Not Avoiding Painful Thoughts

Leaders can learn from John Sarno that avoiding negative thoughts can be unproductive

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looking at them works better.

James lay on the beach on a Caribbean island. He had stopped there on his way to meetings, and a golf game with an old friend, in New York. He was looking forward to the golf.

As he lay on the beach, reading on his iPad, James felt an agonizing pain in his lower back that came on with no warning. Suddenly, he could not move from his position and any slight twitch caused intense pain. As he lay there, hotel employees who passed by stopped and asked if they could help but James declined, hoping it would get better.

After an hour of agony, James thought he should let his friend know that he wouldn’t be playing golf with him. He would think about what to do with his meetings, later.

So, James dialed from where he lay and explained his situation to his friend who asked him some questions. “When did it start,” he asked? “What were you doing when it came on?” James responded that he was lying on the beach and reading papers related to his meetings.

His friend then asked a seemingly odd question – did he have Wi-Fi where he was? James did, and his friend said, “you need to download this book. It’s called Mind Over Back Pain by Dr John Sarno.” James laughed and winced in pain saying, “you have to be kidding; I’m dying here, and you want me to get a book.” His friend remained insistent and, if only to be polite, James said he would download the book when he got back to his room.

His friend persisted – “I want you to download it and read it right now.” “I’m on the beach,” James protested. “Yes,” said his friend, “that’s why I asked you if you had Wi-Fi. I want you to download it and not go anywhere until you read it. It’s a small read, it’ll take you about an hour. Just lie back, get the book and read it.”

This sounded like such a peculiar request, and James was in such agony, that he downloaded the book and began to read. As he finished the first chapter, he felt the tension begin to ease from his body. After an hour and a half, he had finished the book. Though still in pain, James could rise slowly from the position in which had lain for almost three hours, and trudge back to his room, unaided. He went on to play nine holes of golf two days later.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said James, several weeks later. “I’ve had disabling back pain before, and the thought of playing golf two days later seemed ludicrous. This book changed my life.”

James’ story and John Sarno’s approach below, may help you if you have back pain. I write about it here because Sarno highlighted a dysfunctional approach at the root of many unfortunate outcomes we experience, not only back pain. The dysfunctional approach concerns how we deal with our thoughts.

What Sarno believed

Sarno was Professor of Rehabilitative Medicine at NYU Medical School until he passed away in 2017. He treated people with severe, sometimes chronic, back pain, who didn’t always have physical conditions that explained the pain. Also, people with severe physical disabilities, did not necessarily manifest pain. This led him to wonder whether focusing solely on physical explanations for pain may be misplaced.

Mostly pain signals physical damage. However, Sarno wondered whether it served another purpose. Since severe pain incapacitates the brain from focusing on anything else, he wondered whether pain helped the perceiver to avoid something. If true, then perhaps in some instances we could get rid of pain by looking at whatever the brain was trying to avoid, because then that pain would serve no purpose.

So, Sarno devised a treatment where sufferers accept that their pain originates from psychological causes, not physiological ones. Then, they stop behaving as if the pain has physiological origins by stopping physiotherapy and restarting physical activity. Finally, they look at everything in their lives that might be a font of negative emotions like anger, guilt, shame and anxiety – emotions that pain helps them suppress.

This approach helped Sarno build a devoted following among pain sufferers. It has lessons for the rest of us too.

Paying attention to thoughts we avoid

Previously, I said paying attention to thoughts improves life quality (Watching Thoughts). But, Sarno and several psychologists suggest that we avoid painful thoughts, so paying attention may not be easy.

Here’s one way to unearth what we may be avoiding:

• Find a time and place where you will not be disturbed for 20 minutes – set a timer.

• One by one, think of all the salient relationships in your life: partners, children, parents, friends; subordinates, bosses, other relevant colleagues at work.

• For each, ask yourself – what thoughts could you be avoiding? Probe for negative ones – guilt, shame, anger – that may be present under the surface.

Try not to be captured by any one thought. Rather, as I suggested in Watching Thoughts, just watch them.