Rabbi Alon Gul LMSW

Author of Overcoming Burnout

Dr Sarno Specialist

Email: alonjgul@gmail.com

Everyone in the world feels pressure and stress. Everyone knows that stress is bad for your health. What is less known is that stress leads to chronic physical pain. Everybody knows that when we are nervous, we may start sweating or our heart starts pounding. We all know the phrase “you’re giving me a heart attack!” We all know that these physical consequences are due to feelings. So we already know feelings affect us physically. What many of us don’t know are the far reaching results.

When I first heard this idea I was very skeptical, but after trying many different medical interventions for my chronic headaches and fatigue with no success, I had nothing to lose. It was then that I started a journey of health for myself, and subsequently was able to heal others of their physical pain in my practice. 

When I first heard of the famous Dr. Sarnos’ approach to healing physical pain, I was already sold. It was a brilliant idea-the body will distract a person from unwanted feelings by giving him physical pain. I originally thought I was going to try to heal myself from headaches and fatigue, but I thought maybe this could also work for my lactose intolerance. Within 3 days I was already eating pizza and never looked back once. Within time, I was also healed from my headaches and fatigue, to the point that I haven’t had them come back baruch Hashem.

So how did Dr. Sarno discover that the physical symptoms are really rooted in emotional tension? For years, as a medical physician,  he was treating back pain, performing thousands of surgeries, and yet, an unwarranted amount of patients returned after a couple of years with the pain having reappeared. He asked himself the only honest question he could: “If this surgery is supposed to work, why are people coming back?” He concluded that the pain must be coming from an area which had not thus far been considered. Eventually, he discovered that area to be the mind.

Dr. Sarno also found another astounding discovery. In a study he conducted, he found that almost every person who came to him with chronic physical pain had some type of perfectionist tendencies! The reason for this is because aiming for perfection puts a lot of extra pressure and anxiety that things are perfect. In my practice I have found that a major candidate for people who have much physical pain is trying to control what is out of our control. (By trying to control what Hashem is in control of, it puts an enormous amount of stress on our body). It could be trying to control results, what others think of us, denying how we really feel, etc.

I decided that if the method works for me, let me try to assist my clients who I’m already helping with managing their feelings. I was very happy to see success. Moshe (names changed) complained that he was having lower back pain for months. We figured out that he put too much pressure on himself to be perfect at work. After understanding how his body and mind interact, he was pain free, saving himself from potential surgery. Perfectionism is considered one of the main culprits for physical pain. 

David came to me because he has been struggling with an inappropriate internet addiction that he has been trying to overcome with no success. He is a very frum young bochur and was very distraught about his shmiras eiynayim, and always found a way to circumvent his filters. I explained to Daivd that he was going in the wrong direction. The root issue is that whenever he feels anxiety or anger, the body distracts him to have a big taava so he is completely unaware of his anxiety. The more feelings, the more taava.  After working with him using the Sarno approach, he was completely cured from his addiction! The reason it can be completely cured is if you only work on fixing the addiction, a different addiction will come about to distract the person from his feelings. By focusing on the real problem, it is completely cured

Moshe came to me because he had ADD since he as a young boy and couldn’t concentrate on his Torah learning. What we found was that the more anxious he was, the more he couldn’t concentrate, especially when it was a hard shiur or he was indecisive to get a wrong answer on a test. The understanding is that the body wanted to distract him from feeling nervous or pressure by pushing him to daydream or think about random things. We noticed that we learn to accept these feelings and try to calm down, the symptoms of ADD dwindle down.

Not only is this method helpful for adults, it is very important for parenting. I once received a call from my daughters school that she was limping and that her knee was hurting. I approached my young daughter in a sensitive way that perhaps she may be nervous about something. She said she wasn’t and walked away. I backed off (You can never push this idea on someone). Five minutes later she came back saying that she was actually was nervous. Guess what? That pain never came back. The body talks to us; it tells us what’s going on in our insides. When children get stomach pain or headaches before a test, its a sign they maybe feeling nervous and pressure, which needs to be attended to by the parent, instead of just perpetually going to the doctor and not dealing with the real issue.

I have personally seen major success in my practice with people experiencing high blood pressure, lower back pain, herniated discs, chronic itching. headaches, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic colds, stomach pain, foot pain, knee pain, eye pain, nausea, voice loss, eczema, vertigo, chest pain, neck pain, irritable bowel syndrome,  and much more. The list goes on and on. I have also found success using this method to help cure many addictions and low level disorders.

