"I Was a Physical Therapist Who Couldn't Fix My Own Pain — Until I Read This Book"

In 2015 I was already 30 visits into physical therapy for leg and hip pain that was only getting worse. Despite being a PT myself and knowing every treatment that is "supposed" to work, I was getting nowhere.

I started PT at a clinic where I used to work to "fix" my postural issues. They focused on the belief that bad posture is the cause of pain — which is exactly what I learned in PT school. I had already dealt with chronic back and elbow pain for many years, and previous PT had helped those resolve. I was told my flat feet were the root cause of everything, so I spent over $300 on custom orthotics and figured this time I'd finally get the answer.

What started with foot pain eventually progressed to severe left hip pain — some of the worst pain I had experienced in my life. Despite visit after visit, things were only getting worse and my PT had no answers. This wasn't the usual dull ache I'd had before. This was severe spasm, constant tightness, relentless. Everything was painful — walking, sitting, standing, sleeping. I remember feeling miserable and wondering how I was going to work as a PT and just function in day-to-day life. I was only 31 and had been married for just six months. I found myself wondering if this was what my wife had signed up for — helping me just get through the day.

The Book That Fixed My Chronic Hip Pain When PT Couldn't

At that point I went back to searching online and came across Dr. John Sarno's "Healing Back Pain" and the concept of Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS). I had actually seen this book — and his other book "The Divided Mind" — about a year earlier and dismissed them completely. The idea that pain was caused by unprocessed emotions was the opposite of everything I had learned as a PT. But now I was going nowhere, the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, and I had nothing to lose.

I found "Healing Back Pain" at Barnes & Noble the next day and sat there reading it for over an hour. Everything he wrote made sense to me — and it made me question everything I had been taught and everything I was teaching my own patients. I had been telling people to monitor their pain, avoid anything painful, and fix their posture. Sarno was saying to do the complete opposite.

So I tried it. Instead of constantly checking on my pain, I just went about my day. When I caught myself avoiding bending down to throw something in the trash, I made a point of doing exactly that — not to force pain, but to stop treating my body as fragile. I was teaching my brain that movement was safe. To my complete shock, I woke up one day later that week and the pain was gone. From a 9/10 to a 0/10. Just like that. I couldn't believe it.

What Happened Next — The Part Nobody Talks About

I felt like I had a new lease on life. I was convinced I now had all the tools I needed to handle any pain that showed up in the future. I was wrong.

Within that same week I began developing anxiety, insomnia, and GI symptoms with nausea. I had dealt with anxiety for years and had done some counseling, but this felt relentless — fear thoughts piling up one after another. This is what Dr. Sarno called the "symptom imperative." One symptom resolves and a new one appears, because the underlying repressed emotions are still there and the brain finds another way to keep your attention on the body. It was working.

I realized I needed more support and reached out to the Pain Psychology Center, which Alan Gordon founded, and was connected with a therapist and pain coach there who I could work with online from New York.

I worked with that coach for over nine years, stopping only in late 2024 when I felt I could manage on my own. That's not to say I was in pain or experiencing symptoms the entire time — but when symptoms did show up, my coach helped me work through them. Ninety-nine percent of the time they were TMS-related. Even when something felt structural, she would help me see that the brain was at work, because that is what the brain does.

I had spent so many years repressing emotions — especially anger — that my nervous system had learned to express them through the body instead. For me, a lot of that came from how I grew up: difficulty expressing emotions, trouble setting boundaries, religious pressure, longstanding family dynamics. Most TMS and neuroplastic pain practitioners will tell you this is what the majority of their patients deal with too. Not everyone, but many.

Over those nine years I learned enough — through my coach, through every book on TMS and neuroplastic pain I could find — to start applying these concepts with family, friends, and patients. I even convinced my wife, who is a physician, to believe in this approach. That was not an easy task.

What This Means for You

I share this story not because I think everyone will recover in a week — recovery is rarely that linear, and mine certainly wasn't. I share it because I want you to know that I have been where you are. Not just as a clinician, but as a person who kept doing PT that wasn't working, who was 31 years old and wondering how he was going to function, who almost dismissed the very approach that changed his life because it contradicted everything he had been taught.

If you have TMS or neuroplastic symptoms, it may not resolve in a week — but you will get there. I have been through many symptoms since then, some worse than the hip pain, and I made it through each time with the right support. As a mind-body PT, my goal is to give you the tools and knowledge I had to piece together over nearly a decade — so you can get through this faster, and build a foundation that keeps future symptoms from taking hold.

It will not take you nine years.

If you're looking for support, reach out for a free 30-minute call and we can talk through your situation and whether this approach is the right fit for you.

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