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Hello everyone,

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In natural health we have been aware for a long time that the mind can affect the body, physical symptoms, and healing in unexpected ways. There is definitely a link. What has not been quite as clear (at least to us) is exactly how this works and what to do about it. Traditionally, in our practice, we have left this aspect of health and healing to psychologists and counselors. After all, we are nutritionists!

Still, in the back of our mind a question has been lurking. We have all had those patients and clients who simply could not seem to recover, in spite of eating a perfect diet and following the exact right nutritional supplement program. Or the patient who recovers from one issue, only to relapse months or years later, or to develop new and sometimes severe symptoms.

These patients are definitely the minority. But their memory stays with us.

As it turns out, there have been many others who have shared our observations. Dr. John E Sarno, MD, wrote extensively on how he cured chronic pain patients, especially back pain patients, by treating the mind and emotions.

We have been reading and working with his books, especially “The Mindbody Prescription” (1998) and “The Divided Mind” (2006).

If you deal with chronic pain, of course you should receive the appropriate evaluation with a practitioner you trust. That said, Dr. Sarno’s contention was that, especially for back pain which was his area of expertise, the lesion (meaning the area of abnormal tissue change or damage) found on MRI, X-Ray, etc, was not anatomically capable of causing the pain the patient was experiencing.

Dr. Sarno explained that unconscious emotions, typically the negative emotions of rage, shame, etc. were being repressed by the conscious mind and experienced instead as pain in the body. He described this process as a non-dangerous, relatively benign local deficit of oxygen to the tissues called TMS or Tension Myositis Syndrome. The subconscious (for lack of a better term) finds emotions more threatening than bodily pain. Isn’t that fascinating!

Dr. Sarno went on to clarify there were three sources of this repressed unconscious negative emotion.

1) Past traumatic experiences

2) Current life stress

3) Personality traits like conscientiousness, perfectionism, and people-pleasing

Dr. Sarno was very emphatic about the universal nature of repressed emotions. He said it is the human condition and not any fault or defect of the pain sufferer. The subconscious mind creates physical pain to keep the emotion repressed. It’s a protective mechanism—It’s not that the person is doing this on purpose! The idea is that the subconscious is the part of our mind that is out of our conscious awareness. Have you ever suddenly become aware of something about yourself you never knew before? This knowledge, in theory, was in your mind before you realized it…it was in your subconscious.

I would agree that we have a very emotional side to our mind. If we went around all day just acting out of pure emotion, without taking other people or social norms, or our daily responsibilities into account, that certainly would not be good! Some emotions are unacceptable to us and many people will deny having these emotions. We do our best to keep this side of ourselves under control. And so we should.

How to Journal for Chronic Illness and Pain.

Let’s try an exercise. If you would like to see how Dr. Sarno’s method could help you, here are the steps.

1) Journal for 10 minutes a day. Just write stream-of-consciousness style. The idea is to become more aware of your feelings, not to judge them or try to fix the past. Often just becoming more aware of your emotions through writing will help in surprising ways.

2) If you’re not sure what to write about, just pick one of these three things:

a. Past traumatic experiences

b. Current stressors

c. Personality traits such as fastidiousness, perfectionism, people-pleasing or caretaking

others

i. These personality traits aren’t negative! They serve you in wonderful ways. But they

can cause some subconscious emotions that it’s helpful to become aware of by

writings.

3) Read Dr. Sarno’s books. His books contain many case studies of people who were able to become aware of how their repressed emotions were causing their pain.

4) Engage in this process for three months.

You may be surprised how your life can change for the better, just by engaging in the journaling exercise. We feel it may be beneficial for some patients to work on the body and the mind at the same time.

​Here is an interesting study of how writing about past traumatic experiences helped patients with asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

Let us know your experiences!

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Sincerely yours,

Dr. Keith and Laura Sheehan

PS-If you’re wondering “hey, I wonder if stress may be part of my health concern?” just ask yourself if it is! If you think it may be playing a role, give the above books a read (or listen to them on audio as we do), and perform the above journaling for about a month. Write down how you feel in the beginning of the month, and at the end. If you get improvement, keep journaling! If not just decide if you would like to or not, it’s up to you.

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