Chronic pain in the back area is not only about the spine and muscles, and not only about emotions, it is actually about life as a whole because analyzing your entire existence can give an answer to the question of why it hurts.
I do not want to write that I exclude diagnoses of traditional medicine, or on the contrary accept only the psychosomatic side. Over several years of observing what is happening to me, I have made some conclusions and want to share them with other people who have faced the same or a similar problem. Maybe something from what I have written will be useful to you. I will say right away that I have not gotten rid of the problem, but at this stage I have fully understood its nature and deeper causes and personally consider this half of the path to healing.
Let us start with me describing the current situation and my diagnoses listed on the MRI. It is now summer 2026 and my body has the following abnormalities: L4-L5 degenerative disc changes with dehydration, Modic type I reactive changes of the bone marrow of the endplates, L4 slight retrolisthesis backward displacement, facet synovitis (inflammation), L5-S1 protrusion, annular tears of the fibrous ring. This is only what concerns the bones, discs and joints. The MRI also shows a decrease in the amount of muscle fibers with their replacement by fatty tissue. In addition, the DEXA scan shows early osteoporosis in those areas. Along with all this there is weak intestinal function, diaphragm spasm which affects the functioning of the gallbladder and the proper absorption of necessary vitamins and micronutrients, which in my case is also impaired. By the way, the lower jaw also shifted backward because the whole body axis shifted, but this is not exactly what I am talking about now, although biomechanics is something that needs to be watched just like brushing your teeth every day — biomechanics is disturbed and the places where the body compensates will suffer. I also have spasms of the neck muscles, but this will already be considered from the point of view of the psychological state which, as it turned out, lies at the basis of at least 50% of the causes of all the abnormalities described above.
I thought about making a short article by stating the main points so that it would be faster for you to read it, but I realized that without describing everything fully I might not convey everything the way I see it and many people may not understand the point, so I will describe everything in detail.
I will start by mentioning such an unhealthy skill acquired in the process of life and growing up as pathological endurance. What do we endure? In my case it was: a job I did not like, trips of two and sometimes three hours a day in traffic to that same job, and accordingly pain that was at the level where it could still be endured. I endured the pain and worked where I did not want to be, for years, explaining everything to myself by saying that I am strong so I can endure it, that I need to pay the bills, that I have a lot of obligations that need to be covered, that other people endure and I will endure too. At that time I still had no idea what all of this would turn into. It is only now that I understand that the psycho-emotional state directly affects pain, but more about that later.
From the physiological side, I have always been slim and thin thanks to genetics and the type of nervous system which simply did not allow me to gain weight because my brain, as it seems to me, consumes even more than 30% of everything that enters my body in the form of food, supplements and other things from which a person gets energy. My weight on average stays around 50 kg at a height of 170 cm, according to the basic table this is underweight and accordingly my muscles do not have the strength of an athlete, although for normal life it was quite enough for me. I am describing this part to understand that a mechanical problem with the discs and joints in my case could have appeared faster than in larger people, although while studying different MRI analysis cases I saw muscles in even worse condition in people with normal weight.
Let us go back to 2020, when after immigration and two years of working on chairs that were far from comfortable, I started feeling pain specifically in the muscles after several hours of sitting. It was tolerable, at home in the evening I stretched and it became easier. Then I decided to take action and use the services of a massage therapist who understood the structure of the body well and used myofascial release techniques together with dry needles that were placed directly into trigger points. And there, by the way, I endured too, pain for an hour while the session was going on, because “this is how it has to be,” but it turned out that this was not my case when such a method helped someone, and in my case the psyche tightened more and more, although on the first day after the massage there was a feeling that it became easier, but in reality the brain later returned the previous pattern of tension and the muscles went into spasm again. This is exactly a preview of the main topic of the story — the influence of the psyche and patterns of emotional reactions on muscles. I also assume that at that moment I already had changes in the discs and possibly instability of the vertebrae, so the brain kept the muscles in spasm specifically in the lower back area so that this whole loose structure would not shift anywhere, and any pressure, kneading or needles did not allow the muscles to relax, the brain knows better what is happening inside the body and what it should do.
After a month of this exhausting massage my psyche could not take it and I stopped going to the sessions, explaining it by the high price and lack of real effect, although I understand that the body simply got tired of this pain and I came up with an excuse for myself to end it. So regarding massage — in my case it did not work, although it was a really good specialist whom everyone talked about as a person who had saved them from chronic pain and so on. If the problem is purely mechanical then yes, this will definitely help, in my case the problem appeared because of two reasons — psycho-emotional state and disturbed biomechanics with excessive overstrain. So before going to myopressure sessions where they will pull, press and roll your muscles with some hard devices, ask yourself whether the psyche is also involved in your tension.
I continued to work and endure. It was getting worse but it happened so slowly that my body and mind somehow gradually adapted to this state and for me it was not such a serious problem as if, for example, everything had happened in one day, by the way later this did happen.
