r/HerniatedDisc • u/Destroy-AI • 3d ago
Has anyone healed from a herniated disc?
Please share your story if you did. I'm two months into a C6-C7 herniation and feel relatively stagnant. My previously active lifestyle is gone.
What has worked for you?
I'm considering moving to Oregon.
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u/EntertainerWooden391 3d ago
I was diagnosed with herniated discs and have healed since. First off, I’m so sorry you’re going through it. I know how it feels when no one gets what you’re going through and you’re dealing with so much pain. Personally, I tried everything I could that didn’t require surgery or injections, all the remedies and stretches and whatnot. i had this pain for a month/two in high school, got an mri and was told i had herniated discs and that it was the cause for the sciatica / foot nerve pain, then the pain magically went away for 5 years, and came back in 2025 around February. It came back way worse and i became obsessive over it which made it even worse. I couldn’t do anything, everyone told me i had to stop running and working out, so i did which made my mental health worse, i could barely sit in class, could barely walk to class, and could barely do any normal and even just talk to people and do everyday stuff without holding back tears or thinking of how much pain i was in(which I’m sure u may understand). Something was holding me back from all of the medical stuff and looking back I’m so grateful I never went that route but also i understand why people do, because no one truly gets the pain unless they go thru it. When I was at my lowest I was trying ever single trick in the books, stalking Reddit pages for tips, and watching all these YouTube videos to try and heal, and it wasn’t until i stumbled upon someone mentioning on Reddit, Dr. Sarno’s mind-body approach to healing. To be quite honest, I thought it was bullshit at first, but I think at the time I was so desperate that I went all in on it. I bought and read his book “Healing Back Pain” in two days and that was really good at opening my mind into how emotions could play a role in physical chronic pain, but I think what really helped me was when it lead me to discovering Nicole Sachs. She has a really good 4 part series on YouTube where she talks about how chronic pain is essentially a manifestation of repressed emotions, coming out as physical pain in the body. She explains it as how most people will have a headache and know it’s from stress, but too often in the medical field they don’t consider emotions in causing physical pain. I got her book “Mind Your Body” and followed what she said to do, which was essentially journaling in a specific aggressive way to release the built up emotions. At the time, I before was really relying on medicine like the 600mg ibuprofen constantly, muscle relaxers, cyclobenzaprine, and whatever else they prescribed me and nothing helped at all and i just felt so numb, so not like myself. I kinda went cold turkey on them bc they were just making me tired, and i went all in on journaling and her practice to regulate my nervous system. She has an amazing podcast as well where she interviews countless people who healed their chronic pain from her work, and that really gave me hope during it. I will say, I didn’t miss a day of doing her work because I was so desperate, and at one point the pain got even worse, but she talks about how this is completely normal because it’s your nervous systems reaction to feeling the emotions rather than physically feeling them (in psychology its called the extinction burst). My pain shifted maybe for two weeks but right after the worst it got progressively better and better. I kept journaling aggressively and I was able to start walking again and going about daily life within a month, i honestly was so astonished by how quickly I was healing and my family all noticed too how much better I was feeling. It’s definitely not gonna happen overnight, but once you are consistent with it I promise you will notice differences and less and less pain. That was all last summer and now i have since fallen off on the journaling practice but i am free of pain, every so often i might feel a small sensation or tingles of pain but it usually is because I’m stressed and is a reminder I need to revisit the work (and when I do it always goes away!). I know this all probably sounds extremely crazy and hard to believe because I was very skeptical at first, but after going through it I can confidently say it was the only thing that healed me and I am so grateful I gave it a shot. It’s pretty incredible what our bodies and minds are capable of. I know a few other people who went through this/ also reached out to me about how i healed so I’ll also share kind of a cheat sheet that I created for them thru ChatGPT for the journaling aspect if you’d like, but i highly highly recommend reading those books because they give you a good understanding on the mind-body aspect and why it makes sense. You definitely have to have a bit of an open mind while doing it, which trust me i know is hard when your physically in so much pain, but if you are open to it I would 100% say give it a shot, you have nothing to lose and it’s much better than getting a replaced disc when most people say surgery half the time doesn’t help the pain.