• There are many different physical and mental symptoms that are possible when you are in sustained flight or fight physiology.
• At my lowest point, I was experiencing 17 of them. No one could tell me what was happening despite seeing many physicians. I suffered for over 15 years.
• The mental pain was the worst part of my ordeal.
• One reason this process has been effective for so many people was that I learned many important details from my own harsh experience.
• My symptoms resolved and I am grateful I can pass along the healing principles.

I was driving across a bridge late one night, when my heart began to suddenly pound at a furious pace. I couldn’t breathe. I was sweaty, light-headed, and I thought I was dying from a heart attack. I was only 37 years old. This was the first of many panic attacks I would have over the next two years. In one minute, I went from being a fearless spine surgeon to experiencing relentless, progressive anxiety. I wouldn’t emerge from this slow spiral into hell for 13 years. What happened and why so suddenly?

The beginning

My first migraine happened on the 4^th of July. I was five and excited because the local fireworks were being set off in the town commons, directly across the street from our house. But as the sun set, my head began to throb and by 10 o’clock I felt like I was being hit with a sledgehammer. The fireworks less than 100 yards away weren’t helpful.

This was the first of 17 symptoms of a stressed nervous system I developed over the next 50 years. My suffering included tinnitus, burning feet, prolonged tendonitis, insomnia, anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), major depression, migratory skin rashes, crushing chest pain, sweats, PTSD, back and neck pain, heart palpitations, light-headedness, and tension headaches. At my lowest point, I was experiencing all of them simultaneously.

The “perfect” family

My father was a family doctor in a small, New England town. He was highly respected and appreciated. My mother was active in many local activities. I was the oldest of four children, with two brothers and a sister. People would often comment on our  “beautiful family.” We were – from the outside.

Inside our house, my mother was in an intense rage most of the time. She was physically and verbally abusive to me and my three younger siblings. My father wasn’t around much, and he didn’t comprehend the full extent of the situation.Since this was all, we knew, we thought this was what life was supposed to be like.

Interestingly, one of the few things that would cut her anger short was one of my migraines. She would instantly become a loving and nurturing mother, placing cold compresses on my forehead, and keeping everyone quiet.

My new identity

When I entered high school, I felt a deep shift. I was increasingly aware that my family life was not ideal, and I decided that I had had enough. I “shut the door” on my past

Although I still lived at home, I mentally separated from the chaos. I embarked on a quest to create a new identity. I became an excellent student, trumpet player, hard worker, leader, and athlete. During my junior year in college, I took 18 to 21 hours of credit every quarter, worked construction 10-20 hours a week, played sports, had an active social life, ran for student body president, and pulled off a 4.0 GPA. I was having the time of my life. I wasn’t sleeping much.

I continued to graduate from medical school with honors and was accepted in a competitive orthopedic residency in Hawaii. With a great wife, a home in Hawaii, and a promising career, I thought I had it made. I was unaware that I was keeping busy to outrun my past and I had also become a master at suppressing unpleasant emotions.

I completed two years of internal medicine residency before I entered surgical training in Hawaii. Most orthopedic residents undergo a couple of years of general surgery residency before specializing and are comfortable in the operating room. I had never made a skin incision or even knew how to tie a knot. However, handling stress was such a core part my existence, I did not feel it. I was wrapped up in my identity of being “cool under pressure.”

I noticed that my feet burned while I was jogging, which I thought was due to the warm, Hawaiian pavement. My migraines were more frequent, and I had a reoccurrence of warts over both of my hands. One afternoon, while in a weekly orthopedic conference, I noticed some vivid, intrusive thoughts entering my mind. I didn’t think too much about it, but I felt a bit unsettled. Still, I was on top of the world, enjoying my family, learning, and living in a paradise.

Stress

The wheels started to come off when during my post-residency spine fellowship at one of the top programs in the world. It was not as physically demanding as the rest of my residency, but the expectations were extremely high. My migraines were occurring every other week, my ears started to ring, while my feet continued to burn. I pushed through it all.

My “iron man identity” continued to evolve. It seemed that I could handle an unlimited amount of stress. It was my badge of honor. The obstacles I encountered in private practice dwarfed any prior challenges in my training. I recall sitting at my desk one night after working yet another 14-hour day. A patient had developed a serious postoperative wound infection. Another one had gotten into a fight with a security guard. I discovered I wasn’t getting a paycheck that month because of the high office overhead. My mindset was, “ Bring it on.”

A few weeks later, I crashed with the panic attack.

It was only the beginning

Little did I know how severe these symptoms would become and how many more would occur. Skin rashes popped up and disappeared all over my body, my scalp itched, my nightmares became more intense, I had deep aching pains in my upper back, and intermittent crushing chest pain.

There were other terrible aspects of my ordeal. I am a social person and since I didn’t feel great, I quit spending as much time with my friends. The loneliness was crushing. No marriage could have survived all these untreated symptoms because I was often not in a great mood. I worked at hiding it from almost everyone.