Bear in mind that this is not a theory; it works!. Dr. Sarno, the founder of this theory, and the many professionals using this method have found success in tens of thousands of people with an enormous success rate. There is nothing to believe here, you can try it for yourself and see that it works, or ask your friends that have tried it and were cured. 

Symptoms of psychosomatic pain should also not be confused with Coronavirus symptoms which are not caused by emotions. This method is not a substitute for doctors or medicine. When we are sick we should take medication. We should go to the doctor for physical ailments that we need to attend to. This is not a contradiction to this method It’s preventative medicine. It trains your body to not feel physical pain in the first place. It also helps heal symptoms that doctors or medicine have no answer for. 

So how does the subconscious choose which parts of our body to cause pain? It seems as though it attacks the area where we are most susceptible to believing it is truly physical. If we lift something heavy, the subconscious can give us back pain. That makes sense to us, right? Back pain from heavy lifting? Sure(even though all our lives we lifted heavy things with no problem). If we are studying or learning, the subconscious can cause us to feel tired – that makes sense, too. Our bodies are simply worn out from learning, right? Headaches also, they are just the result of mental overexertion. But did it occur to the person that the stress accumulated while studying or learning is the real cause?

Obviously if you cut yourself with a knife and you are bleeding, or bang a hammer on your leg and get a bump, it’s not emotional. Also, it is not advisable to consume something that from experience has been dangerous to your health, like food allergies. But I have witnessed individuals with allergies to gluten and wheat products become completely nonallergic in a matter of days.

Although this is a simplification of treatment due to the nature of the article, the treatment in a nutshell is to be aware that your body will distract you from emotions by giving you physical pain. The method works as follows: 

-One part of the treatment plan is to take time once a week to talk out  or write out events that may have evoked strong feelings. 

-Another part of the treatment is that whenever we start feeling a physical pain, to tell ourselves that I must be subconsciously feeling some type of emotional feeling right now. Let me try to calm down or distract myself so that my emotion simmers down, which in turn, lowers down my physical pain. 

 Step 1 A person must have the awareness that these symptoms are not rooted in anything physical. They are psychological. That means that whenever he experiences any physical symptoms, fatigue, sleepiness, headaches, stomachaches, backaches, etc., he needs to talk – to himself – about what is genuinely bothering him. “This pain is not physical, it is my anger: It is my anxiety: I’m under pressure.” By acknowledging that there are stressful feelings, he can then say “Its okay im feeling this, but let me try to calm down.” If he can’t calm down he should try to distract himself with a brisk walk, reading, or something else that calms him mind. 

Step 2. Knowing the emotions exist is a prerequisite, and can help alleviate the physical pain. But without allowing them to be experienced, they can continue to cause physical symptoms on some level.  An exercise that can be used to bring up feelings that are uncomfortable. For example, some people are uncomfortable with feeling anger because its a bad trait. Of course we don’t want to react to anger but making believe we don’t feel it can cause physical pain. So an exercise can be as follows:

He should write on a piece of paper all the people at whom he feels anger, and everything he would like to say to them. All his repressed anger and frustration should be fully expressed on that sheet. Alternatively, he can be in a closed room and talk about these feelings. He can do the same exercise for other feelings such as anxiety or pressure. 

Step 3. Resume normal physical activity. Once we start feeling relief from any of the physical symptoms by working on step 1 and 2, we can start doing the activities we have been always been able to do beforehand. But don’t do this last step till you start feeling significantly better from the previous steps

The key is to see the connection between the body and mind. Sometimes the physical pain will subside by just acknowledging the cause, and trying to calm down, while sometimes you may need to actually feel the emotion for the physical pain to cease.  Although many feelings contribute to physical pain, such as inferiority, failure, and others, the three main repressed emotions to look out for as the cause of physical pain are pressure, anger, and nervousness. Pressure is usually the strongest candidate to look out for. 

Anger is a strong candidate because some people feel bad about feeling angry so they end up repressing it. This repression often leads to physical symptoms. Nerves are also likely to be hidden in the subconscious when people obsess a lot. They do not realize that when they are obsessing they are actually feeling nervous inside. Pressure is usually caused by the persons perfectionism. Trying to be perfect is a tall order that causes extra unnecessary pressure.

  By managing these feelings, one can lead a life free of chronic physical pain. Sounds unbelievable? Well why not try it, you have nothing to lose, only a relaxed body to gain.

For any questions you can email alonjgul@gmail.com