Can stress cause chronic pain? Why do patients with mindbody disorders think they should be in pain?
Chronic pain can originate in your thoughts. Even if you sustain a minor injury, you may start to believe you’re more seriously injured, which only causes more pain because you’re more stressed.
Discover how stress and other psychological conditions can influence how your body feels pain.
Joint and Back Pain as Mindbody Disorders
Andrea Leonard-Segal is a rheumatologist and a clinical associate professor of medicine at George Washington University. She specializes in treating chronic pain and takes a holistic approach that addresses both physical and psychological causes of pain.
When Leonard-Segal herself developed back pain that didn’t go away with standard treatments, she went to John E. Sarno as a patient. That was when she learned about mindbody disorders and that stress causes chronic pain. Sarno’s treatment cured her, and she’s been using his principles of mindbody medicine in her practice ever since, with a particular focus on treating TMS.
TMS Patients Think They “Should” Be in Pain
Leonard-Segal says that the only common thread between many of her patients is the belief that they’ve seriously hurt themselves. Their injuries—if they have any—are often minor and would normally heal on their own. However, because the patient thinks they’re hurt, the pain continues.
Furthermore, the mindbody disorder often compounds itself because the patient comes to believe that the chronic pain means they’re frail and weak. As a result of that belief, they actually start to feel even minor pains more severely and struggle to recover from injuries and illnesses that should pose no threat at all.
Leonard-Segal’s treatment for TMS is similar to Sarno’s, but she adds that her goal is to give her patients the benefit of an outside perspective. In other words, Leonard-Segal helps her patients to see themselves as she sees them: healthy, strong, and capable. She says that, once her patients internalize that new self-image, they usually make full recoveries.
| Mindbody Disorders as Identity Disorders Leonard-Segal takes a different approach to mindbody disorders: Rather than saying that they’re the result of repressed emotions, she posits that such disorders often come from the patient’s self-image. This idea reflects what life coach Tony Robbins writes about identity in his book Awaken the Giant Within. Robbins’s definition of identity is “the person you believe yourself to be,” matching Leonard-Segal’s definition of self-image. Robbins adds that your identity doesn’t actually define who you are, but rather what you do—you subconsciously act in ways that align with your identity, impacting your decisions and actions. For instance, if you see yourself as an injured person with chronic pain, you’ll think and act like an injured person with chronic pain. Furthermore, you’ll naturally resist changing things that you see as core parts of your identity, because that feels like losing a part of yourself (even though it’s really only changing your perception of yourself). Robbins suggests bypassing that defense mechanism by subtly shifting your identity, or building upon it, rather than totally changing how you see yourself. Continuing the previous example, you might stop telling yourself that you are injured, and shift to telling yourself that you were injured, but have now recovered. This approach allows you to grow past your old identity without needing to reject it outright. |
