Sarno's Theory Is Wrong

Yep, your lizard brain wants you to be like a meerkat on sentry duty. With me my lizard brain wanted me to hide from perceived dangers in my bed under my duvet. To make me bed ridden it gave me severe pain all over my body and a piercing pain in my right thigh that made it impossible to move at all without excruciating pain that made me yell out in absolute bloody agony... This went on for months on end, adding up to my being totally bedridden for around 18 months. I also couldn't sit without pain, which ranged from a searing pain in my anus to pudendal neuralgia-like pain to tailbone pain and sacroiliac and hip pain, and more.

The mechanism is a primitive one that doesn't take into account the long term dangers of its actions to one's health. In my case, my lizard brain wasn't concerned that in being bedridden I was at risk of blood clots and muscle wasting through lack of movement. And, although I was lying in bed it wasn't at all comfortable and so I had precious little sleep and what sleep I did get was fitful and filled with bad dreams due to all the intense pain, so it wasn't concerned about my insomnia either.

I did mind/body work and I'm no longer bed ridden or sleep deprived or in horrendous pain. Follow suit and you'll lose your symptoms, you'll no longer be meerkat on sentry duty.

 

Thank you for sharing that, it means a lot to me. I’m also sorry you went through all of that. Would you say you have a relatively good quality of life now?

 

You're welcome! Yes, my quality of life is relatively good. I continue to do mind/body work though because I still have some symptoms to lose.

 

Diana + BloodMoon + Cactus: You guys are literally amazing. I'm sending you kisses. You mentioned The Secret Language of the Body; I didn't take notice but when it was re-iterated I took notice! I watched a YT video of the author Jennifer Mann and everything just clicked and made so much sense. I now understand what got me here and why I'm here today. My mind is actually structurally okay, it's just that my nervous system (=brain) didn't have the proper inputs from my "caregivers" and non threatening stuff like emotions could be perceived as danger by the brain. It's not that the mind is faulty (it's okay), it's just the data in the mind that's faulty. Anyways, Jennifer mentions the Lightning Process by Phil Mann which significantly helped her on her recovery. I'm gonna order her book but was wondering if any of you have tried and/or recommend the Lightning Process?

 

There were no success stories on the Success Stories Forum crediting their recovery to doing the lightning process when I researched it a while back. There are a few postings where people say that they tried it and it didn't help, with one saying that they felt it made them worse and a couple of postings where they said it helped them to believe in mind/body, but they needed to do other mind/body work. I found two postings elsewhere on the forums (not on the success stories forum) that said it worked for them but they didn't give much detail at all. I remember I contacted one of them with a question but they didn't respond. I understand it's an NLP based programme (I did NLP years ago to help me cope with issues regarding my then work - I'm retired now - and unfortunately it didn't help me at all with that, but I know of couple of people who said it helped them with work-related difficulties).

I would suggest that the best bet is to do the work from Jennifer Mann's book because if the lightning process helped her a lot then it figures that she will have presumably incorporated some of its more helpful techniques, probably tweaking them where necessary, plus added other stuff too.

 

This might help:

“You feel stuck because there is a language your body speaks that you have yet to learn, the language of the nervous system. Your nervous system has one job: to keep you alive. Its efficiency in keeping you alive depends on evolutionary algorithms which are outdated and only as good as the programming it has from your past, so instead of keeping you alive and helping you thrive, it keeps you alive and stuck in survival mode. Living in survival mode and in unresolved trauma patterns creates chronic stress and anxiety – creating the perfect storm for a dysregulated nervous system and illness. Trauma’s impact on your nervous system can be reprogrammed. What you previously thought was happening in your mind is actually happening in your body. The way out is through the way in: a dysregulated nervous system is how illness is done, but a regulated nervous system is how illness is undone. … and the best person to help you heal is you.”—From The Secret Language of the Body

Mike,
The book is chock full of explanations, tools and little techniques to do to put your nervous system back to normal. It also addresses how to heal the chronic emotions from childhood under the surface that drive the disregulation. I just finished my first overall read. Now I’m going back to reread and make the techniques a real part of my life. I’ve been doing some already, and they’re working!

 

I purchased the audio book as it’s easier for me to listen while walking. I’m an hour and a half into the book (it’s an eight hour audio). I must say, from what I’ve listened to, it’s probably the best book on mind body work. The bit that you copied and pasted is from the first chapters and it’s spot on! I believe this is where I went wrong. I was focussed to much on the “why” and not on the “what”. I need to remove stop judging, analysing and thinking. I need to start listening internally via BASE-M. Thank you for this recommendation. You guys have done more to help me than all the professionals I’ve seen to date who are useless at guiding me out of nervous system dysregulation.

 

That’s great I’m glad you’ve got it! I feel the exact same way about this book. It’s the best I’ve read out of all of them.

 

I started reading that book as well. I read the first part and I'm just processing for a few days before getting back to it.

 

It's not protecting you. It THINKS it's protecting you.

