This is an introductory guide for high achievers, successful professionals, and executive leaders on how to overcome chronic pain, anxiety and other physical symptoms.

Creating this guide has been extremely difficult and I’ve been resisting it for a long time.

My role is to ask questions and listen.

The answers are in my clients’ words and often behind the words.

The roots of chronic pain can be repressed emotions, unconscious beliefs, and childhood trauma.

You can’t see all these things right now because they live in your unconscious mind.

You have to take every step on the journey to see and understand what creates the discomfort.

That’s why I always suggest that you work with a trained person who can guide you on this path to uncover your blind spots.

Why did I create this guide then?

To share some truths that apply to everyone.

To point you in a new direction so you can start walking that path.

To ease your fears and anxiety as to what does and what doesn’t cause your pain.

For some of you, I may hit the bull’s eye and unlock everything that triggers your pain.

In any case, if you feel lost right now, I’m sure this course will help you find your way.

Why only ambitious and goal-oriented individuals?

Because I am that type of person and I’ve found that I work better with Type A personality people.

My clients want change and don’t like to compromise.

They want to reach their full potential. Peak performance matters to them. They want an edge.

They seek the truth. They are coachable.

They want excellence and success across all areas of their lives—health, career, wealth, relationships, and happiness.

This was the person I was with the pain and this is the person I am without the pain.

I empathise with these people. I love these people. I am one of these people.

I’ll tell you my full story later but… 

I had an active life when I got hit by back pain.

I was working in investment banking in London, performing with music bands around the world, and also helping students excel in maths and get into the top independent schools.

Chronic pain, perfectionism, self-development junkienism, overambition, and striving often go together.

More about that later.

For now, let’s define physical symptoms and get a deeper look into your situation.

Physical Symptoms and Your Experience

Disclaimer: Nothing in this guide constitutes medical advice. Always consult a doctor for advice on any serious medical conditions.

What You’ve Tried

You’re here because you have probably visited your doctor—or doctors—and have tried many different treatments:

• Medication
• Physical therapy
• Osteopathy
• Massage
• Diet
• Yoga
• Exercise
• Meditation
• Acupuncture.

You may have had invasive treatments such as injections or even surgery.

However, none of these things have managed to relieve your symptoms.

Your Symptoms

When I say symptoms, I mean:

Musculoskeletal symptoms: Back pain, neck pain, hip pain, sciatica, fibromyalgia or any other pain in the joints or limbs.

Heart and Lungs: Shortness of breath, undiagnosed chest pain, palpitations, irregular heartbeats, high or low blood pressure.

Gastrointestinal: Abdominal pain, ulcer symptoms, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, IBS, hiatus hernia, heartburn, acid reflux, constipation, diarrhoea.

Skin: Eczema, acne, dandruff, psoriasis, hives, rashes, etc.

Mental Health: Anxiety, depression, racing thoughts, insomnia, panic attacks.

Others: Fatigue, tiredness, migraines.

The pain may come and go but it is persistent and stops you from living the life you want to live.

It may prevent you from exercising, running, cycling, or even walking.

You may well be thinking about your pain 24/7. You watch for it when you get out of bed in the morning, when you sit down or stand up. Is it still there? Has it got any better?

You may sometimes find your pain puzzling. It may get worse at the weekend.

You are afraid of it because it’s unpredictable.

Going on a long hike is not an easy decision.

The pain makes you angry and frustrated which often results in more pain.

You may have heard theories that you’re in pain because:

• Your spine is damaged.
• Your MRI showed a herniated disc.
• You’re sitting in a chair for too long.
• You lifted some furniture six months ago.

You may have believed it’s an auto-immune disease, a rare condition, your DNA, your diet, chemical or hormonal imbalances.

However, your intellect and intuition both say that none of these things accurately explain your pain.

Nonetheless, you’re not someone who likes to compromise.

You’re determined to understand what triggers your pain so you get rid of it forever and go back to your active, ambitious and high-performing life.

Unless you fell from the 5th Floor, you have a strong spine

If you experience lower back pain you may believe that there is a structural issue with your spine that causes your pain.

So, you have an MRI and you’re diagnosed with a herniated disc or some sort of imperfection with your spine.

And the doctor shows you the MRI, “Here’s a disc bulge, here’s stenosis, here’s degenerative disc disease”, and you go “Mmm… I see now. That’s why I’m in pain”.

And you go home and you find that your pain gets worse. Interesting… The pain gets worse when you’re frustrated, angry, hopeless.

By the way, I’ve had two MRI’s and I’ve also been diagnosed with a herniated disc and Degenerative Disc Disease. But I’m not in pain any more.

Researchers in 2015 undertook an interesting experiment.

They wanted to answer the question: Do all these MRI findings really explain chronic pain?

