How I Got Active Again

Having been more active on the TMS Forum recently it has been pretty clear how much fear of activities is just if not more limiting than fear of pain. Not that they can be separated often.

Getting back to exercise and activities was the absolute game-changer in terms of being confident that I could recover from my 6 years of pain. Let me share some things that worked for me and hopefully they will be of help to any of the other wonderful people who come to this online sanctuary.

My first step was consuming a shit load of TMS information - Dr Sarno, Steve Ozanich, Alan Gordon etc... they became so deeply ingrained that for a while all I could talk about was TMS and started to be confused why people couldn't see that they had TMS too. "Like it is so obvious dudes" - evangelical Ed. Anyway, I have classical TMS personality traits which include wanting every last bit of information - otherwise known as a bit obsessive.

^As a disclaimer: this hunt for information has to stop at some point as it easily becomes too much of an obsessive focus on fixing but at the start I found it helpful to be immersed in the TMS work

Second step was having Dr Sarnos 12 daily commandments on hand all the time. They were in my notebook, in my journal, in my mind, on the kitchen side, on my bedroom table... I'm sure you are getting the picture. I needed to be reminded over and over again that my symptoms were psychological and harmless.

Third step of confidence building was building a long, living evidence list. It has all the evidence that my pain wasn't structural - nothing was too small to be on there. Examples ranged from anything like, my pain started when my parents got divorced, to I didn't have pain for 5 minutes of my morning walk, or wow my pain was terrible just before that hard conversation and has now disappeared. This was beyond helpful in realising that my symptoms were TMS.

At this stage I had eliminated most of my doubts which was the perfect place to start exercising again. Now it was a question of finding exercise I ENJOYED. This was the real crux of the matter for me. As TMS is based on repressed rage forcing myself to exercise, for example going to a gym and lifting weights, was going to cause more symptoms.

I can't tell you how much of a switch it is to do something I enjoyed and wanted to do rather than felt forced by a harsh inner critic. Completely different mode of being.

As I was in the beautiful English countryside I decided I would go on runs as I was already enjoying going out for gentle walks with my dads two dogs: a wee border terrier and black lab. I prepped for each run by going through the commandments, checking in with how I felt - often their was some fear that I soothed with doing 5 second by 5 second breathing and affirmations that I was safe, and reminded myself of Alan Gordons "authentic indifference" - no matter how I feel on this run going on the run is the measure of success - "I don't need to be pain-free to enjoy a run" (that is my interpretation of that concept).

My fourth step was to start small, I ran for 5 minutes the first few days. Of course I had pain, sometimes really bad, but the feeling of liberation was winning out. Every time I came back from a run I celebrated which looked like: cuddling with the dogs, enjoying a bath, having a sweet treat, just saying aloud how well I had done - anything to keep a state of positivity to teach my brain that this was a safe and worthwhile thing to do. Starting this small keep the fear to a manageable level rather than being completely overwhelming.

Fifth step was using visualisation which I learned from the Great Pain Deception by Steve Ozanich, where he describes running while imagining soft, pillowy snow on the ground for his knee pain. So as I ran further and my shoulder pain started to ramp up in intensity I started to imagine that I was a character called Inspector Gadget who is made of metal. If my shoulder was metal I couldn't feel pain right... weird as this sounds it was really effective for me. It took the edge off the pain and fear just enough for me to enjoy the runs.

As I built more and more confidence which was growing with each and every run, I got to a key point which is the "Bring it on, come on!" attitude. I went from being deathly scared of the pain to inviting it in, letting it be as large as it could be without fear as I knew it was TMS. That was my tipping point - I have rarely been afraid of exercise since then and have re-engaged fully. I even did a short stint carrying 30kg tents around for work just to prove to myself that I could do it.

Obviously this was not a linear process -> I didn't just run further and further and there were times of great pain and great doubt. All of which are a totally normal part of the process. But the overall trajectory was that I could do more with more confidence which is one the ultimate goals of recovery from chronic pain.

 

I love this. Thank you for sharing.

 

Thank you for sharing! It is always helpful too to see people who have tried to run or get back into running as I feel that is so scary for so many and our culture is so filled with all the negative about running (you'll hurt your knees! you are too old to that! you shouldn't run every day!) and even though for years I rolled my eyes at those people (um, impact activities strengthen bone) I've clearly ingrained it as I try to get back out there.

 

THIS! Starting to really tune in to all these subtle messages that we receive on a daily basis and how much of an effect that messaging has (often without my awareness) on my behaviors and beliefs.
Sometimes I have to stop myself and think "how do I know that to be true?" - and often it's like "Well, it's all over the internet" (without even questioning the source) or everybody says it... And, then I have to think how did they even know it to be true, etc etc" - maybe through their own experience? But, how much of that was an effect of belief influenced by messaging?

There's a sort of funny anecdotal story that I often think about -
A man was preparing a pot roast for dinner, as he had done many times before. "As usual, he cut off both ends of the roast before placing it in the pan. His curious daughter watched and asked, "Dad, why do you cut off the ends of the pot roast?" The father paused and said, "I don’t know, that’s how my mother always did it. Let’s call Grandma and ask." So they called Grandma, who chuckled. “Well, that’s how my mother always did it! I figured it made it cook better. Let’s call your great-grandmother and ask her!” Three generations now curious, they phoned Great-Grandma, who laughed heartily when she heard the question, “Oh my goodness,” she said, “I only cut the ends off because back then, that was my only roasting pan and it was too small!”

 

Lovely recovery story @mrefreddyg. Thank you for sharing.

 

This is so true - I still hear these messages now about running on concrete in particular and try to shrug them off. I always feel better with movement and our bodies are made to run - that is literally how our ancestors used to catch food. They would chase animals until the animals were exhausted and couldn't run anymore.

A theory that I love is that we are built for long distance running - our feet shape, ability to sweat, big leg muscles and tendons. So lacing up and going for short/medium/long regular runs is part of our heritage.

 

That is amazing! Good on you -- what an inspiring story.
Regarding the fear of pain thing, I had such a similar experience to this recently when I was walking the Camino de Santiago. I had a lot of foot/ankle/calf swelling and while I knew that some of it was probably normal from all the walking, it could also definitely be TMS/symptom imperative trying to get me to stop walking. Realizing that I was experiencing pain but was not actually injuring myself helped me keep going. I knew that if I stopped (which might have been totaly reasonable for someone who wasn't so TMS-prone) it would teach me that I couldn't do things like the Camino, when actually I can.
At some point I just decided that no matter how bad the pain was, I was going to walk the entire thing and that made it so much more bearable and less scary.
I noticed today that when some clear TMS symptoms in another part of my body flared up, my calf also started to hurt. Ha! Can't get me with that one, TMS. I already showed you I can walk 75 miles on that sore calf without anything very terrible happening!