Persistence Pays Off: Conversation with Paul Wyner
Video: Watch the full session here → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN4e3wglaRQ
Dr. John Stracks: Hello and welcome. I'm Dr. John Stracks, a physician focused on the reduction and elimination of physical symptoms using mind-body medicine methods. If you'd like to learn more about working with me or our staff, please visit cormendihealth.com.
I'm here today with Paul Weiner, who suffered from chronic pain for about 15 years before ultimately finding relief. Paul's curious nature and voracious reading eventually led him to an understanding of mind-body medicine — and by learning and applying these strategies, he made a remarkable recovery. He's graciously agreed to talk with me and with all of you about his experience.
This interview is the third in a series about people who've used mind-body medicine methods with great success while also dealing with issues that required physical intervention. Paul is going to tell us about both sides of that process. Paul, thank you so much for being here.
Paul Weiner: Thank you for having me.
Where It Started: 15 Years of Searching
Dr. Stracks: Can you give some background about what you were dealing with and what it was like when the pain was at its worst?
Paul: Like a lot of people, it started with Western medicine — here's what you have, here's what we'll do. In the very beginning I had neck pain and real difficulty turning my head. I tried Eastern approaches too — acupuncture, acupressure, cupping, massage. No relief.
Eventually I went to see one of the premier headache specialists in the Chicago area, a well-published author and subject matter expert. They identified it as daily chronic headache, possibly migraine. We started with Botox — nine shots in the head and neck — and exercises. The pain wasn't responding. It felt less like a headache and more like something in my neck. After a couple of years I pushed for an MRI.
The MRI showed spinal stenosis and a couple of bulges. Still in a Western medicine mindset, I was alarmed. They referred me to a pain specialist — a board-certified anesthesiologist — who looked at the MRI and laughed. He said, "You were told this is bad? I'll show you bad." He took over my care. We did facet blocks, nerve blocks, cortisone shots — anything to try to interrupt the pain signal traveling up my neck into my head. Eventually that led to narcotic medication. Not thrilled about it, but it worked initially.
Dr. Stracks: When did the opioid medication start?
Paul: Around 2006 or 2007, small doses at first. By around 2015, the pain management doctor had really taken over, the medication had become stronger and more routine — oxycodone, Percocet. Pretty significant medication.
Dr. Stracks: And did the pain stay in one place, or did it move over time?
Paul: That was an unsettling phenomenon I didn't understand at the time. It started in my neck and head, then moved to my shoulder, knee, ankle, elbow. I'd explain each new location away — bad golf swing, running on concrete instead of grass. Always looking for a physical cause and effect. Once you understand brain science, you understand that the pain moves around in the brain and shows up in different parts of the body. It's not multiple separate conditions. It's the same thing. But at the time it felt like I just kept injuring new things and being clumsy.
Finding Another Way
Dr. Stracks: You're not someone who was willing to just accept that this was your life. How did you start looking for other answers?
Paul: My wife was also dealing with chronic pain, and watching her go through the same cycle — the same doctors, the same procedures, X-rays, MRIs, no real resolution — woke me up to the idea that I wasn't going to find the answer through medication or through conventional medicine as it was being practiced. I didn't want to be on long-term pain medication. I wanted the headaches to go away.
The first book I found was by Mel Pohl, which gave me an understanding that there's something more than physical trauma driving chronic pain. That led me to Dr. Sarno — and that was a real eye-opener. It sounded a little far-fetched at first, but it opened my mind. From Dr. Sarno I found Dr. Schubiner, read Unlearn Your Pain, did some of his exercises, and realized I needed someone to help guide me through this. I was skeptical. I needed real support.
So I searched for Dr. Stracks, tracked him down — he'd moved from Northwestern — and eventually found him about 20 minutes from my house. We met around 2017. He did a thorough intake, identified that not all of this looked physical, and started helping me understand how it all connected. One of the first things he suggested was downloading the Curable app and starting with the brain science content. That plus our work together started genuinely opening my mind.
From Curable, I joined one of their groups — about 12 weeks of group learning and story-sharing. My biggest takeaway was recognizing that I was not in the worst shape in the room. That was oddly comforting. It also opened my mind to the role of childhood trauma, joy, gratitude — components I hadn't connected to pain before.
Understanding What Was Really Going On
Dr. Stracks: You mentioned childhood. Are you comfortable talking about what you discovered was actually showing up in your body?
Paul: A lot was tied to early childhood. Trigger behaviors, patterns set in motion from around age eight. I never had pain when I was young, but the stage was being set. And by the time I was an adult, I was running into stressful situations — job changes, relationship changes, kids growing up — and my background had primed me to experience those as threats. Pain is actually a pretty clever brain response to that sense of danger.
What was fascinating to me was that through all those years of pain, I never once thought about my childhood or my triggers. My brain had been distracting me through pain. As Dr. Stracks explained it to me, the images — the MRI, the stenosis, the bulges — reflect a situation, not a cause. Lots of people have those findings with no pain at all.
Dr. Stracks: The whiplash study from Europe is a perfect example. There's no word for "whiplash" in that country's language, so when people are rear-ended, they don't think "I have whiplash" — they think "who hit me?" The rates of chronic pain after car accidents there are dramatically lower. Radiologists in that study were shown MRIs of people's spines and couldn't reliably distinguish who was in pain and who wasn't. The images don't tell the story we think they do.
Paul: That reframing was huge for me. Stop focusing on the images. Your spine is your spine. There's no reliable correlation between what an MRI shows and what you feel.
