He Came to Me for Neck Pain, He Left Free of His Addictions

He Came to Me for Neck Pain, He Left Free of His Addictions - A Case Study

“I worked with Caitilin for the better part of a year, and I can honestly say I feel better now – mentally and physically – than I ever have since being injured, and possibly even before that. What began as a journey to unravel the mysteries of my physical ailments ended up becoming just as much about emotional self-awareness as physical therapy.

During this interval, I quit smoking for good – a decision that came to me naturally and one which I was able to execute with relative ease because it came from a deep desire to better myself, and not from the superficial notion that “smoking is bad.” I had always known it was bad, but now I could feel how it was interfering with my growth, and I knew intuitively when it was time to let go of the habit.

My posture, flexibility, and strength all improved as well, but I feel I must reiterate that the greatest changes I have observed to have taken place are in my head. Earlier I said that nothing ever seemed to work out for me because of a problem with my mindset. Working with Caitilin was the catalyst I required to begin correcting that mindset, and the implications of that transformation are joyous and very significant.” -DN

I recently saw a student for a “check-in session” after 6 months of him working on his own. I was overjoyed to see him thriving and fully ready for the next level of strengthening work.

This young man, a self-proclaimed “bona fide shut-in whose only interests were drugs, candy, and internet media” came to me after years of drug abuse and other forms of deliberate self-neglect as he grappled with the tremendous grief of losing his mother to cancer.

He suffered from chronic pain from a neck injury eight years previous, but as he embraced the insights and tools I gave him, he was able to heal not only his neck but the deep emotional wounds that contributed to his pain and his need for drugs.

With the help of an MD, he is off many of his meds for anxiety and depression and has replaced them with the movement, breathwork, and self-awareness tools that he has learned serve him best. These are the tools I give my students as soon as I see they have made the connection between the pain that they originally came to me for and the lifestyle choices they’ve made that have gotten them to their pain state.

Here’s the part of his story that I am most proud of:

“I am confident now that I have the tools to overcome my suffering, and that no matter what obstacles stand in the way of my progress, I will, on balance, overcome them handily.”

My aim is to teach my students how to be their own best healers. When our work is done, my students know how to understand the cues their body is giving them, and how to honor those with intelligent movement, proper nutrition, healing breath, and a constructive mindset.

You can read his entire story here. I know you’ll be as inspired by him as I am!

"When 2020 rolled around and the Pandemic was announced, I was likely among the least concerned people on the planet. At the time, I was so entrenched in a lifestyle of drug abuse, sleep deprivation, and antisocial behavior that for me, a jobless musician with nothing but free time and no aspirations beyond the walls of my bedroom, the Coronavirus lockdown might as well have been my own personal stay of execution. The first thought I had upon hearing about the situation was, “Great. Now nobody will notice if I just lay low and get high for the next year or two without actively looking for work.”

I started experimenting with drugs the summer after my senior year of high school and never really stopped, but I certainly cooled down after graduating college and had managed to hold down two pretty amazing jobs in my 20s, on top of teaching myself advanced music production and creating a host of interesting tracks. But nothing ever really came together for me in either area. Something about my mindset just wasn’t right. I excelled at everything I tried, but somehow, I just couldn’t devote quite enough time or energy to any one thing to see it bear fruit.

Of course, all of this was deeply complicated by the fact that I suffered chronic pain from a cervical herniation I sustained while weightlifting in 2015. When I woke up the morning after I heard my spine “pop,” only to realize I couldn’t turn my head in either direction, I said out loud “My life is over.” That prediction became somewhat self-fulfilling. First, I lost my job because the injury was preventing me from focusing or getting any real work done. I managed to find an excellent physical therapist who rehabilitated me to the point that I was able to land a new, even better job, but I quickly realized that I wasn’t mentally tough enough to handle it while managing my pain.

It was around this time that my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer, which destroyed me, as she and I were really close and I wasn’t ready to lose her. It was also around this time that my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder started to worsen, especially with regard to my physical pain. The placement of objects needed to be perfect, otherwise it would exacerbate my injury. I didn’t dare attempt even the tamest exercise routines, for fear of aggravating my injury. I became so petrified of pain as it related to this injury that, in what I now realize was an extremely misguided decision, I took up smoking cigarettes again just to mitigate the stress. It marked the end of a two-year quit, and the beginning of one of the darkest periods of my life.

I soon lost my job. I wasn’t fired, but I didn’t really quit, either; my boss and I just sat down and agreed it wasn’t working for either of us. It was a strange outcome, considering I had aced my interview and was more than capable of performing my duties, but I probably should have seen it coming. I had started staying out all hours, dabbling in substances I hadn’t touched since college, and showing up late to work on 1-2 hours of sleep with a head full of static and an aching neck.

