To support the theory that pain is caused by anger and other negative emotions, here are some observations from Dr. Eric Robins, a Los Angeles physician and EFT
practitioner.
Pain and anger
by Eric Robins, M.D.
For decades, John Sarno, M.D., has seen the worst chronic pain patients in the world. Most lived with severe pain in the neck, back, shoulder, or buttocks for 10 to 30 years. Most received multiple epidural injections, one or more surgeries, and years of physical therapy. They all had terrible mechanisms of action, such as a forklift truck falling on them or a 747 jet rolling over them, and all their X-rays looked like the "Elephant Man." They all had a good reason for their pain.
Yet even with this challenging collection of patients, Dr. Sarno has a 70-percent cure rate with regard to both pain and function, and an additional 15 percent of his patients are much improved, typically 40 to 80 percent better. He has had these results with about 12,000 patients.
Typically when a pain patient goes to a physician for help, the doctor orders an MRI scan, which invariably shows some sort of anatomic abnormality like a slipped disc. The doctor concludes that the disc is causing the pain and prescribes symptom-suppressing drugs or therapies. Unfortunately, this
approach usually has poor long-term results. The pain may disappear for a while, but it soon comes back, often worse than before.
Dr. Sarno looked at the medical literature and found an interesting study in the New England Journal of Medicine. It showed that if you take 100 middle-aged people who have NO back pain and do MRI scans on them, 65 percent will have a slipped disc or spinal stenosis. In other words, these people have conditions that are blamed for most of the world’s back pain, yet they experience no pain at all. He began asking himself, "If the disc isn’t causing this pain, then what is?"
What he discovered is that his pain patients had chronic tension and spasm of the muscles of the neck, back, shoulder, or buttocks. When a muscle is
chronically tensed, the blood can't flow through it, resulting in a relative lack of oxygen, and this is what causes severe pain.
Then Dr. Sarno asked himself, "Why would someone have chronically tensed muscles to begin with?" He realized that many of us grow up learning, on an unconscious level, that it’s not okay to feel or express our anger or anxiety.
The problem of course is that as we grow up, we experience many specific events or traumas that elicit anger or anxiety. As these emotions start to emerge, our unconscious mind basically says, "It's not okay or safe to be feeling these things." Then, Dr. Sarno explains, the unconscious mind causes muscles to clamp down and tighten in order to cause a pain that takes our minds off of what we are angry or anxious about.
Almost all of us, including most physicians, believe that pain serves a useful purpose, that it protects us from more serious damage or injury. In contrast, Dr.
Sarno quotes Stanley J. Coen of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, who first suggested that psychosomatic physical symptoms were most likely a defense against harmful or toxic unconscious emotional
phenomena. In other words, physical symptoms such as back pain are a reaction to unconsciously generated feelings that are repressed as a matter of
self-preservation, Dr. Sarno discovered that simply becoming aware of these feelings can lead to a cure.
He obtained his amazing results by bringing folks in for two lectures. In the first lecture he'd tell them, "It's not the disc or spinal stenosis or any other anatomic abnormality that's causing your pain. Most people your age who have no pain have a slipped disc or spinal stenosis or other conditions that are normally
blamed for back pain. What is causing your pain is chronic tension and spasm of the muscles."
In the second lecture he'd tell them, "Whenever you have pain, I want you to notice what you're angry or anxious about." Dr. Sarno then had his patients write in a journal, enroll in group therapy sessions, or engage in psychotherapy. He reported that about 20 percent of his patients weren't consciously aware of what they were angry or anxious about, and those patients needed to work with a therapist to get in touch with some repressed or unconscious material.
I explain Dr. Sarno's model whenever I speak to groups because he gets such amazing results, and of course the proof is in the pudding. In one of his books, he explains that this emotional model works not just for musculoskeletal pain; it can be used for most chronic or functional illnesses.
Dr. Sarno’s discoveries are an important breakthrough, but the methods he recommends to handle emotional issues are archaic compared to the speed and efficiency of EFT. We can expect better and faster results by combining Dr.
Sarno’s insights with EFT, which is the best and fastest mind-body healing technique in clinical use in the world right now.
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In his busy clinical practice, Dr. Robins, who is a urologist, teaches EFT to patients whose symptoms don’t respond to conventional treatment. He explains to them that we store trauma not only in our minds but in different parts of the body, including muscles, bones, and organs. Most patients grasp the idea immediately and offer suggestions as
to what event, memory, or problem might be stored in their kidney or bladder or other problem area. In many cases, he has cancelled scheduled surgery or taken patients off of prescription drugs because they were no longer needed. .
If Dr. Sarno can produce such amazing results just by helping people intellectually understand the underlying causes of their pain, and if Dr. Robins can help his patients cure themselves just by demonstrating EFT in a busy clinic, imagine what you can do with a little time and practice using not only basic EFT but some of the most
sophisticated, effective discoveries that are used by EFT practitioners. If you read this book all the way through, practice all the exercises, and experiment with all the scripts, you’ll not only be well on your way to healing your back and saying goodbye to its pain, now and forever, but you’ll know far more about EFT and its art of delivery than most.
For additional information about the link between emotional trauma and back pain, see
“Psychological Factors in Chronic Pain: An Introduction to Psychosomatic Pain
Management” by Dietrich Klinghardt, M.D., PhD, a lecture presented at the 14th annual meeting of the American Association of Orthopaedic Medicine, Tempe Arizona,
February 21, 1997, on page 257 in Appendix A.