I endured until the end of 2024 and went to Tulum, deciding to do a ten-day retreat for myself and at the same time do my first MRI in my life because it was already hurting more if I sat for 5-6 hours. The MRI was done a couple of days before departure, I looked at the conclusion which at that time looked better than on the MRI a year later. At that time I was in a very calm comfortable state after all the ceremonies and mental rest among the jungle and positive people, so I calmly accepted the fact of these physiological changes and decided that when I flew home I would decide what needed to be done.
First of all, after flying home, after ten days of absence, I could not accept the fact that I would again have to live in this place and in this apartment which I really did not like, at that time we had lived there for three months after leaving a great large bright apartment in a good neighborhood with positive neighbors and so on. I tried to endure it with all my strength but the contrast with the previous apartment was quite strong. And after the apartment in Tulum in a new building among the jungle with a rooftop pool and birds singing in the morning, my current place of living seemed to me like a small smelly hole. A couple of days later I went to the job I did not like, put on my work clothes and then some kind of emotional collapse happened, as it seemed to me. I kept trying to accept the current reality but the reality in which I had lived for ten days in Tulum seemed more familiar and attractive to me. The contrast was so strong that apparently it broke something in my psyche and the next day I was doing some things at home as usual, decided to lie down on a mat to relax my back a little and those were the last minutes when I could stay in an upright position. I could no longer get up from the mat. The brain decided to break the movement function so that I would stop and understand what I was doing wrong. It was very scary, not being able to even turn onto my side without pain. All I could do was very slowly crawl to the bathroom and back. A couple of days later a massage therapist came and used all his skills to somehow reduce the tension, but there was no effect at all. This made it even scarier and at that moment most likely the spasm from fear became stronger. The next day, while there were still no even slight improvements, I realized that since the body was in spasm I needed to somehow calm the nerves and I took a dried mushroom that had been sent to me from Ukraine and which a year before I had taken for several months to get rid of anxiety because of financial problems. I took a double portion compared with what I had previously taken as a therapeutic dose and fell asleep (this is the initial effect of this mushroom — it can make you very sleepy). When I woke up I realized that I could stand on my feet, upright! I even walked to the kitchen and back, slowly but fully upright, I was not crawling in a squat like in the morning of the same day. And already then I began to think that the muscle spasm was not exactly mechanical but to a greater extent psycho-emotional. Of course after several hours everything returned to the previous state because the emotions and patterns in the mind stayed in place and sent a signal to the muscles to go into spasm again. But this was progress in the sense that I understood which direction to look in, if massage did not help then maybe working with the psyche could help. Little by little I gradually recovered, work as a trigger was at that time removed from the field so the brain gradually released the muscles. When I began to feel quite normal, about three months later, I went back to work again but already with a certain schedule, one day working one day resting, bought myself a comfortable chair and continued to endure.
By the way, during this period of lying in bed I found a specialist working through myopressure, dry needles, injections into muscles under ultrasound guidance. I assumed that his advice could help me remove spasms and work through the triggers. He looked at my MRI, paying attention mainly to the muscles, showed where the fibrosis was localized which I had said I could feel as a hard area. He checked the biomechanics and, pointing out deviations in this area, gave exercises for relaxing the gluteal muscles, and said that to break up and soften the fibrosis it was necessary to roll on a ball, which I did for several months, and immediately after this exercise I really got a relaxing effect, but it lasted for an extremely short time. I studied a lot of information about muscles, fibrosis and so on, continued diligently using the ball and pressing on my trigger points because patience and hard work will overcome everything. But despite my efforts the body tightened more and more, work and the pain there again created emotional tension. And for some reason, I do not know how it happened, I overlooked that the MRI report listed such a diagnosis as Modic. During a repeat consultation with the massage therapist I mentioned Modic, but in the end I did not hear anything clear, apparently because bone inflammation is not within the competence of a massage therapist-rehabilitation specialist.
After sending my MRI to a vertebrologist and describing the symptoms I heard that supposedly the muscles had nothing to do with it and there was no fibrosis (although there is and a lump the size of a walnut can clearly be felt in the quadratus muscle and this is really visible on MRI). He said that my stiffness of the whole body in the morning and pain in all the muscles was fibromyalgia and that in general I needed to take antidepressants and NSAIDs and that was all my treatment. I thanked him for the advice and did not communicate with him anymore. Thanks to his words I immediately began studying information about the condition of muscles and fascia which traditional medicine labeled as fibromyalgia and realized that I did have some very similar symptoms, while the stiffness appeared randomly and was not always there and did not get worse over time, and this stiffness of course also affected the lower back pain where there were already mechanical injuries in the spine even without it.
