A reader reached out to me recently with a question. She has a long history of symptoms. Dystonia started 10 years ago, CRPS at least 5 years ago, with a wide variety of symptoms, including pain, that could be associated with CRPS. Before she discovered Dr. Sarno and the mindbody approach about 2 years ago, she decided to try deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat her dystonia. DBS helped to reduce her dystonia and allowed her to keep up with the physical demands of her job. However, other symptoms did not improve. She was also wondering if physical exercises could help to reduce her dystonia.
Now that she learned about mindbody healing, she is pursuing this path with dedication and effort, but she is still confused and conflicted about her symptoms. Because DBS was installed specifically to treat dystonia, in her mind dystonia stands as a separate condition. Much like we get one medicine for cough and another medicine for fever when we catch a bad cold, she was thinking that DBS was supposed to help her dystonia while mindbody method was there to address pain and other CRPS symptoms.
We had a long conversation about the way mindbody healing works, which is very different from the pharmaceutical approach. There is one and only one underlying symptom for all the scores of symptoms with which your CRPS may have chosen to manifest itself: overstressed and stuck brain. While physical exercises are always good for keeping your muscles healthy and strong, they will not ultimately help your brain to get unstuck and turn off all symptoms. Same applies to DBS. Most likely, once DBS is turned off, her muscles would go back to dystonia again.
My reader is learning that symptoms, both physical and non-physical, are like predators who attack a traumatized or overstressed nervous system. Where a healthy nervous system can fight off the attackers, a vulnerable one falls prey! She is working on re-focusing her effort on relaxing her mind and easing her anxiety and fear. She now sees only minor improvements, but she is patient and dedicated. Work in progress!
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