Without a job, I occupied my free time getting high with friends, overspending on designer clothes, and playing way too much Pokémon GO (which made my neck feel a hundred times worse). Eventually, my mom passed, and that was the last straw. I became a bona fide shut-in whose only interests were drugs, candy, and internet media, and I stayed that way until 2021 when a seemingly random accident snapped me out of my stupor and set me on the path to healing.

At the time, I couldn’t have known how tripping over my computer monitor’s power cable, sending the entire monitor crashing to the floor, would change my life. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, but at the time, it filled me with unbearable despair. That monitor was the last bastion of entertainment I had, and when it so violently broke apart, I realized that without it, I had pretty much nothing at all. After screaming for what seemed like hours, I ran out of energy and sunk back into my chair, completely defeated.

When I looked up, I finally saw the state of my room for the first time in years. It was a literal garbage dump – a disgusting, poorly lit wasteland filled with all manner of detritus. Wrappers, empty packaging, loose tobacco, grime, broken electronics, filthy clothes, dust, crinkled cans, moldy cups, stained sheets, and enormous clusters of tangled cables littered every square inch of floor. The only walkable path led directly from where I sat to the door. In that moment, the illusion I’d spent years perfecting disintegrated, and I knew I had reached the end of the line.

The first thing I did was clean. My sister was willing to help, even though she had endured my psychotic, drug-fueled behavior for far too long. Together, over a period of months, we spent each day undoing what had taken me years to do, and by the time we were done, the visible damage had been all but erased.

Then, rid of all the clutter, I turned inward and pursued a newfound interest in spirituality. I learned to meditate, experimented with hypnosis, sound baths, and other audio/visual-based mindfulness aids, and began to break away from many of my old default emotional responses – anger, mockery, and arrogance, to name a few.

Riding that momentum, I decided to do something I’d always thought about doing – learn martial arts. I knew of a place not far from my apartment that taught Krav Maga, so I decided to sign up for a private lesson with the owner. To my surprise, the experience was a lot of fun, and I found myself wanting to continue the lessons. After some time, though, it became clear that my body just wasn’t moving smoothly. I had spent too long crumpled up in my desk chair, and my muscles, already more susceptible to pain and stiffness due to the injury, had become locked into some very uncomfortable patterns. That, coupled with my fear of experiencing pain, stopped me in my tracks. Luckily, my instructor noticed this and recommended I meet with a healer by the name of Caitilin Twain, whose techniques and intimate knowledge of body mechanics he touted as the best he’d ever experienced. I trusted him, so I decided to meet her.

After my first session with Caitilin, it was obvious to me that she had a different approach than all the physical therapists I’d seen before. Not to besmirch their methods, but they simply weren’t considering the flexibility and positioning of my entire body when addressing the pain in my neck. In fact, at eight years post-injury, it was unlikely that pain from the herniation was responsible for the majority of my issues. When I thought about it logically, it didn’t make sense that an eight-year-old injury was holding me back with such ferocity. The explanation that seemed a lot more sound to me – the one that Caitilin proposed – is that my body was out of wack due to incessant amounts of time spent in limiting positions and that my pervasive fear of experiencing physical pain was preventing me from getting unstuck. Ironically, she said, it was also this fear that was likely contributing to my continuing stiffness, as the impending threat of possibly hurting myself was causing me to tense up without even realizing it.

I worked with Caitilin for the better part of a year, and I can honestly say I feel better now – mentally and physically – than I ever have since being injured, and possibly even before that. What began as a journey to unravel the mysteries of my physical ailments ended up becoming just as much about emotional self-awareness as physical therapy. During this interval, I quit smoking for good – a decision that came to me naturally and one which I was able to execute with relative ease because it came from a deep desire to better myself, and not from the superficial notion that “smoking is bad.” I had always known it was bad, but now I could feel how it was interfering with my growth, and I knew intuitively when it was time to let go of the habit. My posture, flexibility, and strength all improved as well, but I feel I must reiterate that the greatest changes I have observed to have taken place are in my head. Earlier I said that nothing ever seemed to work out for me because of a problem with my mindset. Working with Caitilin was the catalyst I required to begin correcting that mindset, and the implications of that transformation are joyous and very significant.

The damage I inflicted on myself during the span of only a few years is immeasurable. I am lucky to be alive, and with no permanent cognitive impairments, but the cost of my hellish excursion was extraordinarily high. The mental anguish I suppressed during that time keeps revealing itself in the most unexpected ways, and although I continue to battle it with an increasing rate of success, there are times it completely consumes me. But I am confident now that I have the tools to overcome my suffering, and that no matter what obstacles stand in the way of my progress, I will, on balance, overcome them handily."