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In my mid- twenties, life was good. I was in graduate school for psychotherapy at USC. I was an outgoing, active guy. I hung out with my friends. I went to Dodgers games. I was in a kickball league (my team even made it to Nationals!). But during my second year of grad school, everything changed. I developed severe lower back pain, and it completely derailed my life.
Even something as simple as sitting through a movie became a two- hour- long nightmare. Dodgers games were out of the question. I couldn’t watch sports, let alone play them. The stiff classroom seats at USC caused me so much pain, I had to buy a soft, lean- back chair from Office Depot and roll it from class to class. In case you’re wondering, lugging a giant chair everywhere you go is not great for your social life.
I saw three of the leading back specialists in Los Angeles. One of them told me that my pain was caused by a disc herniation. One of them told me that my symptoms were due to disc degeneration. One of them told me that my back hurt because I was just too tall.
I couldn’t make myself shorter, but I tried every other treatment imaginable: physical therapy, biofeedback, acupuncture, acupressure. Nothing helped. I got so many MRI scans of my back, my friends joked that my spine was turning into a magnet.
After about six months, I got an epidural injection. It didn’t cure me, but it cut my pain in half. Life was once again bearable . . . for about eight days. Until one morning, out of nowhere, I felt like a grenade went off in my head. It was the most excruciating headache I’d ever had.
And it stayed.
Chronic daily headache, the internet told me, had no known cause and no known cure. Terrific.
After seeing even more doctors, I found a headache specialist who diagnosed me with high cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pressure. He prescribed some medication, which didn’t help.
Here’s the thing about high- CSF- pressure headaches: the pain is worse when you lie down. So I couldn’t sit up because it hurt my back, and I couldn’t lie down because it hurt my head. My father, practical man that he is, suggested that I try to find a way to live at a forty- five- degree angle. Thanks, Dad.
Over the next several years, I developed the following additional symptoms:
• upper back pain
• neck pain
• shoulder pain
• knee pain
• heel pain
• tongue pain (who gets tongue pain?)
• eye pain
• tooth pain
• toe pain (three different toes!)
• hip pain
• stomach pain
• wrist pain
• foot pain
• leg pain
• TMJ
• heartburn
• vertigo
• tinnitus
• itching
• fatigue
In short, I was a mess. Doctors were scared of me. I had plenty of diagnoses to go along with these symptoms: bulging discs, partially torn rotator cuff, repetitive strain injury, etc. But none of the medical treatments helped me.
Pain took over my life. It was too hard to put on a happy face with my friends, so I withdrew socially. I couldn’t work. I put my life completely on hold to try to deal with my pain. I even moved back home with my parents.
One day my mom gave me a book about a mind- body approach to treating pain. She told me that her friend’s son had read it, and it had helped him get rid of his back pain. She’s a loving mother, and she was trying to help me. So I did what any rational chronic pain sufferer would do. I threw the book across the room.
“A book isn’t going to help me, Mom. The pain isn’t in my head. I have a bunch of diagnoses from doctors.”
She shrugged and left the room. You don’t argue with someone in chronic pain.
A year later I finally read the book, and I spoke with my mom’s friend’s son. The book didn’t get rid of my pain, but it opened my mind to the possibility that I could. It was an important first step. I decided to learn everything there is to know about pain.
I studied the neuroscience of pain. I learned that pain involves both the body and the brain. Normally, the brain gets signals from throughout the body and processes them. If the body experiences an injury, the brain generates the feeling of pain.
But sometimes the system goes haywire. Sometimes the “pain switch” in our brains can get stuck in the on position and cause chronic pain.
We call this neuroplastic pain. Normal pain is caused by damage to the body. But pain that persists after an injury has healed, or pain that has no clear physical cause, is usually neuroplastic pain. In chapter 2, I’ll explain why neuroplastic pain develops and how to determine if you have it.
I realized that I was suffering from neuroplastic pain. I’d been focused on fixing my body, but to get rid of my pain, I needed to target my brain. The mind- body approach to chronic pain was relatively new, and the treatments were underdeveloped. So I created new techniques to rewire my brain and restore the natural order.
I still have bulging discs. I still have high cerebrospinal fluid pressure. I probably still have a partially torn rotator cuff. But I don’t have any pain. I eliminated all twenty- two of my symptoms.
Along the way, I realized that I wasn’t alone. In fact, we’re in the midst of a chronic pain epidemic. More than 50 million adults suffer from chronic pain in the United States alone. Globally, the number is estimated to be 1.2 billion!
Treating chronic pain became my life’s work. I founded the Pain Psychology Center and began helping other sufferers. In my experience, the majority of chronic pain is neuroplastic pain. Over the years, we’ve refined our techniques into a consistently effective system— Pain Reprocessing Therapy— and we’ve helped people overcome every form of pain imaginable.
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