"Oh no! Not this again!!"
Most people with back pain will be able to identify with the following scenario:
The first thing that most people do when they have back pain is go to see their doctor hoping the doctor can tell them what's wrong.
As I mentioned before, people usually get lab work, x-rays or an MRI study done to see if there is any real problem. If all the tests come back negative, the doctor usually prescribes some pain medication and also sends them to see a physical therapist.
"Everytime I go to the therapist I hurt more…"
Unfortunately, for one reason or another, physical therapists have a bad reputation. When people think about P.T., they think "pain and torture". This is because most physical therapists still use a "one size fits all" approach to treating their patients.
The main problem with this cookie cutter approach to physical therapy is that it doesn't treat the individual. It treats the diagnosis. If the doctor sends 10 people with the diagnosis of "back pain", each one of those people get the same treatment or a variation of it.
Therapists make the same mistake as everyone else and fail to actually listen to their patients. This approach usually doesn't give the patient optimal results and the pain and frustration continues.
My struggle was to figure out a way to avoid this mistake. To minimize further pain and discomfort while at the same time maximizing my patients' ability to move pain free.
Figuring out the puzzle
It took a while and a lot of focus to develop an understanding of what was really happening with my back pain patients.
By their test results, I knew that there wasn't a serious condition that was causing their back pain. This meant that the back pain was probably due to problematic muscles and other soft tissues.
How to get my patients to buy into this idea that all their pain was caused by simple muscle strains was a challenge in itself. Everyone found it hard to believe that this was their only problem. I would have to repeatedly remind them of all the tests that they had taken and of the results.
My patients would come up with this or that reason as to why there had to be something else going on because the pain was so great. …I knew this was going to be a challenge.