Mindbody Pain

Can the mind, stress, trauma, and repressed emotions really cause physical pain and illness? Before delving into the specific areas of and approaches to mindbody healing, I believe it is crucial to understand how chronic pain and symptoms begin on a physiological level. What I believe to be my superpower when engaging with this topic is that I have not only collected the facts and resources necessary to have a discussion about chronic pain and disease, but I have lived and continue to live with it myself. Here I will weave the research into my personal narrative with the intention of painting a clear picture of the inseparable relationship carried out by the mind and body. 

I had my first experience with chronic pain at 20 years old. What started as mystery pain in my back causing me to leave parties early turned into nearly 10 years of on-again, off-again chronic pain symptoms spreading throughout my entire body. At the worst points, I would end the day unable to undress myself or walk more than 10 blocks without crippling pain. However, these moments of complete debilitation were also mixed with months or years where I could lift over 200 pounds from the gym floor and proceed to train four consecutive clients. I was floored; how could these two truths live in my body? If I was truly facing a progressive disease, my worst fear at the time, then my physical ability shouldn’t be able to fluctuate so drastically. Unfortunately, when I began to seek care from the Western medical system, not a single doctor asked me about my life. Despite likely living in some form of fight-or-flight for years prior, at 18 years of age, and just two years before my symptoms began, I experienced a particularly significant and horrifying traumatic event. From age 18-20 I was living mentally in a constant hypervigilant state and physically in close proximity to the person who traumatized me.

In his book, Becoming Supernatural, New York Times best-selling author Dr. Joe Dispenza clarifies how stress affects our physiology. He notes that a stressful experience causes the sympathetic nervous system to turn on while “the body mobilizes an enormous amount of energy in response to the stressor” (Dispenza 2). As if living through a stressful event isn’t jarring enough, Dr. Dispenza states that even thinking about the past or trying to control the future (both common responses to trauma) can “knock our brains and bodies out of normal physiology.” Our bodies are not meant to live in a chronic state of fight-or-flight. If the stress continues, the body “never returns to balance” (Dispenza 3). 

Dr. John Sarno was a physician, pioneer of mindbody medicine, and best-selling author. He coined a diagnosis to explain the mindbody connection that causes many of our chronic health conditions called Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS). TMS is “initiated by psychological phenomena” and are “neither illnesses or diseases, but rather symptomatic states induced by the brain to serve a psychological purpose” (Sarno 1). The pain and symptoms are very real, however their origin is in the brain. The cause of this mechanism according to Sarno? Repressed emotions.

This is the good news: if the mind can create or perpetuate pain, it can also heal it. We may not be able to prevent the initial harmful events in life, but we do have some room for negotiation with the thoughts, beliefs, and patterns that tend to follow.

About five years ago, and after five years of failed treatments by doctors who admitted to having no idea why I was in so much pain at such a young age, I saw a physician named Ira Rashbaum at NYU Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation who trained under Dr. Sarno and has been recognized numerous times as a top doctor. Dr. Rashbaum listened to my explanation of symptoms, asked questions, performed a physical exam, and ultimately diagnosed me with TMS. With my pain consistently at a level 9 or 10 prior to this appointment, the effect of simply being diagnosed with a mind-body disorder temporarily lowered my pain and symptoms by nearly 70%. I then went on to thoroughly research (no surprise there) TMS and equivalent mind-body disorders as well as practice many of the suggested treatments (which I will delve into further in future blog posts), most of which included efforts to send messages of safety to the brain. Unexplained chronic pain and symptoms can feel terrifying; in the worst moments of my experience with it, I had begun to fear what felt like a very real possibility of ending up in a wheelchair. Unfortunately, this fear reinforces and keeps you stuck in the cycle of nervous system dysregulation and the resulting pain. Fear becomes the driving force of your symptoms, and your symptoms, in turn, reinforce your fear. My fear reduced significantly after hearing from Dr. Rashbaum that I wasn’t suffering from a degenerative condition and the direct result was decreased pain.

Many studies have demonstrated a connection between the brain and physical symptoms. One such study conducted at the University of Colorado, Boulder by doctors found that after a treatment called Pain Reprocessing Therapy (designed to reprogram the perception of pain in the brain), two-thirds of people with chronic back pain “reported being mostly or completely pain-free” (National Institute of Health). As the research catches up to understand the inseparable link between mind and body that has always been there, more and more treatments and methods are being studied and developed to promote healing. These methods are what I will continue to explore personally, professionally, and academically. I plan to share my findings here on this blog as well as with my clients experiencing chronic pain and illness.

Ultimately, this blog is the culmination of 10 years of seeking answers about the human body and experimentation with healing strategies. While I am not completely pain and symptom free by any means, the symptoms no longer debilitate me as fully as they once did. I understand now that the events of my life have contributed to the dysregulation of my nervous system and have created a sense of fear in my body so profound that it continues to debilitate me in its best attempt to keep me safe. The hopeful side of this same coin is that I now also understand that my perspective, state of mind, lifestyle, and ability to honor my rich internal world have the power to reduce my pain. While I am still on the quest for understanding, my ultimate finding is that stress and trauma absolutely fundamentally alter the body’s ability to regulate. What we do with this truth is completely up to us. Our choice may mean the difference between living a life limited by pain or one of endless hope, health, and prosperity.

Sources

Dispenza, Joe. Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon. Hay House, 2019. 

Reynolds, Sharon. “Retraining the Brain to Treat Chronic Pain.” National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 18 Sept. 2025, www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/retraining-brain-treat-chronic-pain. 

Sarno, John E. The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain. Grand Central Publishing, 2012.