Are most skin issues TMS?

Hi guys,

I love these forums, and appreciate all of you. The conversations nearly always bring me back down to Earth - it’s so much easier to see these things clearly when it isn’t yourself. I do have one question though, that I’m looking for feedback on...

I have had probably every TMS symptom over the years, and have been able to recognize/heal it in almost every instance. It always improves or resolves for me when I notice the pains moving around the body and can laugh at myself. I saw a mind/body doctor (Stracks) who was wonderful, and I found almost all of my symptoms disappear with his reassurance that I was on the right track. I still get symptoms, but find them to be easier to talk myself out of. I’m using the curable app too, to try to knock it out for good.

I am wondering though, do dermatological conditions typically fall under the TMS umbrella? I have had a mild, occasional skin condition (Hidradenitis Supperativa, supposedly) that began the first time about 12 years ago, when I had extremely difficult feelings about a boyfriend and was under other stress, too. I understand this condition has autoimmune like qualities; but is also misunderstood, and can be managed with various things like diet and supplements.

I’ve had a few mild flare ups over the past 12 years, but nothing even worth visiting a doctor over. I recently have noticed it happening again, and I’ve been in a particularly stressful place in life, which brought the connection to mind.

Is this a kind of condition that could be attributed to TMS?

Thank you!

 

imho this is TMS. I didn't even know it was called hidradenitis, but I also have a couple of recurring (small) spots that reawaken under stress. The funny thing is that once a spot has healed, the next one starts to get irritated, as if they are in contact about who is next.

 

I did just check out The Great Pain Deception and Steve referred to “a whole host of itises” as being TMS pains that can’t otherwise be identified. In another spot, he says “skin outbreaks that are almost always undiagnosable as conventional skin conditions are TMS.” I’m not sure if that excludes this condition, or not, but it’s interesting.

The only thing that’s throwing me about it is that this is being referred to online as an autoimmune condition, which is something I can’t say about any of my other symptoms.

 

Here's a book on psychosomatic skin issues, 'SKIN DEEP' by Grossbart & Sherman, I think one of the authors might have written a chapter in one of Dr. Sarno's books.

http://grossbart.com/SkinDeep.pdf





Ted A. Grossbart, Carl Sherman
Health Press, 1992 - Health & Fitness - 265 pages
1 Review
Dermatology has made remarkable strides in recent decades, with the advent of high-tech aids such as lasers and cryosurgery and new wonder drugs such as steroids and vitamin A derivatives; thus, many skin sufferers have been cured by their physicians. Yet many have not. If you have brought your persistent eczema, your stubborn warts, your psoriasis or other distressing skin ailment, or even your recurrent herpes to specialists and superspecialists, and if all the creams, lotions, and medications have failed to help, you must wonder if there is something else -- and ardently hope that there is. This is exactly what Drs. Grossbart and Sherman have addressed in Skin Deep: A Mind/Body Program for Healthy Skin.

 

Tom. I love you.

(This book is fabulous. I've stopped reading at 'fractional suicide' because I am needed in the kitchen but that phrase and explanation alone is a tms can o' worms.)

 

Fantastic! I’ll give it a read.

 

This is the preface from the book should anyone want a taster. It promises to be a very good read and in much the same way as people with tms but without back pain can extrapolate from Sarno’s early book, the same is true here. Besides which I am pretty sure most folk here have experienced some kind of skin issue. All due credit to @Tennis Tom.

“Preface

Depression, anxiety, and feelings of isolation are epidemic. One minute we are driven
by boredom into a restless search for "the action" but in the next minute, when we
find it, the stress triggers a headache or a rash.

Feelings are not the problem, though. They may be uncomfortable – even
painful – but they are never pathological. The problem is all the things we do to
protect ourselves from painful feelings. We exhaust ourselves running around so the
sadness won't catch us or we try to dissolve our sense of powerlessness in alcohol or
pills. We frantically search for the right car or dress that will distract us from never
having felt fully loved or cared for.

Boredom and restlessness are not feelings at all but the smudge left behind
when painful feelings are erased: push anger away and what's left is the empty
sensation that nothing's happening – or that nobody is there. As for the stress that
causes, triggers, or heightens medical problems: this too is not a matter of simple
aggravation, sadness, or frustration but the anger, sadness, or frustration you're
trying desperately not to feel.

You know the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy: they can be neither
created nor destroyed, only shifted from form to form. Emotion – a kind of psychic
energy – obeys the same law. Shut anger or sadness or frustration out the door and it
comes in through the window or, often enough, through the body. Your heart
"attacks." Your asthma "gasps." Your eczema "weeps."

By the Law of Conservation of Emotional Energy, you cannot erase the fact that
a key person in your life didn't love you (or only loved who they thought you were; or
the reflection of themselves they saw in your eyes; or a "you" that agreed not to love
someone else).

All you can do is con yourself: keep on struggling to do what it seemed would get
them to love you; or attempt to rewrite history: find a person or dilemma just like the
one that hurt you way back when and convince yourself that this time the story will
have a happy ending. When it doesn't, try again. And again. And again.

Try as you might to come up with new plays that will win the game, the season
is long over and nothing is going to change the score. Switch jobs. Move to California.
Retire. Get married. Get divorced. Get a horse. You still won't be recloned as your
ideal self. Your past is nonnegotiable.

My advice: Give up. There is no place to go and there's nothing to do that will
change things on that level. Pessimistic? Think of it as liberating. Now you can just do
things because you enjoy them or because they catch your fancy. Now you can be nice
to someone just to be nice to someone – not to get rid of the ache that lies buried
inaccessibly like the phantom pain in a limb that was amputated long ago.

Give up the fight; accept and feel the feelings. Get off the merry-go-round that is
taking you nowhere. One day – through psychotherapy, perhaps, or through a
particularly sobering personal experience – it gets through that the universe will not
be declared a misdeal, so you begin to play the hand you've been dealt. The painful
slowness of life speeds up or its frantic, exhausting pace slows down. You become
more present and more playful. Relationships go more smoothly. Work is more
rewarding. Externally, your life is identical – but incredibly much richer.

When you start to make sense of the past, you stop repeating it; when you stop
pretending your wounds aren't there, they start to heal. When you stop repeating
battles that have been history for decades, then you're left with … what? Real life; no
more, no less. Maybe it's not the four-scoop, three-topping whipped cream special
with the cherry on top, but there will be some magically tasty moments.”

 

brilliant... and free for everyone to download!!

 

So good - I’ve found it useful to have passages like this to read when I’m off-track.

Thanks!

 

Thanks for posting the preface Plum, who would have thought popping a pimple would have such underlying psychological TMS elements behind it!?!