Last summer there was a major change going on in my household and already being subject to extreme anxiety I was under an unusually heavier amount of stress. One day I walked to the drug store to get myself a soda and when I was walking back it hit me like a ton of bricks: back spasms shooting up and down my spine.

My brother was about to move out, some several hundred miles away and it was upsetting me, and as I usually do, I stuff the feelings down deep inside-- something I've done all my life. Almost never have I told the truth to a psychotherapist. The last time I did, I wound up inpatient in the psyche ward of a hospital for a week. But this, the pain was unreal.

You know how if you go to the emergency room for an injury they ask you "on a scale from one to ten, one being benign, negligible, ten being the worst pain imaginable, how much does it hurt?" The highest I've ever had to answer was seven and that was for chest pains brought on by a panic attack I had at a job many years ago. These back spasms were a ten. I actually fell over, I thought I'd been shot.

I managed to get home where I lied down until I was able to walk again, but for the next two weeks I had to walk with a cane because my back kept twitching and this pain sent shockwaves up and down my spine. They receded almost completely after three weeks with "aftershocks" here and there. Lately I've been getting them, again-- back on the ten level. I'm not sure if they're back spasms or something else. I told my psychiatrist (not psychotherapist) about it and he said it could be caused by intense anxiety and he gave me some muscle relaxant that did very little to ease the pain.

Is it really possible that my anxiety/depression can attack me physically in the manner I've described?