I have been suffering but sever back and neck pain for the past 6 years. Ive battled with depression, prescription meds and alchohol for the last 3 to 4 years because of it.

I think I finally found the Cure from Dr John Sarno's healing back pain book.

The basics is that there are all these extremly negative emotions stored up and repressed in the unconscious mind. We dont remember them and we are not concsciously aware of them. The unsconscious mind thinks it extremely dangerous for these emotions to break through into the conscscious realm. In order to prevent this it manifests physical symptoms to get the mind paying attention to the body rather than the realm of emotion.

My unconscious mind has chose to distract me by reduces the amount of oxygen or some other way of painfully but not dangerously altering the tissue in my muscles tendons and ligaments. Obvioulsy the doctors cant find a structural problem because there isnt one. Hence the prescription meds.

John Sarno believes that you just need to learn and accept the process that the unconscious mind is using and why and let it really sink in and the cover is blown on covert operation your unconscious mind has been doing to distract you and it no longer works and teh pain goes away. He has had an extremly high success rate with 80% of the thousands of patience he has seen or the last 30 years are completely or almost completely free of pain and return to full unrestricted activity. 20% need physchotherapy to work out tougher issues.

I have already had periods of the pain rapidly shifting around since find this out and starting to believe.

My challenge is to either find out how to completely accept this or to work through my issues.

I decided to start trying break through to my unconcious mind through dreams and tell it to knock it off. After a few months I started having limited success with bits and pieces of conciously directing a dream sequence toward contacting the uncounscious mind once I realized I was dreaming. This only happened rarely and I would either wake up right away after realizing I was dreaming or I might control a very little duration of the dream.

Last night aftering switching my meds from Morphine to fetanyl I had a major breakthrough. I woke about 3AM and after my nightly trip to the jon I couldnt get back to sleep. I felt better than I could remember feeling in years so I decided to do some reading in the old testament.

I went back to bed around 8AM after my wife left for church. I think I dreamed for the entire 2 hours until I was awakened by my phone. I had several crazing dreams where I realized I was dreaming early on. At first I dreamed that I couldnt wake up even though I was trying. Then I dreamed that I would wake up and follow characters that appeared to me and then realize that I was still dreaming and try and wake up again. This happened quite a few times and I think I was getting practise at realizing I was dreaming and then gaining some control of the dream. I started trying to communicate with the characters and they represented certain parts of my mind. I believe that I identitfied the unconscious part of my mind appearing as an old woman. She didnt want anything to do with.

Does anyone have any experience with controlling their dreams. I have heard stories of people that can guide and direct their dreams at will. Any thoughts, insiight, comments are appreaciated.

My goal is to have it out with my unconscious and explain to her that I am an adult now, I can can better handle these dark emotions that would probably been to hard for a child to deal with and should be released delt with and let go. I have had weard pain issues all through my teenage years that I think were other ways my unconcious was repressing maybe something huge from my child hood. I am not aware of any major abuse other than being spanked by my dad when I really misbehaved.

I am post my dream log below if anyone is interested in more specifics that I could remember.


Dream Log

Sunday June 14th 8a to 10a

I started taking 25mc/g fentanyl patches for chronic neck and back pain again Saturday night after my 9PM shower. I had been on morphine for 4 months. Went to bed at about 11PM

I had several dreams after waking up at 3 AM feeling great. Couldn?t sleep so I finished second Samuel thru the death of king David to the rise of Solomon and the building of the temple.

Made love, made breakfast. Laid down to read a little more of the old testament and couldn?t keep my eyes open.

I started having multiple dreams about not being able to wake up, dreaming that I woke up and continuing to not be able to wake up.

I heard my wife in the house, but I think I dreamed we were in a trailer or something. I told her I couldn?t wake up and asked her to help me. I couldn?t open my eyes and I had an anxiety attack. At first she thought I was goofing around and then got scared. I told her to call 911. Then I woke up briefly and fell back asleep. Before each dream sequence I was either on the bed dreamed that I looked to my outstretched right hand and saw different sheets than were actually on my bed or I would dream that I was on the floor of a trailer with a metal vent. I actually did wake up a few times between dream sequences and lift my head and then go back to sleep.

Started to dream I couldn?t wake up again, there were dogs in the room, sometimes licking my face, some time running around the room. I heard my father in law call. I answered him but was still trying to wake up within the dream. I cant remember what words were spoken.

At some point I became aware that I was in a dream loop where I couldn?t wake up and I decided to try and use the dreams to solve the mind body disorder I have called TMS where my unconscious mind is trying to keep rage from breaking thru into the conscious mind by altering muscle, nerve, and tendon/ligament tissue(Dr John Sarno believes that is reducing the blood flow and thereby oxygen therefore this tissue send a warning to the brain as pain) to distract the conscious mind by focusing its attention on the body rather than emotions. As I dreamed I woke up and got out of bed I started having visions of people, animals, darth vader, etc. I started following and trying to communicate with these visions believing that they could represent certain aspects or qualities of my mind. I started asking questions about how to solve my TMS. At first some would run away. Later some started talking to me, hostile at first. Then later communication started to open up. I started identifying some of the aspect of my brain. One was a doctor or nurse and she was there quite a few times as I dream I first got out of bed. One was and old woman and she was nervous of me. I got a feeling while in the dream that this old lady represented my unconscious mind, or at least a part of it. After I stopped dreaming and woke up for real and remembered the old lady, I remembered that in one of John Sarno?s book he explained that the unconscious brain is right above the brain stem and is the oldest part of the brain in the evolutionary process.

I also remember a specific instance where I was either on a bus or train with other passengers, I recognized my brother sitting across the aisle behind me. He was trying to tell me something absolutely vital, as I turned around and tried to get closer, another passenger that looked big and mean and had a baseball bat, was trying to keep jeremiah from telling me like he was trying to guard my conscious brain from getting this secret. There was a black person that I was trying to get a knife from so I could battle the guardian of the secret that was wielding the baseball bat

Its been an hour since I woke up and the details fade as time slips by. I do remember some last details, as I got better at communicating with these characters it was like I was piecing together a puzzle. There was a very important character that I knew had the answer. As I got close to him the scenary around us would change. He started to run on water. We were traveling as though we were flying across the waters surface. I would get closer to him and he would pour on more speed.

I vaguely remember the dream sequences ended with me plummeting to the water and I feared that I would drown. God lifting my up through the clouds and showed me the most beauty I had ever seen I believe he was lifting me up to heaven as the phone vibrated and pulled my out of my dream sequence for good. I think that somehow represented the end of my pain and health problems.

Bits and pieces

Multiple pairs of broken sunglasses. Jeremiah told me that he liked my hat and sunglasses combination.

There were physical sensation such as cold and heat in arms and legs when I was dreaming I couldn?t wake up.

My fingers were contorting when I was having my anxiety attack.