You Have the Tool to Manage Pain and Stress

It doesn’t cost you anything to lower some pain and better manage stress. In fact, you already own it. You may know it as noodle or the little gray cells. Meet your mind.
Since reading Healing Back Pain by John Sarno, M.D., I experience much less back pain than I have in the past. Sarno says that much of the pain we experience comes from our stresses turning into physical pain. Instead of the mind accepting and handling the stresses and problems, it shuts itself off and converts the stresses into physical pain.
Of course, we can’t solve all of our problems, or at least, not fast enough to avoid the pain. What we can do is learn to accept them and tell ourselves that we’re aware of the problem.
Studies Show Psychological Connection between Mind and Back Pain
Many studies from universities and published in journal have proven the following points that Sarno makes in his book:

• Many patients with cracks in their discs or thinning discs experience no pain.
• The source of many patients’ back pain has been psychological — in how they deal with stress.

To give you a specific reference from Health Psychology journal, a study led by Robert Kerns, Ph.D. shows that using psychological treatments (alone or part of a multidisciplinary approach) decreased back pain more than any other treatment. Search for back pain and psychological intervention, and you’ll see many results.
Stress affects your health. Our caveman brain deals with some problems in “fight or flight” mode. Instead of hitting or running away, we tend to experience hearts beating faster, blood pressure climbing, adrenalin hopping and body aching.
Put Your Mind to Work
I bring up this subject to share how it has helped my back problems and to share how I’ve been dealing with recent stresses.  A report from a standard checkup arrived in the mail requesting a follow up. At first, my stomach flipped and my mind wandered everywhere refusing to return to work. The report even says that the results turn out to be harmless for the majority of people who need this follow up.
I needed more comforting than that. The follow up doesn’t occur for another week — it was the soonest I could get in. Well, I don’t have time to dwell on this especially since it’ll be a few more days before I get results. So how do I refocus? I told myself that the medical staff wants to be on the safe side and double-check things. I also reminded myself that even though it means the pain of another appointment and more time away from work, I’ll rest easier knowing the results are very accurate.
After doing that, I felt less antsy and moved on with my week.
No Worrying Allowed… Not True
I’ve read Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Great advice. I put it to work. Still, I worry and dwell on things. It’s OK to get mad, sad, depressed, frustrated, whatever. The trick is not to let it interfere with your life for too long. Go ahead and do the woe is me routine for a little bit. While this routine may not bring progress, it helps us deal with the situation in a way that comes natural to us.
You may not be able to solve the problem right away (or ever, in some cases) or feel better, but you can move ahead with your business. This is where I do the “I accept the problem and I’m doing the best I can to work through it, so don’t you dare turn it into pain” routine. I get right back to work within a day. (unless it’s weekend, then I leave it until Monday.)
This thinking is how I dealt with tests back in my school days. I didn’t have confidence that I’d do well, but it never stopped me from studying hard and doing my best. I know that experts say that negative thinking leads to negative results and so on. But some of us can learn to let the thinking be while doing our best to achieve the opposite.
Funny — I just came across this tweet: “Don’t take negatively about yourself – you may just start to believe it.” @leadtoday. I agree that it can be true — it’s all how you manage it and what you do about it.
How do you deal with stress and difficult challenges?