What being a 'goodist' does to your body
Happy Sunday, Soothers. It was about three or four years ago when I stumbled across Nicole Sach's work, via an astrology podcast (very on-brand for me). The hosts had her on to talk about a particular journaling technique she created and teaches called JournalSpeak. Journaling nerd that I am, I listened up.
As Sachs chatted with the hosts, I realized that this journaling technique wasn't just about self-discovery and emotional exploration. It was about healing chronic pain. In the body. Yup.
"Uh, I know journaling can do a lot," I thought, "but... what did she just say?"
Sachs is a psychotherapist who now teaches folks recovery from what is officially called Tension Myositis Syndrome (or TMS for short), but can also be referred to as mind-body syndrome.
Before she became a therapist, and then went on to do this work, Sachs grew up in a highly dysfunctional household with an emotionally abusive and volatile father. She ended up having back issues so bad they nearly crippled her twice in her 20s.
She connected with Dr. John Sarno, who some of you may have heard of when it comes to back pain, and eventually, through his work and then her adaptations of it, healed her back issues and went on to begin to champion the work to the world.
According to Sachs and other mind-body practitioners, chronic conditions develop when we have emotions bigger than our capacity to feel them, and our brains and dysregulated nervous systems, which are often already stuck in chronic fight/flight, decide it is "better" for us to feel (sometimes absolutely debilitating) physical symptoms than the emotional ones, or the repressed trauma we don't want to or are not ready to truly face. The physical pain becomes the world's best distraction from emotional pain, from past trauma, from all sorts of big emotions we haven't been adequately taught to feel or process, that our brain then perceives as a literal threat.
It's all about safety. Strange and infuriating as I know it sounds, our brains often decide it is "safer" for us to feel physical pain than emotional pain. In this horribly misguided effort to love us, protect us, keep us safe, our brains decide to use their power to signal and give us IBS, or fibro, or migraines, or back spasms, or acid reflux, or ankle and foot pain, or wrist pain, or whatever (truly, the list can go on; you can see a list of conditions Sachs has worked with here) instead of acknowledging our rage at our father, or our shame at being dumped, our fear of disappointing our parents, or our trauma from being bullied when we were kids.
Wild ride, huh? Thanks a lot, life.
The important thing to know here is that the pain is absolutely real. There is nothing more infuriating to be told that your pain is in your head. Your pain is real. It's simply that the root cause is not medical or physical. It is emotional, brain and nervous-system-based.
I've been relatively hesitant to speak more publicly on TMS and JournalSpeak, which is kind of ironic, given that it's the framework I believe in that actually has the most scientific research and medical backing of neuroscience and brain science behind it.
I'll happily natter away to anybody about Tarot, Reiki, the energy body, feng shui — things that Western science can't "prove" (but that of course have thousands of years of documentation and teachings behind them) — but to talk more openly about how physical pain and conditions are caused by emotional issues, repressed trauma... has seemed a bit too out there.
But after using JournalSpeak myself (I'll get more to that in a minute) and after coaching and teaching hundreds of highly sensitive people over the past several years, and following Sachs' work for that long, it's something that I really do feel I owe my audience to speak more actively on.
Because I see highly sensitive people suffer so deeply, much more commonly than the general population, from chronic pain conditions. Some of them have suffered for decades, or believe they have a life sentence to that pain. And there really is a path forward.
In short, I see the pain of being a "goodist" and what it does to your body. And HSPs... well, we're goodists.
See, there's a funny thing about TMS. There are personality traits that actually make you more susceptible to suffering from it. And one of these is being a "goodist."
What does it mean to be a goodist? Try these on for size:
Perfectionistic qualities
People pleaser
High intelligence
Try to do good above all else
Being good or kind is an integral part of their identity
Self-critical
Can lack self-compassion
Often will help others before they help themselves
Feels guilty frequently
Wants to fix or protect others
Struggle to give themselves self-love and self-care
Hard to slow down and rest
Ha ha it's me, Catherine Andrews, stop reading me to filth, list
I know in my heart, these are some of the core qualities of Soothers. And of me!
But even after discovering Sachs' work and seeing the way it transformed other people's lives through her incredible podcast, I thought it was just something I should be sharing, not something that necessarily applied to me.
After all, I'd never had chronic migraines like many of my clients, or IBS, or fibromyalgia, or nerve pain.
But then in the past couple of years I've been reflecting, and wondering: Was that really true?
I had lower right back pain that developed out of nowhere at age 30 and was often so bad I couldn't walk. It has flared up on and off throughout my 30s and a bit into my 40s (before I started JournalSpeak).
I've had chronic urinary tract infections since my early 20s, well as chronic yeast infections.
And since I was the ripe old age of 9 (sweet, stressed-out little Catherine), I had neck pain and shoulder pain. Nothing that was ever incapacitating, but enough to really be more than a nuisance and quite difficult at times.
No, these weren't as bad as migraines that would knock you out for days, or back pain so bad you'd considered surgery, but upon reflection, plenty of pain issues I had just written off as something I would learn to have to deal with, not necessarily as chronic conditions.
However, I started JournalSpeak a few years ago, and, just as the work promises, these conditions have almost entirely disappeared. (And I'll share more about how you can start JournalSpeak in a bit). And the funniest part is, now when those pains do flare up from time to time, as they will, I can connect it directly with an emotional stressor I'm experiencing.