To answer this question, they came up with something very clever.

They asked 3110 volunteers who had never experienced any pain in their lives to have an MRI.

You see where this is going…

Guess what?

The MRI’s of these healthy and pain-free people, were as f***** up as the MRI’s of people who suffered from chronic pain.

Here are the numbers:

If you take healthy 40 year-olds and you give them MRI’s, 68% of them have disc degeneration.

Nearly 7 out of 10 healthy 40 year-olds have disc degeneration—but are completely pain-free!

If you take completely healthy, pain-free 30 year-olds who never complained about back pain, 40% of them have disc bulges in their MRI’s.

A doctor once said to me, “I don’t know how this slipped disc’s giving you the pain you’re talking about. If you saw my MRI, you would think a double-decker had run over me — but I don’t have any pain”.

This is one study.

There are numerous studies that prove “flawed” spines don’t cause chronic pain.

Also, other studies prove that treatments such as injections or surgery are NOT effective for chronic pain in the long-term.

For now, let’s forget studies and use some common sense.

Our spine is much stronger than we think. If our spine got damaged every time we lifted a heavy object, it is unlikely that the human species would be where it is today. Builders wouldn’t exist—let alone weight lifters!

If your herniated disc is indeed herniated, it should be herniated 24/7 and pressing against that nerve the whole time.

But how come you have moments when you don’t feel any pain?

How come you sometimes forget the pain?

Does the disc go like, “OK, I’ve given them enough pain for the day, I’ll come back tomorrow. You know… I don’t feel like pressing their nerve today”.

I’m sure that if you saw a tiger in front of you right now, you’d run faster than Usain Bolt and you’d forget your back pain until you’d get back to safety.

The Root of Chronic Pain

Everyone has a different reason for being in pain.

Let’s start with some basic facts to get to the root of how pain develops.

You do whatever you do in life to generate positive feelings: joy, satisfaction, happiness, recognition, love, security, belonging.

Or you do something or behave in a certain way to avoid a negative feeling: fear, rejection, shame, sadness.

When we come to the world, you don’t know the rules. 

You do something and people react to it.

Their reaction makes you feel something.

And you adjust your behaviour based on what you feel.

We learn how to meet our emotional needs through trial and error.

We don’t come to this world with an instruction manual.

Humans have managed to get to this point of evolution because of our capacity to adapt (and when it comes to chronic pain maladapt).

We start to learn from our parents.

So, your parents are strict and as a kid, you feel that you have to meet certain standards to earn their love. You have to be a top student at school, you have to be polite, you shouldn’t get angry, you shouldn’t be very emotional… you have to look after your younger brother or sister first and then yourself.

Maybe my parents unconsciously pass on different rules that I have to adhere to. And if I do, their love towards me is guaranteed.

So, we do all these things to receive our parents’ love.

And this often happens unconsciously as I said. Your parents never said upfront, “If you don’t do this or that, our relationship is over—you’re not our son, our daughter”.

Our parents are the way they are because they learned that from their parents.

You also learn from your social circle, teachers, friends, society or media.

This is how you develop your programmes (beliefs)—what you should do or not do to meet your emotional needs.

And then you go to work, you fall in love with someone, you have to live with others, but all these other people come from different families and backgrounds and have totally different programmes to yours.

And here’s where the clash happens.

You end up becoming someone else to get the approval of others.

This creates uncertainty, anxiety, fear.

You repress (unconsciously) or suppress (consciously) these feelings. 

You strive to appear calm, strong, and always in control.

That builds tension in your body which can manifest itself as physical pain or other conditions.

What happens is that you deny your emotional pain and instead express it through amplified physical symptoms—a process called somatisation.

Because there is less of a stigma attached to seeking help for physical rather than psychological problems in high-stress high-status environments.

Think about it.

Would you rather complain to your colleagues about your depression or your back pain?

A large body of empirical research links somatisation with suppression of emotions, stress, and trauma.

For instance, two weeks before they invaded Iraq, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division, experienced their distress differently.

Compared with combat-naïve soldiers, combat veterans denied emotional symptoms—such as anxiety, irritability, depression—and instead reported more physical symptoms—such as back or neck pain, hiatus hernia, headaches, digestive issues, insomnia or sexual difficulties.

The Neuroscience of Pain

What do you mean, Angelos, by saying that I’m expressing my emotional pain through physical symptoms???

Neuroscience has shown that when someone suffers emotionally, parts of the brain that are activated are identical to those that are activated when they get a physical injury.

Here’s a picture from one scientific study proving that social rejection and physical pain overlap on a neural level.

Your back, neck, chest don’t send “pain signals” to your brain.

All sensations, including those associated with severe pain, are electrical signals which go to your brain through your nervous system.

