and is the last-ditch effort of your subconscious to freak you out (by causing extra physical pain).

If you've visited multiple respectable health professionals and have tried what they've recommended yet you haven't gotten the results you want, then perhaps those professionals are wrong (and might just be oblivious to mindbody interaction, which in my experience most western health professionals are).

So then, yeah, I'd encourage you to trust Dr. Sarno's books and Lissa Rankin and Louise Hay and the hundreds of others out there.

Likely that will mean to ditch the ergonomic equipment and habits (icing, massage, etc) that are your "crutches".

Start assuming you are resilient and strong rather than fragile.

Start listening to your subconscious and whatever it's trying to tell you (or alternatively what it's trying to distract you from).  Consider journaling; I'd try both pen-and-paper and also typing because they produce different results.  Meditate.  Relax more.  "Treat yourself" more.  Stop feeling guilty about anything.  Allow.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Ryan

I take Ryan’s advice and carry on. I emailed him one more time:

September 3, 2016

Hey guess what? It worked! I journaled for about a week and then got bored and quit but the pain is about 80% gone. my right wrist and elbow still flares up at the end of the day with a lot of activity, but I usually wake up in the morning with no pain.

 if I do something I really enjoy like volleyball or sculpting - even though they both put a lot of "stress" on my wrists - there's no pain.

It's pretty awesome! Thanks for your advice on getting through the tough part

Ryan emailed me back

Yayyyy!!!  I love hearing stories like yours.

It will go down to 0%.  And then you'll feel like an invincible superhero.  

Journaling doesn't have to be the only way.

For a while, I carried a slip of paper in my pocket with a list of emotional words, and throughout the day I'd try to just check in and see which different emotions I was feeling (because in the past I'd never tried to identify them specifically).  That helped, too.

And then at other times, I carried around a list of questions that would prompt me to look at whatever was happening that day from other perspectives.

The power of the mind is amazing!

Congrats on your progress, and thanks for looping me in!

Ryan

It’s hard to describe the relief of figuring out a solution to debilitating, career-ending pain. It most certainly ranks high in my top five most dramatic life-improving events.

It’s insane how many people that book has helped. There’s are endless wikis and websites and blog posts and testimonials of people being permanently cured from all kinds of pain just by reading his book. Google “Thank you Dr. Sarno”, it’s pretty nuts!

Nowadays, if I ever see someone in a wrist brace I ask them what it’s for. If they tell me it’s for chronic pain due to “repetitive stress” I preach, testify, evangelize and generally annoy the hell out of them until they agree to read his book.

Spread the word and tell your friends, friends. You don’t have to live with many types of chronic pain. It’s crazy but it’s true.

Here’s some links for the unconverted

Interview with Ryan Walsh. Pretty phenomenal story.

Documentary on TMS All The Rage

Another documentary on TMS This Might Hurt

20/20 old segment on TMS (and a young John Stossel!)

Talk at Google by Doctor who treats TMS although I think he calls it something different

Curable App. I haven’t used it but I’ve heard good things.