“…the pain is not in your head, but the solution is not in altering your body.”
In her new book, Mind Your Body, psychotherapist Nicole Sachs explains how chronic pain can be related to unresolved emotions. This isn’t a new idea; Louise Hay wrote You Can Heal Your Life in the 80s. But Sachs explains it from a scientific perspective that makes healing feel achievable. She explains our brain’s fight or flight responses. There are actually four, not two:
- Fight: Combating the enemy
- Flight: Fleeing from the enemy
- Freeze: Freezing and hoping the enemy doesn’t notice you
- Fawn: saying or doing whatever you think will placate the enemy
This is your body trying to protect you and these are important responses, but the flood of hormones and chemicals they send through your body are not meant to be long-term. When the perceived threat is chronic, your body creates pain or sickness to signal you to take care of yourself.
“When we don’t know how to feel our ‘unacceptable’ emotional reactions to life (shame, despair, rage, grief, and terror), we are diverted from these challenging feelings by something that our nervous systems deem safer: physical pain and anxiety.”
Dr. John Sarno, a physician and professor at NYU, wrote a number of books on healing back pain and chronic conditions, and Sachs became his patient after she was diagnosed with spondylolisthesis, a degenerative spine disease. She then became his student and colleague, which led to her treating patients with chronic pain and this book.
“Remember: Your brain thinks it’s protecting you. The question is, from what? The answer is simpler than you realize. It is our unthinkable, defiant, and conflictual thoughts and emotions. They threaten us somehow, and we ‘believe’ that acknowledging and feeling them will kill us. This, of course, is not rooted in any truth—scientific or otherwise. As Dr. Sarno’s groundbreaking work has shown us, the mind’s desperation to protect us from these feelings is the direct cause of much chronic pain, muscle constriction, neuropathy, bodily inflammation, chronic anxiety, and more.”
Sachs uses a combination of journaling and meditation in her treatments. She has a podcast, the Cure for Chronic Pain, and multiple videos on YouTube. Below is a short video in which she explains chronic pain.