It’s then the job of your brain to encode and interpret those signals and activate a danger-alarm mechanism if necessary.

When you put more pressure on yourself, you have a greater tendency to activate this mechanism.

Not all pain is emotional of course.

People have accidents and end up with a broken pelvis, hip, spine, wrist, etc.

At other times, there is clear nerve damage that can be easily seen in an MRI.

However, if you have pain that moves around your body, then disappears and suddenly returns, or you’ve had a couple of operations and it’s still there, your pain may not be injury-induced but brain-induced, neural pathway pain, neurological pain.

There is no disease that gives you back pain when you wake up in the morning, and gets better through the day. So, at 5 pm you’re all of sudden pain-free, but it comes back at night with pain in the shoulders.

There is no disease that does this.

But it’s possible to experience that because neuropathways can turn on and off.

Feeling the pain can become a habit.

Neural circuits that fire repeatedly become more sensitive and hyperactive.

They can even get bigger and stronger—like a muscle does when you work out.

“Cells that fire together wire together” which means that synapses—unions between neurons (brain cells)—get solidified the more often the respective neurons “talk” to each other.

So, the more you express your emotional pain through physical symptoms, the more you get stuck in that habit.

Pain becomes an everyday thing. Your default mode.

And more pain results in more anxiety, fear, and desperation which only intensifies the pain—it’s a viscous circle.

You can break the habit though when you understand how your pain develops.

When you stop reacting with more anxiety to your pain.

When you go like, “Mmmm… it’s clear. I now see what’s going on. I’m not going to react to it. 

I may feel in pain right now but I don’t have to react. It will switch off the same way it switched on. It’s craving my attention but I’ll ignore it”.

This is when you stop interpreting those signals in your brain as something dangerous.

The danger alert mechanism switches off, the tension moves away and so does the pain.

Until your default mode becomes a pain-free mode.

Examples of How Tension Develops as a Result of Limiting Beliefs.

I am not good enough – Low Self Esteem

What do you do if you feel you’re not good enough?

You do more.

The tendency to strive, excel and overachieve often comes from an unconscious feeling of low self-esteem.

The problem is that no matter how hard you strive, you never think you’ve achieved enough.

You may complain that your tension is caused by external and unavoidable stressors such as your over-demanding job or family responsibilities but that’s not the whole picture.

It’s your own conscientiousness, your perceived beliefs of your own performance and success that generate the tension.

The whole world may think you’re doing an outstanding job but you still may think you’re not good enough.

Lack of guidance and support in a new role at work

You may experience physical symptoms soon after taking a new role.

This is often caused by a lack of support from your manager or colleagues.

You may think, “they don’t care, they don’t want to help me, they don’t like me”.

However, the reason may be that they simply don’t have the time.

They may also be under pressure from their own manager.

It’s not you—it could be the culture. 

Maybe they never got the support they needed when they joined the team.

They may be testing your ability to work things out on your own.

But sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees.

So, you feel frustrated when your performance depends on input from others. 

Type A personalities and high-achievers struggle with that because they want to have control. 

No matter what the reason is—and yes it could be that they simply don’t like you—all you have to do is acknowledge the frustration, the helplessness, the anger and anything else you feel.

Name ALL these feelings and accept them.

Later, when you’re a little more grounded you may want to understand why this is happening and decide the best strategy.

You’re Stuck in your Professional Career 

You’ve been working in an industry or role for years which makes it impossible to jump on a different role. 

“You lack the experience”, they say. You may be thinking that you’re not as young any more for a transition.

The negative emotions are followed by physical pain which makes you feel even more stuck.

The emotional and physical pain keep you in a low energy state which prevents you from letting your passion and enthusiasm win those who are willing to give you a chance.

Lack of Impact – Not being involved in decision making

You may struggle because your work doesn’t have a direct impact in the organisation.

You may be stuck in a role which only helps those who take the final decisions.

No one asks you what skills you would like to develop or put into practice.

No one sits down to work out the intersection between your vision and the organisation’s vision.

Lack of Recognition

Others are receiving credit for your work and achievements.

They are being promoted while you’re staying in the background. 

You Perceive yourself as Less Successful in your Personal Life

You may have consciously prioritised your career at the expense of your personal life or romantic relationships. 

One of my clients was in pain because they had a belief that a high-status high-paying job would guarantee love, recognition from others, a successful relationship, and more.

However, he found that there was no correlation between his professional success and success in other areas of his life.

He was so obsessed with building the perfect professional image expecting that this would also secure love from others and a successful romantic relationship.

When he let go of that belief and approached relationships in a simpler way taking his professional success out of the equation, he found a lovely partner.

You Strive to Appear Strong and Emotionless

You are afraid of others picking up on your “weak and emotional” side. 

