I don’t often share personal stories about myself.  As a psychotherapist, I received some pretty strict training on the appropriate use of self-disclosure as a therapeutic tool, and I’ve found over time that less is more when trying to help people through their own struggles.

However, I was recently reminded of a time when I was forced to learn a lot of lessons – lessons that changed my life in many ways – and thought maybe you could enjoy some of those lessons without having to go through the suffering.

Several years ago, I was having some back pain, as many people do.  I thought I could work through it, exercise through it, and if I just ignored if for long enough, it would just go away.  (Lesson 1: pay attention to your body, mind, emotions, relationships, and spirituality; when any of them are ‘injured’, it won’t just “go away.”)

It didn’t go away.  It got worse.  I had to stop ignoring it and do something.  (Lesson 2: address the problem correctly, with the right kind of help, quickly.)  I saw a chiropractor several times a week for a few months.  No improvement.  In fact, it got even worse.  Then, there was a slight slip on the ice getting into my car.

Now, I’ve heard people say they were in so much pain they couldn’t move, and I always thought the were maybe exaggerating, just a little.  But when I tried to get out of bed the next day, the pain in my back that shot down my legs brought me to tears.  It took me 20-30 minutes just to roll over, but I eventually rolled out of bed onto my hands and knees, and slowly crawled to the living room chair, where I sat catching my breath for the next hour.

My wife asked me if I wanted her to take me to the doctor.  Of course, I told her “No”, that I would just take the day and rest, and it would eventually go away…  (Lesson 3: take help when it is offered, get help early, don’t wait until it is a crisis.)  I spent the day shuffling around from wall to wall, using them to prop me up those few times I tried to venture away from the chair.

The next day, Saturday, my wife took control and took me to the med center.  Sitting in the car was excruciating.  I think she hit every pothole to teach me a lesson in humility.  The joke was on her, because when they got me to examining room, and asked me to climb up on the x-ray table, apparently my appearance was so ghastly and groaning so horrible, she had to walk out of the room for fear she was going to faint.  They couldn’t do anything with me there, the x-ray didn’t show any problems, so they scheduled me an appointment for an MRI and a follow up with a spine specialist for the following week, and then sent me home with a very large prescription for opioid-based painkillers.

It wasn’t too long before I gained first hand experience in how people can become addicted to pain medication.  As that first dose dissolved into my blood stream I felt a warm and peaceful euphoria, and the agony in my back and legs started to diminish, almost disappear.  It was blissful.  I got to do that every 4-6 hours.  I knew I should wait the full 6 hours, but as the days went by waiting for that MRI, the painkillers lost their bliss-inducing power.  I crept closer and closer to the 4 hour dosing mark, and then started to cheat, “just a little”, to taking the meds before the 4 hour mark.  Meanwhile, the pain really didn’t change that much, I was just getting a little more numb to the world.  (Lesson 4: know your limits.  If you don’t know your limits, especially when it comes to these kinds of medications, have someone hold you accountable to setting limits)

Eventually, I had the MRI (that was no fun) and got into the specialist’s office about a week after starting the pain meds.  His prognosis: “you shouldn’t expect to be able to run every again.”  I teared up like a baby he they loses his favorite toy.  I didn’t fashion myself a competitive runner, but I enjoyed running 4-5 times each week and prided myself on finishing several half-marathons as well as other competitions in recent years.  Running had become my favorite coping skill, my go-to for stress relief.  And now I was told that I would never do it again.  I was crushed.

Where were those pills?  It was time to relieve the pain.  (See Lesson 4.)

Treatment was to be one week of anti-inflammatory steroids to decrease the swelling in multiple herniated discs that were interfering with nerve function in my left leg.  If that didn’t work, back surgery to “snip” the herniated discs.  And more pain meds, stronger ones this time.  Oh yeah, more pain meds.

Many people who have to have the aforementioned surgery will have to have it done again.  They also have a higher likelihood of requiring spinal fusion later in life.  I was not excited by this proposition, so I rested at home for the week, hoping the anti-inflammatory meds worked, eating high-grade pain medication all day long.  By this time, I was using a walker to shuffle around the house.  I was unable to go to work.

The anti-inflammatory medication didn’t work.  By the end of the week the effects of the pain meds was diminishing significantly.  On Friday, I was begging for surgery.

Somehow, by some small miracle, I came across several people that weekend who had similar problems, some of them had gone through surgery.  Each one of them spent time with me and encouraged, practically coerced, me not to have surgery.  The stories they told me were terrifying.  Surgery seemed to like the automatic and easy answer from the specialist, but not so much from those who had gone through it.

The next day, I called the spine specialist and canceled the surgery.  Then I called the local physical rehabilitation office, and scheduled an intake for “aqua therapy”.  (Lesson 5: advocate for your own care – physical, mental, emotional, etc.  Trust your physician, psychologist, therapist, etc., but you are your own expert on you.  You are the authority on you, share that knowledge with the professionals you work with so you can work as a team)

I got rides to therapy several times a week, and shuffled myself and my walker into the pool.  I relearned how to walk, and did some crazy exercises that essentially pulled my spine apart and allowed the discs to slide back in, over time – think of the medieval torture racks meant to pull people apart, that’s what they had me doing.  It was gloriously euphoric.  I learned new exercises and rebuilt my back for six months.  Many of the exercises I still do today.

A month after I started taking them, I confronted the pain medication and prepared to discontinue.them.  As a licensed clinical addictions counselor, I thought I knew what to expect from withdrawal.  It was worse than I expected, those 3-4 days.  But it was far better than continuing down the path I was headed, the path we see so many people struggle with today.

I got healthy.  I kept doing my rehab exercises.  I stopped taking pain medication.  I got back to the work of helping others.  It took over 6 months from injury to feeling better.

We all struggle in life.  Even therapists.  But we all choose our attitude towards that suffering, and choose how we address it.  (Lesson 6+)

Finally, Lesson 7, Nietzsche was right as Frankl quotes him in Man’s Search for Meaning, “A man who has a Why to live can bear almost any How.”

People suffer.  But having a why allows us to endure a lot.  By choosing our attitude toward our suffering, we can discover new meaning.  For me, that year, it was getting back to running, getting off pain medication, and being fully present with my family.

What is your “Why”?