| Jonathan Van Ee's Story | |
On the last day that my parents were visiting, we attended a repetitive stress injury support group in San Francisco. There, a panel of people who successfully overcame their repetitive stress injuries shared their stories. One common theme in the stories was that your mind can play an important role in causing pain. Nate McNamara was one of the panelists. He had gone to a lot more physical therapy than I had been to. He shared my passion for wanting to overcome the pain, and had seriously researched potential cures. Nate outlined the "mind/body" approach (which I believe is best called the "mind-is-body" approach) with which he overcame his pain. The mind, said Nate, is itself the source of the pain. To cure the pain, you must make your mind change how it interprets pain. That approach made a lot of sense to me, because I had started to question whether my pain was really the result of a problem with the tendons in my fingers. When I would sit in front of a computer my hands would be in pain. But, if I sat on a couch, I wouldn't necessarily feel the same level of pain. That made absolutely no sense to me. The doctors and therapists I saw did not have an explanation for that. I came to believe that my mind was causing the pain, and that I must treat my condition by pushing through the pain. After reading up on this approach, it made even more sense. In this journey I uncovered a number of seriously notable facts. One Harvard student indicated there is no evidence (none!) that there is anything wrong with the tendons of people diagnosed with tendonitis caused by repetitive stress injuries like mine. My pain immediately started to lift. Within a few weeks I felt much better. I went into remission a few times, during which the pain and numbness returned for a while. Eventually though, my pain went away almost completely. Now, I can feel only the memory of pain in the tendons of my fingers. They are like a muscle sprained some time ago. |
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