You don’t want to appear vulnerable especially in executive leadership positions.

You Want to Take Off your Leadership Hat for a Second

The higher up you move as a leader, you may feel lonely.

You may find that all you need at times is just forget your professional identity and be an average human.

You miss that.

Relationships become more serious. You always have to be careful of your words. Work politics suck your energy.

Your Job is Not as Fulfilling Anymore

My investment banking clients are suffering from this.

People end up doing administrative work as a result of bureaucracy and regulation.

It’s not as fun as it used to be. Instead of meeting with clients, they do boring tasks to make sure they are compliant.

Spending time on non-client activities.

Career Transitions Seem Scary

You can’t give up your current lifestyle, you can’t suffer a drop in lifestyle in order to explore what else life has to offer.

You’re a high achiever, but you just don’t know what is out there, away from the City.

You have kids, mortgage and you don’t have the luxury to say no to all this and experiment. 

The Guilt of Quitting

A cut-throat, aggressive, competitive, and ruthless environment may not not be for you (and most of us really!).

But you feel a loser for quitting. Here comes guilt.

You feel you’ll disappoint everyone else around you—your parents who paid for your expensive education, your partner, and yourself. 

Your First Steps Towards Healing

Step #1 – Listening to your physical, emotional and spiritual state. Internal Scanning.

Write down how you feel.

Don’t just write generic things such as “I feel discomfort, I feel bad”.

Go deeper.

Imagine you are a psychologist and you’ve been asked to write the most detailed report about yourself.

You may be feeling:

• Angry with yourself because you haven’t managed to find the solution to your pain.
• Sad because you are not able to engage in your favourite physical activities.
• Anxious to go back to your ambitious, goal-oriented life that pain has put on hold.

Try to find the most descriptive words to express exactly how you feel.

You will probably notice that when you find the exact words, you will feel an instant relief.

Write your thoughts down or say them out loud.

You may wish to do this internal scanning while going for a walk.

Get your deepest and darkest thoughts off your chest.

Observe those feelings and thoughts from a non-judgemental perspective.

If this is impossible, it’s OK.

This exercise may make you feel even more angry, sad or hopeless.

If you want to cry, cry. If you want to shout, shout.

Ask yourself again, “What else do I feel?”

Go deeper. Take time to write some more or say these things out loud.

Forgive yourself for not having found the secret to your physical and emotional pain.

You may start thinking about mistakes of the past—or things you maybe shouldn’t have done.

You did those things because you wanted to feel better.

Forgive yourself for all you’ve done to relieve your pain.

Allow yourself enough time to complete this exercise.

The deeper you go, the more you discover about yourself.

The exercise of acknowledging and accepting how you feel is therapeutic.

You will feel lighter.

Step #2 – What Would you Like to Feel?

Write down and say out loud everything you’d like to feel.

Write down who you’d like to be.

No matter how distant or impossible this may look right now.

You may be in excruciating pain, exhausted, fatigued.

It doesn’t matter.

I want you to paint the picture of your ideal self: thriving, completely pain-and-symptom-free.

How would you like to feel?

How would life look if you were completely pain-free and thriving?

How would you be spending your time?

Be as specific as possible.

In this case you find this exercise difficult or it brings negative feelings, acknowledge them.

Once you’ve acknowledged how you feel, bring your focus back to this exercise.

What would you like to feel?

Besides feelings, also write down: dreams, aspirations, new things you want to try, hobbies, experiences.

The pain can’t stop you from visualising or dreaming.

Ask yourself again, “What else would I like to feel?”

Go deeper.

Dream bigger.

Allow yourself enough time to complete this exercise.

You can write or record these thoughts with your phone or go for a walk and meditate on what you’d like to feel.

Step #3 – Imagine You’re Pain-Free

Imagine, the healing journey is over.

You’ve arrived at your destination.

What would you do?

I’d like to invite you to do something that brings you to life.

Imagine pain and all your physical symptoms are solved.

You can now live how you want.

What would you like to explore or do?

You may feel this is impossible right now for you.

I still want to challenge you.

Do it to the best of your capacity.

You may not be able to run right now but take a breath, relax and still run for 10 metres.

Or just walk.

Step #4 – Drop All Pain Management Methods

When you’ve learned to live with pain, you follow a daily routine of pain management activities—stretching, cold showers, stretchers, special exercises, physiotherapy, sleeping on your side, sitting in a certain position, having breaks to walk around, etc.

I want you to stop all these activities.

Yes, you heard me right.

Stop any activity that you do to protect yourself from more pain.

Simply forget all these tips and tricks that have become part of your daily life for a long time.

This may feel scary at first.

I understand.

However, I’m challenging you to do it.

Not only for today but every day going forward.

Loving you, Angelos