I went through this scenario at the beginning of 2019, Same nightmare trying to execute a trust with many pitfalls and complexities. At the same time I was dealing with spending $20K repiping my house to avoid a slab leak and moving everything to get the inside painted. I also had continuing job stress which escalated in 2015 when my company went through a merger. That was when i developed pain in the left side of my body and on top of it i went through menopause at the same time. Crippling neck pain occurred right after a difficult time selling my mom’s house. I had chronic pain since my 30;s but never recognized myself a chronic pain sufferer. I had severe abdominal pain from IBS and severe pelvic pain supposedly from endometriosis but now I know that pain was also TMS/PPD. So I came to this realization at age 60 and discovered Sarno’s books after a psychic reading in April 2020.

Boy, does this sound familiar. My mother died in October of 2014 and I immediately put on my executor’s and began the process of settling a fairly complicated estate. It took over a year to untangle the mess and get her huge house ready to sell and I was second guessed the entire time. We finally sold the house 15 months later and guess what happened- yep, back pain, herniated disc, and surgery, my second one. I was diagnosed with another herniated disc earlier this year with the solution being a double fusion, but, mercifully, I found Sarno’s book and realized I’d never truly grieved my mother’s death. It was extremely painful to dig into a lot of the emotions, but today I am pain free and absolutely doing all of the physical activities multiple doctors told me to stop. I have my life back and my family had me back.

That is so awesome, Larissa! Nice work!

Alissa, it’s a good analogy for treating yourself kindly, yet consciously firm, deflecting the knee jerk kind of panic that we experience when migraine prodrome – or symptoms – begin. For myself, I used to just give up and become miserable even before the disabling pain took over, telling myself “Oh no. Here we go again, why me? Why now?” Envisioning all the inevitable agony that we’re used to, I let my mind take the wheel, driving me down a highway to Hell. We can take the wheel back – with some self talk and acknowledgement – recognise your body is trying to show you there’s a deeper issue that needs to be addressed. Stress, PTSD, anger, frustration, intolerance, perfectionism, fear… Basically – if you knew a child experiencing these things, use what words you would to calm them down,to see a balanced solution and encourage their body/mind to relax, expressing some of the pressure that is the real cause of the migraine. Hope this helps, one year later?

So the easiest way to start is to ask yourself what you’re feeling stressed about in your life BESIDES the pain. Write a little paragraph or two around whatever comes up. This will start opening you up to the emotions. Trying to hang on and keep calm is actually suppression. You need to allow yourself to acknowledge where life is feeling hard (and you can acknowledge that the pain is hard, too, but then move to other areas of your life).

Hi Alissa,

Treat it as though it needs you to be in charge, like a young child. Tell it you heard its message, and now it’s time for it to go take its nap. 🙂