The last time I got a UTI? It was the day we were doing an inspection on the nature witch cottage, and I was just marinating in fear and shame that, what if I had made a bad decision, what if they found something really wrong with the house, and I couldn't have this thing I wanted so bad, and what if I was an idiot for even trying, a stupid little girl who made this huge investment that was going to prove to be a huge mistake?
The last time I got bad lower back pain? I was dealing with an emotional situation that was making me feel both afraid and angry as well as some money fears.
But as I started JournalSpeak, I haven't had (beyond that one UTI last November) a UTI in over two years. My back pain will flare from time to time, once or twice a year, but then I return to JournalSpeak and it disappears after a day or so.
(One of the most strangely poetic elements of TMS is that often where you are having pain is connected to the emotional cause of it. Lower back pain is often fear, anger, resentment. Pelvic issues, shame. Digestive issues, emotional repression - like, you are unable to 'digest' emotions. I remember listening to one of Sachs' podcasts with a young adult who was having a lot of fear around his piano and musical career and his pain was manifesting as nerve issues in his hands... the very instruments that allowed him, or prevented him, from playing piano at all.)
So if you're reading this, and you're curious enough to want to investigate more about mind-body stuff, I'll give you below a few resources:
A brief primer on how to start JournalSpeak
A list of some of Sachs' podcast episodes that I think would be most impactful for you to listen to
Other resources, beyond Sachs that are a little more medical/scientific and may be more along the lines of the evidence you need to start this work
Starting JournalSpeak: Sachs details her process in full here, but here's the gist of it: You make three lists. One is past stressors — anything in your childhood, young adult or past life that was hard, difficult, upsetting (bullying, breakups, ways your parents treated you, when you had to move as a kid, etc.). From the 'big' to the 'small', because it all counts in JournalSpeak. Mine includes things like bullying I experienced in elementary school, a crush rejecting me in high school, a breakup in my 20s, moving from DC to Virginia when I was 8, my mom having cancer when I was 15, and so on. Second list: Current stressors. This may be aspects of your current job, the way you view your body, that you fight frequently with your partner, that you're a new parent and it's totally overwhelming, money fears, etc. Then, the third list: Personality traits that you have that may contribute to stress. This includes people-pleasing, being anxious or neurotic, being a pushover, being defensive, quick to anger, whatever.
Keep this list at the front of your journal then, every day, at any time of day, set a timer for 20 minutes, pick one of these topics from whichever list and just let yourself write openly, honestly, furiously if you need to, ugly crying if you need to, and just uncover what is there, totally unfiltered, in your journal. You can rip it up or burn it afterwards if you need to. You must write for the full 20 minutes, even if it seems you want to stop earlier. Keep going. Afterwards, do a loving kindness meditation (you can find plenty on YouTube or InsightTimer) for 10 minutes so you can forgive yourself for expressing whatever you might have had to express (many people, when they start JournalSpeak, may feel very guilty about what they've written and need to forgive themselves for what needed to be said).
And that's it! Ideally, do every day. Your symptoms will decrease over the months.
Podcast listening: If you need evidence or proof, Sachs' podcast, The Cure for Chronic Pain, is the place to start. She has hundreds of stories of regular old joes who have cured their chronic conditions with her work and it's good to listen to so you can start to build belief this could work for you, too.
Here's a list worth listening to, I think:
Pelvic Pain, Interstitial cystitis, Back Pain, and Anxiety with Shivani
A Life Free of Carpal Tunnel, Back Pain, IBS, Anxiety and more with Marian
Back Pain, Sciatica, Coccydynia, and Unnecessary Surgery with Jacqueline
Male Pelvic Pain, Stomach (IBS) and Back Issues with Eric Hissom
You can really start all the way at the beginning and just binge, Sachs has well over 200 episodes.
Other resources:
Ezra Klein recently had Rachel Zoffness, a pain psychologist, on to talk about this very topic
The Body Keeps the Score is one of the seminal works on this very topic, that more and more people are familiar with. I think though people are like "Oh yeah this person with like, Iraq War trauma, could have this issue, but not me, with my mostly-decent childhood!" and I want to encourage you to realize, your body is also keeping the score.
Howard Schubner has an "Unlearn your Pain" book and program
A lot of people get started on this work with the Curable app
Dan Buglio is a pain and TMS coach with some resources too (I wanted to make sure to include lots of resources from men, because women can often easily grok this work and pick up on it, but men I find are often more resistant/don't identify/think it's BS. Men I also find are the ones who suffer the most from TMS-related mid and lower back pain.)
And that's where I'll wrap things up today. This phenomenon may seem wild, or illogical, or just plain wrong to you, but I encourage you to explore it, listen to a podcast or two of Sachs', and try out JournalSpeak yourself if you are suffering from a chronic condition, whether it's pain, digestion, pelvic or anything else.
You deserve to feel good and live a pain-free life, a life of joy and legacy and potential. And I believe, with the work that Sachs and others like her offer, you can do that. Even as a goodist. Especially as a goodist. Feel your emotions and face them; turn towards that small, scared inner child that never got over that pain and hurt from 30 years ago and give them comfort and a voice; and understand that you are courageous, deserving, loving and worthy.