The only option to remove the inflammation in the bone was taking NSAIDs, but as I understood these drugs were contraindicated for me because of stomach sensitivity, I liked more the idea of restoring biomechanics and activating the work of the gluteal muscles which would start working properly and take over that part that had been in the lower back, thus reducing compression in the spine and the inflammation should begin to decrease. Approximately people needed 6-12 months for this, with NSAIDs, while I somehow magically wanted to do this without medication. But unfortunately, even working 10-12 days a month, alternating sitting and standing at the workplace, after several months I realized that there was no chance of recovering in such a situation even while doing exercises.
A year after my first MRI, strong psychological tension began to build up. Because there is chronic pain which triggers my nervous system 24/7, because I am still continuing to go to that job which I was already completely sick of, and because I somehow also managed to find myself a horse to lease and ride after work..
About the horse. I do not know what made me decide that I had superpowers and take this horse under my care. Apparently the fact that thanks to the horse I was overcoming my fear of partially losing the ability to live a normal life is what pushed me to do it. I rode only at a walk, very rarely at a trot, I tried to stay on the horse no more than 30 minutes so as not to create more problems for myself. And to my surprise I physically felt better after riding, although everyone knows that on a horse you sit upright and accordingly there is compression. I think part of the pain left the lower back together with the fear and despair from the thought that I would never be able to ride again.
At that time, at the beginning of 2026, my psychological state had already started catching up with the physical state, I mean that it was also getting worse although before that I had not experienced any mental problems, neither unexplained anxiety nor panic attacks, the only thing there had been was a period when I was simply very emotionally tired because of debts that existed at that time and within a couple of months thanks to the situation itself being resolved and the support of the red mushroom with white dots during this period I quickly returned to my previous state.
And then I decided to see how I would feel if I leased a horse, whether I would feel better or worse. So that you understand, a horse is a dangerous animal weighing 500 kg that needs to be taken care of from A to Z besides simply sitting on it for half an hour. I spent 4 hours at the ranch while cleaning, walking and training my horse, which by the way was also a large racing breed, and this means that he was not a particularly calm horse even though he was 20 years old. I started everything from zero, studying information on YouTube because before that I had only ridden, I had no idea at all how to train and closely interact with a horse. Every time I got into the saddle I literally reprogrammed my neural connections responsible for fear of pain and danger because of the current condition of my lower back and replaced them with more positive ones, in fact showing the psyche that I can ride and that this improves my condition. I cannot say that the condition of the vertebrae or joints improved because I do not know what was happening inside, but by feeling it really became better, until the moment when I came back to work again.
Psychological tension kept building and building, my life circumstances seemed hopeless to me because I was still continuing to work, one business that I started had to be closed, the second business was developing slowly because of lack of investment and time. And one day another breakdown, as I call it, happened in the lower back, as it had the first time when I could not walk. All the emotional tension again came out through the lower back, or got stuck there, in general the result does not change from this — I again ended up lying in bed and analyzing the situation. At that time I was already 90% sure that it locked up specifically because of emotions and not because of something physical, I mean there was no injury or heavy lifting.
I had an MRI in April 2026 in Mexico and saw worsening in the report, which is not surprising because the main causes of this problem had not been removed — the job and its emotional perception.
I did not write earlier that I did not go to local doctors, after studying their treatment protocols for such patients I realized that I did not want to do a block and remove the pain, this would not solve the problem but would remove the symptom and even that is questionable. One visit to a chiropractor worsened my condition because with such diagnoses plus the type of my hyper-controlling nervous system and excessive sensitivity, no stretching or twisting or anything that this specialist does should be done.
The only thing I considered was acupuncture, but unfortunately because of lack of work and finances, as well as the long distance that had to be traveled to a good specialist, I did not try this option. Different specialists looked at my MRIs, I stopped only on the one who sees disturbed balance of muscle function and misalignment as the root cause, this idea seems to me as logical as possible and comparable with my “medical history.” Plus I decided to work with the psyche myself because I have enough experience.
I found information about body therapy which is done in groups or individually, and began testing this method at home because I have a connection with my subconscious due to the fact that for many years I have done meditations and different esoteric practices. The principle of this method is that a person lets go of control, stops sending a signal to the muscles and allows the body to do what it wants, giving a mental intention to release accumulated emotions, and in this way the body really begins to move by itself, twitching and twisting in different directions, if you do not interfere with it and do not control it, and after that it becomes noticeably easier both physically and psychologically, you can directly feel that part of the tension and spasms dissolve. This is a very effective practice that I learned at home.
From everything written I conclude that personally in my case the problem consists of 50% psychological factor (tension, dissatisfaction, pathological endurance) and this needs to be worked with first because the brain is the decisive link, and the other 50% is the mechanical factor in which inflammation is maintained by excessive compression during long sitting, during long walking while biomechanics has not been restored and the back muscles work with double force, thereby worsening compression.
Any conditions with prolonged or sharp back pain should be checked with MRI, some cases really require surgical intervention, such as a large hernia for example that a person may not have known about. But judging by all the information that I came across during the time while I was looking for the causes and possible solutions to my problem, I can conclude that a large number of people also have a significant percentage of influence of their psycho-emotional state on pain.
