Thanks so much for writing this. I had basically an identical experience of developing chronic pain then spending two years ineffectively treating it with physical therapy before realizing it was psychosomatic and tied to my emotions. Once I read “the way out” I was halfway to being cured and today I feel 90-95% recovered. To anyone reading this in chronic pain there is hope.
I wrote a blog post detailing my experience but yours is much more well researched and I’m glad you are spreading awareness of this.
I think the EA community is probably much more prone to this issue for the following reason: personality traits that are a risk factor for chronic psychosomatic pain are pretty much identical with the stereotypical EA, namely;
“High in any of these personality traits: self-criticism, pressure, worrying and anxiety, perfectionism, conscientiousness, people pleasing—these correlate with neuroplastic pain”
thats quite interesting—the only other EA person who I have discussed chronic pain with actually had severe wrist pain for years and then later attributed it to stress rather than structural damage (they were in their late 20′s and 30′s) so that definitely fits your observation