Myofascial Pain Syndrome Support Group

I have read a couple of articles and saw a clip on TV about him, and skimmed his book. My understanding is that his concept works for people with unexplained back pain; pain symptoms with no physical cause. Since my problems are due to real nerve and disc damage and real trigger points, and I don't think I have "repressed emotions", his methods were not helpful to me. His ideas may work for some people, but there are a lot of us whose problems are not all in our heads.

If you watch a scary movie and it evokes an emotion from you, does your pulse not race? maybe your blood pressure rises? perhaps your muscles tense? are these not PHYSICAL REACTIONS to what you have just witnessed? i mean tangible, measurable and quantitative physical reactions to something that isn't really "real"? i mean it didn't REALLY happen to you, right? what is "reality" anyway other than just our interpretation of the world around us? i would like to respond here by noting that our minds do, in fact, produce many "real" phenomena within our physical bodies depending on what each mind is thinking or how we are INTERPRETING a situation. that being said, and as we know: for every action there is a reaction. so what is the reaction within our bodies to overwhelming stress (physical or emotional) over an extended period of time? disease would be better known as "dis-ease". i'm not saying that this is all in our heads, nothing farther than the truth! i just believe that completely ignoring the mind's connection to the body would be just looking at one side of the coin. oh...and with a blindfold on.

Thanks for your well written opinion. I agree wholeheartedly. There are numerous physical reactions to emotional stimuli (blushing, sweaty palms, to name a few more). It's impossible to gloss over the mind/body connection. There are some illnesses such as heart problems, high blood pressure or even acne, whereby it's "normal" to acknowledge the psychosomatic connection. However, it seems that with CFS, there are two extreme positions. One is that it's a purely physical ailment and doctors approach it scientifically. The other is is that it's psychosomatic, as Sarno maintains, and emotional garbage is the seed of the pain. (Note: Sarno believes the pain is REAL but that it's the body's way of distracting the brain from painful emotions.)

I'm wondering the opinions of my fellow pain sufferers. Personally, I'm middle of the road, as you sound you are, Radfrey. I'm trying to work with the medical field and investigate my stress, but I wish that it wasn't such a bipolar experience. The doctor's think I'm nuts when I bring up Sarno. They point to my slipped disks as proof of the pain. Some of the alternative healers I've spoken to are "too" alternative for me. It's a learning process to figure out the emotional and physical inter relationship.