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Back Pain

My recovery story from from back pain

Here is my recovery story from a diagnosis of Degenerative Disc Disease. I hope it helps to give some hope and awareness to anyone suffering with chronic pain.

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My identity

Growing up, I was very sporty and fit. I was in the school hockey team, swim team and tennis team. I was in the cadets and loved all the adventure training that came with that. During my University years, I took up Waterpolo, swam the English Channel (as a relay) and climbed Mount Kenya.  After University I joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a Physical Education Officer and was captain of the RAF Ladies Waterpolo team.  My whole identity and career revolved around being fit, strong and active.

The start of my back pain

Soon after becoming a mother, I experienced sudden excruciating back pain for no apparent reason one morning when I was taking my toddler to nursery and then going onto work. The pain was so bad I couldn’t lift my toddler to the car. I was doubled over in pain.  I was solo parenting at the time because my husband was also in the RAF and was, at the time, serving in Iraq.  As I was serving in the RAF, I was fairly well taken care of and got an MRI reasonably quickly and was sent on a 1 month spinal rehabilitation course.  I was also prescribed diazepam and naproxen which didn’t do much for my pain but knocked me out to the point that I couldn’t parent properly.  My MRI showed that I had degenerative discs and the consultant diagnosed me with Degenerative Disc Disease and told me that my spine was fragile and that I shouldn’t do anything to impact it – no hiking, no assault courses, no tennis – WHAT!  I was only 30 years old and went down a dark spiral of despair as my whole life and career revolved around me being fit.  I remember one physiotherapist saying that the pain was all in my head which made me feel so angry.  I now understand that all pain is processed in the brain but all pain is real.  Saying comments like this was really really unhelpful.

My treatments

So what did I do?  I tried massage, dry needling, osteopathy, craniosaral therapy, gentle Pilates and more.  Many of which provided some relief, but nothing was long term.  When I left the RAF I trained in massage and craniosacral therapy as I wanted to help others, but I was still getting pain and sometimes the pain would be in my neck and shoulders too.  It wasn’t until an osteopath mentioned a TED talk video by a physio in Australia called Lorimer Moseley, that my recovery started to improve.  Lorimer is a pain scientist and physiotherapist and helped explain to me that despite my awful pain, this didn’t equate to tissue damage and in fact 50% of 30 year olds would show some kind of abnormality in a spinal MRI, such as degenerative discs, bulging discs and more.  These are normal abnormalities just like grey hair and wrinkles!  I found this hugely reassuring which reduced my symptoms but didn’t eliminate them.

The link to stress

By this time we had moved to Saudi Arabia with my husband’s work and we had had another child.  Saudi Arabia presented a whole load of new challenges for me, which I won’t go into here (buy me a drink and I’ll share that story).  I remember my neck being seriously painful over there and I had another MRI which showed muscular spasm.  The more I started learning and researching about pain the more I was able to link my pain to stressful episodes – Saudi Arabia being one of those and solo parenting with a husband at war being another!  But I still had pain.

The link to emotions

When we moved back to UK (Shropshire) life was more stable and I continued some professional development.  I remembered listening to a webinar by Georgie Oldfield (SIRPA) where she explained about stress and emotion contributing to pain.  I already sort of understood this, but I was still experiencing episodes of pain, albeit not as bad or as frequent as it had been.  It wasn’t until I went on a Craniosacral training course where we were practicing Somatic Emotional Release, that I experienced an amazing emotional release.  My whole body started shaking, like I was shivering and what came out of that session was a realisation that I had been holding onto so much anger and resentment.  This was towards our situation in Saudi but also surprisingly towards my darling lovely husband, because I was actually jealous that he was going to war and getting medals whilst I was expected to put my military career on hold and change nappies! I didn’t even know I was holding or suppressing these emotions as it was all happening subconsciously.  In hindsight I also displayed some personality traits such as perfectionism (Officer Training literally drills that into you) which are linked to chronic pain and I had an identity of being strong, so I was afraid of showing any weakness, such as that fact that I was struggling to solo parent. After that experience on the craniosacral training course I haven’t had back pain like I used to.  I remembered that webinar by Georgie and decided that I must go and learn more so I did.  I’m now a SIRPA practitioner.

Getting my life back

Don’t get me wrong – I still get pain because after all I’m human right, but when I get symptoms, I can identify why and feel empowered to know what to do before they escalate and become chronic.  I have my life back and have since been able to run assault courses with cadets, hike mountains with my kids, and I have my sense of adventure back.  I’m even doing an open water swim in June 2026!