Ages ago something happened to the homo sapiens so it prevailed over other human species, like homo erectus and neanderthals. We already know the homo sapiens were more social than their cousins. Meaning the "run from the tiger" mechanism was somewhat adapted to the "gotta be accepted" one. It brought us here and emotional pain was one of the prices.

 

Bingo! You hit the nail on the head. I’m lucky in a way because I have good support around me. I feel I have an uncontrollable child that’s scared and frightened who is controlling my autonomic systems. I hear people say that TMS is just a mind thing. It isn’t! The mind is so connected to the body that they are one! Let me tell you something, as a man, I have a reasonable amount of body hair. Now, since TMS went wild I have lost about 50% of my body hair. I’m not entirely sure why, could be lack of nutrients/oxygenation/blood flow or increased stress hormones. The decisions made by the mind are causing actual physiological changes in the body that are visual to the naked eye. That’s just one example … I feel the mind is slowly suffocating the body. That makes me so angry because it’s my body. I am the operator. The subconscious should be there to manage autonomic systems, this is an overarch of governance in my opinion!!!!!

 

It is enraging, for sure. You do the work, journaling, exposure, meditation, breathing, emotional release, messages of safety etc. and your limbic system goes "wow this guy is clearly out of his mind, here, more pain". Not to say every life event you miss because of it...

Then you read stories about people who had an emotional epiphany and boom, healed in 2 months. And you think "wait, should I be inspired right now?"

But one thing this forum taught me is that TMS recovery is way harder than what the TMS circle makes us believe in the beginning. I know they mean well and are worried about not scaring people, but c'mon... TMSers are intelligent people who thinks too much actually. (And of course, a book called How To Get Rid of Pain God Knows When wouldn't sell at all).

But here we are in the TMS pool trying to figure out how to accept and heal, each morning closer to the day when pieces start falling into place.

 

May I ask what you think likely triggered your sensations? I heard anecdotally in Japan that fibromyalgia is treated as a condition of poor sleep and I believe severe insomnia was the cause of TMS pains.

Basically, I’ve been trying to figure out what triggered my central sensitization (CS) pain, and here’s my theory.

I have Crohn’s, which constantly sends pain signals to my nervous system. Then I likely had a severe H. pylori infection, which added more nerve signals and inflammation. My brain’s primitive threat-detection system — the amygdala, hypothalamus, and brainstem — interpreted these signals as danger.

This “lizard brain” reacts to raw nerve and chemical signals, not nuance. It flipped my nervous system into survival mode, triggering severe insomnia. I could barely sleep, because my brain thought staying awake was keeping me safe.

Sleep is how the nervous system resets and regulates itself. After weeks of almost no sleep, my autonomic and pain-regulation systems became dysregulated. Minor sensations and stressors got amplified. My brain then interpreted these distorted signals as life-threatening, producing severe pain, especially when I’m sitting or lying still.

Basically, my brain’s “safety system” became maladaptive: it tries to protect me but ends up causing a vicious cycle — insomnia → nervous system chaos → amplified pain → even less sleep.

From a scientific perspective, this fits with what researchers call central sensitization: the nervous system becomes hyper-responsive and interprets harmless signals as threats. In my case, the triggers seem to be chronic inflammation, post-infectious signaling, and sleep disruption, all combining to create this self-perpetuating cycle.

The point is that the lizard brain only understands electricity signals. It has no idea what the threat is or if there is indeed a legitamate threat. It runs on very basic code and in my opinion is a defect of the way we evolved. I was thinking of BloodMoon, Sita and Cactus and how they managed to get their life back together. I believe in all cases it was a case of regulating their nervous system (Brain) by calming the electricity signals to their lizard brain by getting good sleep, living their lives as best as they can and not freaking out. Rinse and repeat this time and time again. I think sleep is a big factor because without good sleep the brain will not be able to process nervous system messages properly. This is key for anyone looking to recover from fibromyalgia like pains. How is your sleep?

 

I think good sleep is very important and might play a significant role in symptoms, the ability to reach deep sleep and rest for real. I actually have good sleep, but I treat it and use a mouthpiece to reduce snoring and apnea. I think my symptoms reduced a little when I started treating it, but not significantly.

What happens during the night is quite a mistery, the way symptoms change so much when we wake up. Maybe it's just the result of hours with the unconscious running the show, I really don't know...

My symptoms are mostly triggered by the amount of time doing phisical exercises. It also happens for other things like sitting for example. As time passes the sensitivity increases. I'm able to reduce it if I lie down for, say, 1 hour. But I'm currently avoiding doing it. As for the emotional work, it's mostly the anxiety and frustration, and maybe some victimization.

 

I would in no way say I’m a great sleeper at least right now, but I’ve never stressed about it. In my late teens 20’s I averaged about 2 hours a night and was rarely tired. Too much life in me in those days to worry about sleep!

