UPDATE: With the new year coming, it’s a great time to reevaluate your health, both financial and physical. Don’t suffer through stress and pain. Get to know a little about Dr. John E. Sarno below, and how you can alleviate the pain you may be suffering from.
Are you in pain? Does your body ache?
Well, it’s called life. But there’s something you can do about it.
We all have heard about mind over body. This is different.
Let me introduce you to the late Dr. John E. Sarno, who during his life helped relieve the pain of people like Harvard Medical School grad and guru of alt medicine Dr. Andrew Weil, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld creator Larry David, TV personality John Stossel, and shock-jock Howard Stern.
What Dr. Sarno has done for them and for others is to understand that sometimes our mind-body connection is disconnected.
Our hidden or unconscious anger (rage) expresses itself through physical pain without our mind even knowing it.
The Key to Healing
What Dr. Sarno explains in his books is that the key to healing is for you to tell your body to cut the &#%!@ crap.
To tell your body “I know what you’re doing to me.”
Why should you care?
Because maybe you’re the type of person who fits the back-pain profile.
Read what this initial skeptic and pain free patient has to say:
Think about what you are like—what is it in you that lets problems create such pain. I am a typical Sarno type—perfectionist, easily angered, highly motivated, high achiever, somewhat compulsive and impatient with other people. Those are the parts of my personality that led my mind to develop back pain. However, there are other types that get it. One of my co-workers is a happy, easygoing, very pleasant woman, but she got back pain as bad as mine, and the book cured her, too. (It took her about three months, by the way, but she is perfectly healthy now.) Try to learn what is inside you that needs distraction. What permits the pain to develop and persist? Be honest about yourself. Again, remember that you don’t have to change your personality for the cure to work—you just have to understand and fight it.
The Fears of Retirement
Much of my day is spent speaking with investors who have been extremely successful in their lives.
They are family oriented. Most are financially independent or well on their way to achieving independence.
But they are crossing a bridge that is new to them.
They don’t have to work anymore.
But they still have fears.
- Fear of not knowing what to do with their time.
- Fear of what aging will feel like.
- Fear of whether or not they have enough money.
- Fear of not having meaning.
- Fear of not being happy.
These are big worries. They matter. They can’t simply be swept under the rug.
Your body won’t let you—even though you may shrug your shoulders and think: “I’m fine.”
You may be a type S personality—type S for the need of Dr. Sarno’s wisdom.
Top 20 Causes of Stress
Take a look at this list created years ago by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe on the causative role of stressful life events in the natural history of many diseases.
Many items on this list are negative, but many are what you and I would consider desirable.
Notice how six of the top 20 have to do with money.
Money is a huge psychological stressor that can express itself through physical pain without us even knowing it.
- Death of a spouse
- Divorce
- Marital separation
- Jail term
- Death of a close family member
- Personal injury or illness
- Marriage
- Fired at work
- Marital reconciliation
- Retirement
- Change in health of family member
- Pregnancy
- Sex difficulties
- Gain of a new family member
- Business readjustment
- Change in financial state
- Death of a close friend
- Change to different line of work
- Change in number of arguments with spouse
- Mortgage over $10,000 (in the 1960s)
If you suffer from physical pain then believe me, getting to know Dr. Sarno will be time well spent.
Dr. Sarno’s Best Books
Here are my favorite books by Dr. Sarno:
- Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
- The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain
Here is the trailer to his documentary (pay no attention to the ding-bats in Congress): All the Rage
Originally posted July 10, 2019.