As my family disintegrated, I descended into a full-blown obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I had the internal version, which is experiencing vivid intrusive thoughts, that I would then try to counter with “good” thoughts. I was in an endless, unwinnable battle and my thoughts progressed to disturbing impulses. Along with my many other symptoms, I was in bad shape. I then made the mistake of reviewing some articles on OCD and discovered that the prognosis was (and still is) poor. The best outcome would be to somehow manage or diminish the symptoms with medications or behavioral therapy. I became totally despondent. There was no escape and I sunk into a major suicidal depression. Still, no one could explain to me what was going on or how to solve it

Penetrating the facade

I now understand that major life changes, especially around family dynamics, create more stress and symptoms. The stresses can be positive or negative. The problem with major family events is that they penetrate the façade, and I had been working on mine for decades. A major shift in my symptoms occurred with the birth of my son. My divorce was disastrous. The burning in my feet increased to the point where they felt like they were in a toaster oven. The ringing in my ears was intolerable, I couldn’t sleep, all my other symptoms worsened, and the unrelenting anxiety was the worst part of my ordeal.

I pursued many self-help books, took medications, saw other physicians, underwent multiple diagnostic tests, and aggressively pursued psychotherapy and counseling. I was both open to anything and desperate.

I would’ve thought that meeting my current wife would have been the answer to my suffering. We had an instant connection and I fell in love – except it felt like I was falling off a cliff. I lost more control. When I mustered up the courage to tell her that I was in love with her, she thought I was going to tell her that I had terminal cancer. My suffering dramatically worsened, and I was beginning to seriously give up. No avenue of treatment was working. I had no hope.Slowly, things changed. I escaped the grip of chronic pain in 2003 and continued to gain a deeper understanding of the problem, as well as the principles behind the solutions.

Recap

One reason that the concepts presented in Back in Control  have been helpful for so many people is that they evolved from my prolonged suffering. Almost everything I tried failed, and when I experienced the faintest glimpse of a way out, I kept building on it, step-by-step. Not only I am I doing well, but I am thriving. It is my  privilege to share these strategies with you and be a witness to your healing journey.

Chronic pain has multiple manifestations. Each person has a different experience and must find their own way out. But contrary to common perception, chronic pain is a solvable problem. I am one of the success stories.

The post My Descent Into The Abyss first appeared on Back in Control.

The post My Descent Into The Abyss appeared first on Back in Control.

Dr. Sarno

He is a well-known physiatrist who described the “tension myositis syndrome.” (TMS) I had been familiar with his observations described in his best-selling 1984 book, Mind Over Back Pain. He felt that the nervous system was created muscle tension and inflammation. He also made the astute observation that anger or rage was a critical factor in the evolution of chronic pain. He was partially correct about the anger, but modern neuroscience research has shown that the symptoms are created from the physiological response to threat and not primarily from muscle tension.

Dr. Schubiner

Howard Schubiner is a pain physician who practices in Detroit, MI, who spent time with Dr. Sarno. He has authored a book, Unlearn Your Pain, which addresses chronic pain as one of the symptoms of the Mind Body Syndrome (MBS), which is another name for the tension myositis syndrome. I have chosen the term, Neurophysiologic Disorder (NPD).

In March of 2011, he was one of the keynote speakers of a seminar I co-chaired, A Course on Compassion-Empathy in the Face of Chronic Pain. I had a vague understanding of what I had been through but was still searching for more answers. As I sat in the lecture I had a deep insight into my experience and it instantly all made sense. He concisely presented the over 30 possible symptoms of stressed nervous system and I realized that I had experienced almost half of them. In chapter five of his book, Unlearn Your Pain, Dr. Schubiner lists 33 symptoms of NPD (He uses the term Mind Body Syndrome).

The Neurophysiological Disorder (NPD) – Make the Right Diagnosis

As your nervous system is connected to and controls every cell in your body, the potential symptoms and combinations are almost endless. Mainstream medicine does not embrace these concepts and that would, historically, include me. I have both watched it and experienced it. Our medical culture has “medicalized” a neurological diagnosis. The first step in being successful in treating any disease is making the correct diagnosis.

My Experience with NPD

Here is the list of my symptoms of NPD. I will tell the stories in detail in later posts.

• Migraine headaches
• Migratory skin rashes
• Severe burning in both of my feet
• Obsessive compulsive disorder
• PTSD
• Anxiety/panic attacks
• Severe depression
• Chronic tendonitis
• Heartburn/acid reflux
• Tinnitus
• Insomnia
• Back/neck pain
• Tension headaches
• Unrelenting itching
• Chest pain
• Palpitations

Every one of these symptoms has vanished or is at a level that causes minimal interference with my quality of life. However, if I quit practicing the principles that I am teaching some of my symptoms will re-occur in about two weeks. These are permanent pathways. Usually my ears will begin to ring, my feet will burn and a skin rash will appear on the back of both of my wrists.  Fail well

Terminology

There have been many attempts at using a term to describe the array of symptoms that occur when your body is full of adrenaline and cortisol. These terms include:

• Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS)
• Mind Body Syndrome (MBS)
• Stress Illness Syndrome
• Central Sensitization Syndrome
• Neurophysiologic Disorder (NPD)

All of these terms are describing the same process. Any stress, perceived or real is going to put your body into a fight-or-flight mode and you will experience multiple physical symptoms. The key to healing is feeling safe, which creates a wonderful chemical environment where you can both physically and mentally thrive. It is a learned skill that is not difficult.

The post My Battle with NPD first appeared on Back in Control.

The post My Battle with NPD appeared first on Back in Control.