 

Tbh, I would say that my improvement has been despite not getting good nights of undisturbed sleep. (Unlike Cactus, pre-TMS I enjoyed 7 to 8 hours of sleep when I was younger.) Since experiencing mind/body symptoms, sleeping well has been difficult, especially so when I was bed bound in excruciating pain, but then I learned to place my attention on the pain together with my breath rather than mentally running away from and resisting it, and that enabled me to get some sleep 'with' the pain (albeit it was a 'troubled' sleep because my brain incorporated the pain into my dreams and made those dreams very unpleasant).

With regard to 'not freaking out'... I think it helped that I reached rock bottom when I was bedridden. Hitting rock bottom did majorly freak me out at first, of course, but then in time I became kind of 'grateful' for the small things that I could do (like peeling carrots from a tray whilst in bed) and defiant in doing them. I'm also appreciative to be where I am these days, even though that isn't with me being completely free of pain...

When one is like 'the walking wounded' - not bedridden, not at absolute rock bottom - and endeavouring to carry on with life as usual, one isn't liable to feel grateful or appreciative, one makes comparisons with one's pre-TMS life and gets frustrated and feels pressured (it was how I felt with my TMS symptoms before I became bedridden and I read the same in so many people's postings on these forums). I'm not saying that I haven't had frustrations, and more than the occasional bout of despair, because improvement has been far from linear and I've experienced major flaring of symptoms numerous times, but I was 'lucky' you might say, because in being bedridden I started from scratch and when you start from scratch in your recovery everything you end up being able to do, no matter how small, feels good and at least somewhat promising, and when you can do activities pretty consistently and then consistently it feels like a bit of a small 'miracle'.

All this said, I don't believe everyone has to hit rock bottom in order to recover, I think what's key is not doubting the 'diagnosis' that it's mind/body and thus believing that you're not broken because that helps you carry on regardless (as you say, living your life as best you can).

 

Would you say that you are able to travel these days like long car journey's or trips on the plane? For me, it isn't just the sensations, I cannot experience relaxation. I feel there's this internal energy/vibration like my nervous system is in a hyper state. Did you feel like that? I heard Ketamine is very good at reducing nervous system hyperexcitability and I'm wondering whether this is an option whilst I do TMS work. I think TMS work is extremely challenging when the symptoms are severe. I'm wondering if anyone on this forum tried Ketamine. Did you take any drugs to help you with your TMS journey or was your treatment plan just TMS work?

 

I was in such pain that I couldn't sleep at night. I would always fall asleep in 2 min but I would wake up after a few hours in tremendous pain. So I couldn't fall asleep again. Because of the severe lack of sleep I started to have hallucinations. I basically lost my mind and had to be hospitalized. It's not fun to say the least...But it's something normal, everyone would experience this after weeks/moths without proper sleep.

My illness started suddenly after I moved to downtown LA and there was a very noisy place, where I used to live. The building was OK but the level of noise was insane, police helicopters at night, homeless people outside everywhere...I could not sleep for an entire month. I was a new immigrant and had no idea about bad and good neighborhoods in the US. The internet was not so developed then. I was coming from Germany where I lived in a small town, very quiet and serene in the Black Forest area. My new diet played a role as well, everything in the US was either too salty, had too much fat or too much sugar in it. Every weekend I used to drive to 3-4 European stores here in the US just to buy normal food. Pickles without added sugar in them for instance. Mustard. Soup etc. Even the cans of beans had sugar in them here in the US and back in Europe I was not used to eating so much sugar daily. Anyway...

I never stopped living but it was very difficult to function. It brought me to my knees many times, my faith in God got very strong. I had nowhere to turn so I had to get closer to God. My husband helped me a lot, and my family (in Europe) too. My dad is very successful professionally (architect) and he helped us financially. It was hard for me to accept but I did. It humbled me even more. I'm a very independent person and very ambitious and depending on others was not easy. I have had a job since I was 18 and having my own money was normal for me. My ego got crushed but now I'm grateful for it.

Mike, you are right. You live your life and do your best, and try to find joy in little things. Life is made of little things, everyday things. It took me some time not to take things so seriously. My nervous system is still too sensitive but I'm taking care of it and I'm careful to keep it balanced.

I want to add that I've always been very happy, as a child or adult. This fact was probably decisive in my recovery. Keeping a good spirit and concentrating on the positives in life. It's not always easy but the reverse is sad. This is the only solution.

Take care.

 

I just wanted to chime in and say that I completely understand how you feel. My body is in a constant state where it simply can’t find rest. It’s hard to describe, but it often feels as if my body is always on edge, like I could have a heart attack if someone startled me (not literally, but you know what I mean). It’s as though I can never fully reach that deep, relaxing “ahhhh” feeling. Even if all my other symptoms disappeared, it would still be difficult to truly relax. So I completely get what you’re saying. I believe it’s because our nervous systems are stuck in a chronic fight-or-flight state, which might also explain the other symptoms we experience. I somehow feel like a chased animal.

This feeling also disappeared the times I’ve been free of my other symptoms.

 

Thank you for sharing! I appreciate it, Sita.