Hi Disgruntled Pelican On the John Sarno route I have the same labrum/FAI in my hips and went through pain and am now pain free running as much as I want. This review on his booked helped me from a reader that mimics mine and I believe your situation:
"I cannot imagine the world the Dr. Sarno has opened my eyes to. As many reviewers have already mentioned, I'm a hardcore empiricist and lover of science myself and also worry that people will look at me as if I'm telling them sleeping with crystals under their pillow will cure their decades long pain cycle if I talk about TMS. However, there is new research in the world of pain science for anyone interested in exploring more about this and I find it extraordinarily fascinating and makes a lot of sense. Pain is pain– it's a signal that the brain sends to drive a behavior (avoidance of a hot stove, for example). Whether the signal is triggered by physical damage or trauma or not is where it gets interesting.
My story is that I've been a marathoner with a desk job for the last 7 years, but had always dealt with chronic injuries– quite a bit more frequently than your typical injured runner. Every few months I'd be out with something, usually lower leg tendonitis in different tendons, bones in my foot that needed to be realigned every 3 days, etc. I was extremely diligent with getting lots of PT, monthly expensive sports massages, and it would just barely manage the issues. Then one day (actually right before I could sign up for my very first Boston marathon) at age 26 I tore my ACL/MCL/meniscus/fractured my tibia at a trampoline park, which took the usual 1-2 years of rehab to come back from. However, the amount of emotional pain that caused me and the upset to my lifestyle as a 20-something whose only friends and life outside of work was largely running, I had a lot of feelings I didn't know what to do with.
About a year post-op, I developed some really bad front-of-hip pain on the operated leg. It started on a group trip where I felt my pain and mobility issues (less than a year post-op) were dismissed by some of the members of the group and then just lasted, and lasted, and lasted (3 years in total). I had hip pain for 2 full years before going to an orthopedic surgeon again for assessment and an MRA. Before that I tried resting, quitting running, so many painful massages, yoga, even more PT, etc. Every day I spent 30-60 minutes foam rolling/stretching/strengthening the things around my hip just to get a 5-10% reduction in pain. It hurt to sit for more than 20 minutes and was excruciating. It of course hurt during or after my very short, very infrequent runs as well. The MRA revealed a "large" labral tear and femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) that needed surgery
"immediately" or else I'd get arthritis. Funny enough, literally the day after I got the results back I had excruciating new pain on the side/back of my hip and then for the next 2 months dealt with SI joint pain that would switch sides occasionally for no reason.
I did a ton of research and found that in some studies they witnessed high rates of healthy people who were asymptomatic to have labral tears, suggesting that presence of a tear does not inherently cause pain, and yet surgeons are adamant that that's the source of pain because we have no other explanation. I had heard the same findings in population studies with mensical tears, as well as the equal outcomes of sham/placebo meniscal surgeries compared to real ones. Combined with the unclear successful outcomes of FAI and labral repair surgery, I was starting to be very skeptical and cancelled the surgery, but still had no answers.
To make a long story a tiny bit shorter, I read Dr. Sarno's book in Feb of 2020. It's now Dec 2020 and I have been running since 100% injury free. I (probably should but) don't do a single PT-like exercise besides maybe a yoga or barre class a week and run 30-40 miles per week right now. I used to only manage running every other day or less because my hip would hurt and my operated knee would feel puffy and sore. Now I run 6 days a week and the only thing hurting is my discipline to wake up early every day. I sit all day at my desk without pain and pop out for a 6 miler, again without pain and without 30+ minutes of pre-run stretching. I started doing 10 mile long runs and trail races again and rather than limping around for days with sore feet/ankles, I walk and feel completely fine. I occasionally get a "reminder" in the form of a sore hip, sore SI joint, sore foot, ankles, one time my wrist felt like it had carpal tunnel even though I hadn't even touched my computer all day or used the wrist for anything, etc. but because of my knowledge of TMS these things don't build into actual injuries and last a mere few seconds or sometimes a few days intermittently.
My hip pain actually ended up transferring elsewhere in my body (symptom imperative)– to pelvic pain which took me longer to accept as TMS and has been more difficult to address due to fear and doubt. But I am nearly on the other side of that as well thanks to additional resources like journaling (Nicole J. Sachs, LCSW who worked under Dr. Sarno) and Dan Buglio on youtube for daily reinforcement."