The Turning Point
Paul: I was skeptical for a long time. Fear was a massive contributor — what if this doesn't work, what if the pain comes back, what if it goes somewhere new? The turning point came when I developed shoulder pain. Dr. Stracks suggested it was likely mind-body, possibly connected to a toxic relationship. I wasn't having it. I went to an orthopedic specialist and got an MRI. It showed micro-tears and a separated labrum. I came back feeling vindicated.
The orthopedic surgeon looked at everything and said: "I can't account for your pain based on what I'm seeing. You shouldn't be in this much pain from this." I had to go back to Dr. Stracks with my tail between my legs and say, "Okay. The image thing. You're right."
We started working on the relational piece — identifying the toxic dynamic that was connected to that shoulder. When I addressed it and removed that toxicity from my life, I came back and said, "I hate to admit this, but I can move my shoulder again."
Once I fully committed — not can this work, but this will work — the progress accelerated dramatically. I threw myself into it. Journaling, letter-writing to people who had created toxicity in my life (letters I never sent), breathing, centering, somatic tracking, continuing to meet with Dr. Stracks. And the medication piece moved with it — as I embraced the mind-body work, I started to realize I was taking pain medication partly out of fear. What if I let go? What happens then?
Working with my doctor, we created a titration plan. Ten pills to eight, eight to six, down to two, down to one. Each decrease brought a moment of anxiety that faded. Eventually I called Dr. Stracks and said, "Guess what? Done." It was one of the best feelings I've had in a very long time.
When Something Physical Really Was Wrong
Dr. Stracks: Relatively recently, you had a pain issue that didn't respond as well to the psychological work. Can you talk about that?
Paul: I developed pain in my foot — the toe knuckles and that whole area — really painful to walk. I saw a podiatrist who immediately suggested surgery. And I'm embarrassed to admit that I let the pain drive me into saying yes before I really thought it through.
Recovery was supposed to take three to four months. Two and a half years later I was still in pain. I eventually found a new podiatrist — actually I saw three — and settled on one whose first instinct was to do everything possible to avoid operating. After exhausting other options, we did go in surgically.
What they found was that the first surgery had caused scar tissue to wrap around a nerve. The second surgeon released the nerve from the scar tissue, put a protective wrap around it, and cleaned up some cartilage and arthritis in a second area. Three months later my foot feels great.
Dr. Stracks: And you'd learned enough by that point to approach the surgery differently.
Paul: The anesthesiologist told me, "You're going to wake up feeling great, you'll be on your feet in days." I held onto that. I'd also done visualization, meditation, positive affirmations going in. And this surgeon's approach was completely different from the first — he understood that surgery doesn't have to be the first line of defense. He spent four or five months trying everything else before agreeing to operate. And when he finally did, it was because we'd ruled out everything else and determined this was a legitimate structural issue caused by the first surgery.
The arthritis they found, by the way — I'm in my mid-60s. Bodies have arthritis. Bodies have narrowing of the spine. That's aging. It doesn't mean it's causing your pain.
Dr. Stracks: This is exactly what I try to help people understand. It's not black and white — physiological or not physiological. Both can be true. What we're trying to determine is whether there's a physical component so significant that it has to be addressed physically before you can feel better. In Paul's case, the answer with the second surgery was yes. For the vast majority of everything else he experienced over 15 years, the answer was no.
Life Now
Dr. Stracks: What is your life like today?
Paul: I wake up feeling great. I don't spend any part of my day wondering how I'll feel in four hours. I had a big argument with my sister recently and felt nothing afterward — no flare, no fear of what it would do to me. When things were bad, a conflict like that would have set off weeks of symptoms.
I have no limitations. I can do pretty much anything I want. I don't carry medication everywhere I go. I don't think about it. If I get a headache during allergy season, I take a Motrin and move on. The shift isn't just that the pain is gone — it's that the mental load of managing it is gone. Joy, gratitude, forgiveness — those became real parts of my life. Pain had dictated everything before. Now it doesn't.
And there's an unexpected benefit: my relationships are better. Learning to identify and eliminate toxic relationships, learning to communicate differently — that came directly out of this work. Unintended, and enormously valuable.
Advice for People Just Starting Out
Paul: Be curious. Ask "what if it works?" instead of "what if it doesn't?" Be open-minded. Throw your MRI away — not literally, but stop letting it define you. An image is an image. It doesn't tell the full story.
Understand that trauma doesn't have to be one massive event. It can be a whole accumulation of small things, suppressed over years. Get those feelings out. Talk to someone. Journal. Write the letters you never send. Be amazed at what starts to shift.
And don't try to do this entirely alone. Reading and apps are valuable — they were for me — but nothing replaced sitting with Dr. Stracks, asking real questions, and being truly heard without judgment. All three together — the work I did independently, the work in groups, and the work with a professional — made for a much stronger outcome than any one of those alone.
Dr. Stracks: It's worth noting the timeline here. Paul's pain started around 2005, we met around 2017, and by the time we're recording this in 2023, he's been living free of significant pain for several years. The full arc of healing took roughly four to five years from when he really committed to this work. That sounds long, but it compares to the next 30 or 50 years of living life without these symptoms. The math is worth keeping in mind.
Dr. John Stracks practices mind-body medicine via telehealth nationally and internationally, focused on the reduction and elimination of chronic pain and physical symptoms. To learn more about working with Dr. Stracks or the Cormendi Health team, visit cormendihealth.com.