Last summer I was teaching a course in Positive Psychology at the University of Toronto. The summer courses are compressed from the normal 12 weeks to only 5 weeks so the schedule can be very challenging. One day during this period I was bending down to pick something up at home when a horrible snapping sensation occurred in my lower back, quickly followed by violent and excruciatingly painful muscle spasms running down my back and legs. My muscles had tightened up such that I was leaning to one side and couldn’t straighten myself. The pain was intense. Just thinking about moving caused painful muscle spasms.
This was actually not the first time I had this problem. I had first experienced in when I was in my early twenties attending grad school in Memphis. The pain is very intense and debilitating and lasts for about a month before easing. But this time was different. I had a course to teach. I had to get up in front of class and lecture for 2-3 hours twice a week. How the hell was I going to do this? I didn’t want to send out a notice canceling a lecture, not just because I’m such a devoted teacher but because I really loved to teach. I didn’t want to cancel because I would feel cheated. But I could barely stand for 3 minutes let alone 3 hours. What could I do?
Well, I decided that, dammit, I was going to teach that class if I had to do it while sitting, or even laying down! So I asked my wife to drive me to school. She walked with me to class while I pushed our baby stroller so that I would have something to hold on to while walking, and she helped me to hook up my computer to the projector. I took a chair and put in front of the class and sat down on the chair. I was in a great deal of pain. The trip in from the car was very tiring. I announced to the class what had happened to me and that I may have to lecture while sitting and then I began my lecture. As I was talking I felt the compulsion to get up and move around, to point to the screen, to animate myself.
I then attempted to stand up to do so and when I did I noticed a most remarkable thing. I felt almost no pain. That’s right — almost no pain! I stood and delivered the entire 2 1/2 hour lecture with almost no pain. But that’s not all. I was so happy that I had succeeded in delivering the lecture and that my pain had substantially receded that I walked with my wife to a nearby Starbucks to treat myself to a Latte. As I began to walk towards the coffee place, I could feel the pain returning, my muscles tightening, my body contorting once again. By the time we reached Starbucks I was racked in pain once again.
How did this happen? I believe that this most remarkable case of disappearing pain was caused by a large dose of endogenous opioids (endorphins) elicited by a threat. It has long been known that the perception of the threat of injury elicits the fight-or-flight response, one component of which is the release of opioids to numb pain. This natural analgesia is adaptive for if organisms were hobbled by pain while attempting to escape threat, they would likely not survive. For me, a failure to deliver that lecture represented a threat in many ways. It was the first full undergrad class I had taught so I felt the need to prove myself. I wanted to get great student evaluations so that I would get the opportunity to teach again. To have canceled that class would have thus posed a substantial threat to me.
For me this event was a personal reminder that we have evolved to survive and that when we think we just can’t make it, the body reveals a strength that we never knew it had.
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